9/24/19 Plitvice Lakes National Park, Croatia

We left beautiful Budapest and crept our way out of the city on two lane roads. City’s in Eastern Europe have terrible auto access to the city centers. You’d almost think those roads were there before cars🧐

Onto the freeway and smooth sailing, until the boarder of Hungary and Croatia. We’ve visited 23 countries now and been in Europe over five months with no border crossing issues until yesterday! We drove to the border with our passports in hand, with French license plates on the Peugeot. Usually we are waved through, a couple of times we are asked a few questions and then waved through. Not yesterday. The border guard asked for our passports and vehicle registration and asked us to pull out of line😳 Then five minutes later he comes back to the car and asks for a form that allows us to stay in a country for 90 days. We explained we are driving through 23 countries and the US state department says we didn’t need one because we were not staying in any one country for 90 days. Long story short after being “detained” 20 minutes, a different person walks up, hands us our passports and registration and says “Good Bye” and waves us off. Welcome to Croatia😎

Ok, we continue our drive through Croatia to the Plitvice National Park, an area of world renowned beauty. Driving through the countryside, you can’t help but notice the empty, destroyed homes and the homes damaged by warfare during the Croatia war of Independence. They are very common.

We arrive at the National park area. We are staying one night in the village of Rastovaca, a very small village. The industry here is tourism. Hundreds of homes in the area are now Airbnb and B&Bs, incredible. Ours is a perfect example, seven rooms in one house.

The Park is renowned for its beautiful water and waterfalls. The watercolor is green to blue depending on the sunlight and clarity. The Park is much more spectacular in the spring as the falls are all spring fed and much more dramatic in that season. Still awesome and we got to walk eight miles up and down the hills to see everything.

Fun day, but the crowds were huge. Some people report in the summer they wait four hours in line for tickets😳 We were lucky, we walked right in. At least 50 tour buses we passed on our way today driving to Dubrovnik Croatia, were headed for the Park. Crossed into Bosnia once, then back into Croatia without be detained😎👍

Sitting on our patio now, enjoying the cocktail hour

Three nights here, enjoying the sunshine and views

Ciao, Ciao😎✔️🍷