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.