When we were researching what we wanted to do in Croatia, we found out about this national park with lots of waterfalls. It seemed pretty ridiculous to do as a day trip from either Split or Zagreb, so we decided to rent a car.  Since we are in Europe, I got to drive a manual transmission for the first time in a while. A bonus of this route is that we no longer had to figure out how to get to Zagreb from Split. The trip from Split to the park was a little under 3 hours.

Plitvice Lakes National Park is the largest national park in Croatia, and one we had certainly never heard of. Apparently, everyone else has because there were *a lot* of people there! And now we definitely understand why so many people were there – it was stunning.

The day before visiting the park, after arriving in the area, we explored the village of Slunj and had dinner there.  Lots of waterfalls!

We stayed in a small village that was walking distance to one of the park entrances, that way we could enter the park when it opened at 7am before most of the day trippers arrived.

The documentation on the park and how to best explore it was confusing, but we settled on route “H” – which involves starting on a bus and walking along the lakes / waterfalls before taking a electric boat to more lakes and waterfalls before taking another bus back to the start.

After we got off our bus and walked by the first lake, we took a side quest to a lookout that I assume was one of the highest areas in the park.

After that, we started winding our way down the lakes and seeing endless waterfalls.

A lot of the hike was along boardwalks

10/10 recommend this park if you happen to find yourself in the area.

Trip Overview

• Depart August 3, 2026
• Return October 8, 2026
• Planned stays in
  • Split and Zagreb Croatia
  • Ljubljana, Slovenia
  • Budapest, Hungary
  • Vienna, Austria

Part 1 of ? – Split, Croatia

An epic trip is hard to even start to capture, but I am going to try because I know I’ll need help remembering some of the details someday. We arrived in Split after many many hours of travel (28 if I am calculating correctly) – ubering from my mom’s house in Bowie, MD, to the Amtrak station in New Carrollton where we took the train to Philadelphia, PA. We took the Philly metro from there to the airport and relaxed in the lounge before our flight to Madrid.  I think I ate one of everything as I was in excitement mode for the trip ahead. Jon and I both watched Hoppers on the flight, a cute Pixar movie if you haven’t seen it already, then we tried to sleep as much as possible which unfortunately was not a lot. We bumbled our way through the Madrid airport managing to find the lounge where we were so excited to take showers even though the bathrooms seemed more like saunas. We had hours to kill and did so fairly easily and had a smooth flight to Split, a bus ride from the airport to the cruise port, and then a walk to our Airbnb where we crashed. 

Things we did in Split

First some background on Split, it is the second largest city in Croatia (to Zagreb) with a population of about 160K. With over 1 M tourists visiting annually, the city balloons in the summer. There was a least one cruise ship in port daily which adds to the chaos.

• Day trip to Krka with the Cutlers
  • Our friends were just wrapping up a trip to Croatia. Fortunately, we overlapped as our first day was their last. We dove right into a day trip to Krka National Park. 
  • It has beautiful waterfalls that you do a loop down on one side and back up on the other to take in the views. You used to be able to swim at the bottom, but it was ruining the environment so they stopped allowing it. 

• Wandered the Old Town – a lot
  • Diocletian’s Palace – a large part of the old town is in what was once the retirement home for a Roman Emperor – it is in various states of (dis)repair in a very unique way.

• • So many nooks and crannies to wander through with everything from tourist shops to fancy boutiques, dive bars to five star restaurants scattered throughout.

• • They have good beer, yay! Shout out to Leopold’s Delicatessen Bar, The Daltonist Craft Bar, Mandrill’s Pub, and The Little Beer Store (with great beers from Tap B Brewery and Hvar Brewing)
• Day trip to Trogir
  • Wow does the internet oversell this place, it’s a cute town with a bunch of tourist shops. My perspective may be slightly influenced by the fact that we took a long hot bus ride to get there, but I stand by my assessment. 
• Day trip to Klis
  • This was quite the bus trip up a mountain on very narrow roads, I still can’t believe the public bus goes along that route. 
  • The fortress/castle is cool, definitely worth exploring. We had it to ourselves at first since we took an early bus to avoid the peak heat. Side note, some of Game of Thrones was filmed here, but we never watched the show.

• Day trip to Hvar Island
  • Took the ferry over to Hvar which was pleasant enough, but a little disappointing that the whole ferry is enclosed – no fresh air on the deck. This was much worse on the way back when it was HOT and FULL and there was a tiny whisper of the idea that the boat had some sort of cooling system.
  • The island was nice, the beaches were much the same as off of Split, but there were more resorts to stay at and lots of yachts around. 

• Went to Kasjuni beach
  • We went a bunch of times, way more than I was expecting. We would take an early bus and leave a little after noon. The place was utter chaos by noon, but before it was a peaceful haven of cool beautiful water.
  • Rock shoes are recommended everywhere and are 100% necessary for enjoyment and they help you float. 

• Explored Marjan Park
  • Before we got to Split I thought we’d walk here all the time as we stayed nearby. As it turned out we fully explored it, but really only made the trek up the hill twice because it was hot and it was a nontrivial hill to hike up!

• Checked out other city beaches (Bačvice and Ovcice)
  • The information online about the different beaches confused me quite a bit. For one thing, a single beach will be referred to as though it’s several different beaches. For another, there are Google reviews of all of them making them sound like hell on earth – dirty, full of trash, etc. Fortunately, that is nonsense. 
  • The city beaches are a bit odd, with concrete platforms forming much of the “beach” but they aren’t gross! 
• Came across a religious procession for the Feast of the Assumption – there were large speakers broadcasting the religious service this group was processing to.

• Went to a lot of grocery stores and the Split Mall
  • We like to self-cater when traveling for a long time to avoid gaining 1000 pounds (hopefully) so we needed to figure out grocery shopping and it definitely took some figuring out. Stores are all closed on Sunday so we had to remember that and we had to do lots of translating.
  • Malls are always fun to explore the local culture and Split was no different, the most notable thing being that they allowed smoking inside in cafes that were kinda sorta closed off from the mall, but not enough to stop it from smelling just awful.

Some other observations

• The water of the Adriatic was gorgeous, the perfect temperature, so clear, just the best!
• Seafood is on the menu and it’s delicious, so is Ćevapi, sausages served on a sort of roll/sort of flat bread optionally with ajvar, a wonderful red pepper based sauce – our new favorite condiment, cheese, and onions. As an aside, the first time we got Ćevapi was the night of a Hadjuk Split match. Split loves their soccer team, there are things like the pic below all around town indicating the year the supporters club was founded. We ended up having to wait extra long for our food because the supporters all come out in force into the town even if they aren’t going to the game and apparently they are fond of Ćevapi too.

• If someone famous was in a terrible movie it will be on TV here (example: “How Do You Know” With Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson, Paul Rudd and Jack Nicholson)
• Coffee is confusing, lattes seemed to just be coffee with milk, served in a glass with a straw??
• It was hot, so hot, not unexpectedly hot, but still so notably hot which was exacerbated by the lack of a/c and fans even when such things were readily available, sigh.
• We got super lucky on where we stayed. We originally picked it for easy access to the promenade and Marjan Hill for running, but we decided to take an extended break from running on this trip so that Jon’s knee/quad issue could heal and so we didn’t have to pack running shoes.