My request for my trip to Croatia was the beach…..Laura’s was Plitvic Lakes.

Inland about 2 hours from Zadar the Plitvic lakes was granted UNESCO World Heritage Listing status in 1979. Before Laura mentioned it I hadn’t heard of it. All I knew of Croatia were the beaches – that’s where all the European tourists head for in summer. I did a little research and got a little excited about the visit.

The lakes were reported to be stunning, but also severely crowded with people during summer. After my overly touristy experience in Split I was keen to avoid a repeat. So, while neither of us love early mornings we decided to get up early to avoid the crowds and, wow, it was so worth it. Later people would queue for 2 hours to get in. It meant that we basically had the park to ourselves for a couple of hours.

So. Worth it. The lakes are just beautiful.

The park has 16 lakes and is divided into 2 sections filled with almost 20km of gorgeous wooden boardwalks. You can get between the 2 main sections by boat and/or bus which we did, but I highly recommend walking as much as you can. I mean, that’s kinda the point….

The boardwalks wind through the different levels of lakes and waterfalls and the water is unbelievably crystal clear.

Because we got into the park so early, we had the place to ourselves for a few hours and that was my win of the day. We could stop and enjoy the views and take as many tourist-free photos as we liked. We spent almost 6 hours there, but I could see how you could easily spend more if you stopped to take photos.

I have to say that the park didn’t provide a lot of signage and at times we wondered if we were still on our correct path (they have different walking track options). We found out later that there are only 9 park rangers for the whole place, which is clearly not enough. After visiting Krka National Park we realised how much could be improved at Plitvice.

It is best described through pictures, so here you go….

Next stop on the Croatian road trip, Zadar!