Again, we were only in Split for an afternoon. I don’t know how Sara has done this for six or seven or eight months without a break. It’s a lot of travel time, which is very tiring.
There’s an old town (of course) by the water, and the new city has spread out around it. The old town in Split is cool because it’s all inside the old Diocletian's palace. I thought it was really gorgeous and was happily wandering around taking photos. Then my camera battery died. Not cool. Our hotel was twenty minutes’ walk away, so I decided to head back and charge my battery for an hour, then come back to town for dinner. Once you get outside of the old town, you feel like you could be anywhere and you wouldn’t know it. There was nothing to define the place, and it wasn’t even very attractive. I also didn’t particularly want to be walking around on my own in the dark. It wasn’t necessarily the people who gave me that impression either, it was that the city was grimy and the buildings in our area were all huge, rundown apartment blocks with beaten-up cars parked outside.
We were on the public bus to Plitvice Lakes, which was a bit of an adventure. We’d been warned that it might be very busy, and that was almost an understatement. We had to change buses after about an hour, and at the same time we picked up more passengers. They actually just keep selling tickets when they know all the seats are already full, and some of the seats had been allocated twice. The intercity coaches also double as local buses, and all the locals who are only going to be on the bus for five or ten minutes will get on first and rtake the seats, so there were a few arguments. I felt sorry for the conductor, he had to settle all the arguments. Then when we stopped for a break, we picked up even more people, and two of them got on the bus and decided to sit in the seats that Marsha and Cameron had been on for the entire trip. Even though they’d left piles of their bags on the seats so everyone could see they were taken, as we’d been advised to. These people weren’t going to move Marsha and Cameron’s bags either, they were just going to sit there with all the luggage. They were very upset when Marsha came back and told them to get lost, the woman went to get the conductor, who took Marsha's side and also told them to get lost. There were free seats in the next two rows back.
However, we eventually all got seats and made it to Plitvice. We were dropped off on the side of the road in what felt like the middle of nowhere. We walked up through the trees and immediately found all the public walking trails, and followed them into the park and to our hotel. There are only three hotels in the national park. I believe the park is a Unesco site, which means they can’t change anything. Apparently that includes the hotels. It was like being transported back to the late 70s, they must’ve been pretty nice hotels at that stage but they clearly haven’t had any kind of upgrade since then. Our hotel still had very classy brown and orange wallpaper, carpet, and furnishings; a lot of exposed wood; lots of square lightshades artfully grouped in threes; and yet it was always just a bit dark inside. I can’t believe I didn’t take any photos.
We had that afternoon and the following morning to visit the lakes, before we caught the bus to Zagreb at 130pm(ish). Within the park, there’s a system of I think thirteen lakes of varying sizes, which are all interconnected by streams and waterfalls. The entrance is in the middle of the lakes, and the walking tracks start from the opposite side of the closest one. There’s a boat that takes you to the start of the track, and another boat leaves from the same point to follow the river down a little way, if you want to use it. There are also buses which connect the entrance with stops at either end of the lakes, so you only have to walk in one direction. Bonus! There are miles and miles of paths, if you walk one way and take your time stopping for photos and the like, it’d take about three hours to walk from one end of the lakes to the other. Or, if you wanted to, you could spend days hiking around the place. However, you’re not allowed to swim or fish or anything, because they don’t want to disrupt the ecosystem.
I decided to walk from the front entrance, up to the biggest lake at the top. It was so nice. It was late enough in the season that there were times that you felt like you had the place to yourself. There were also times when school groups with no manners came past and you had to balance on the very edge of the bridge, which didn’t have a railing, while they went past you in groups of three across. Never mind, school kids will be school kids. It was also late enough in the season that there hadn’t been any rain for quite a while, so the waterfalls were not really in full swing, which was a little bit of a shame, but personally I enjoy looking at a calm lake just as much, so it didn’t really bother me. 
The park was really beautiful and extremely well managed, there was very little rubbish and the pathways and bridges were well kept. It reminded me a lot of Waimangu Volcanic Valley, the park outside of Rotorua that my family has been involved with for 20 years, and my Dad still manages now. In comparison, I much prefer Waimangu. Less people. More interesting. More varied scenery. And Waimangu is even cleaner and tidier than this area was. That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy Plitvice, but I still prefer Waimangu. I basically grew up there though, maybe I’m just biased!
The next morning I opted for doing nothing until we had to leave. Mainly because I was in such a foul mood, but also I felt like I’d seen as much as I needed to of the lakes. We were all a bit concerned that when the bus turned up we were going to have a major scrap on our hands if we wanted seats, so Sara organised three of the men to help with getting bags on and the rest of us were instructed to just get on and get seats, and save spares. There were at least 25 people waiting for that bus, but when it (eventually) arrived, it was surprisingly empty. No scraps then. Disappointing. And so we made our way to Zagreb...
There’s an old town (of course) by the water, and the new city has spread out around it. The old town in Split is cool because it’s all inside the old Diocletian's palace. I thought it was really gorgeous and was happily wandering around taking photos. Then my camera battery died. Not cool. Our hotel was twenty minutes’ walk away, so I decided to head back and charge my battery for an hour, then come back to town for dinner. Once you get outside of the old town, you feel like you could be anywhere and you wouldn’t know it. There was nothing to define the place, and it wasn’t even very attractive. I also didn’t particularly want to be walking around on my own in the dark. It wasn’t necessarily the people who gave me that impression either, it was that the city was grimy and the buildings in our area were all huge, rundown apartment blocks with beaten-up cars parked outside.
We were on the public bus to Plitvice Lakes, which was a bit of an adventure. We’d been warned that it might be very busy, and that was almost an understatement. We had to change buses after about an hour, and at the same time we picked up more passengers. They actually just keep selling tickets when they know all the seats are already full, and some of the seats had been allocated twice. The intercity coaches also double as local buses, and all the locals who are only going to be on the bus for five or ten minutes will get on first and rtake the seats, so there were a few arguments. I felt sorry for the conductor, he had to settle all the arguments. Then when we stopped for a break, we picked up even more people, and two of them got on the bus and decided to sit in the seats that Marsha and Cameron had been on for the entire trip. Even though they’d left piles of their bags on the seats so everyone could see they were taken, as we’d been advised to. These people weren’t going to move Marsha and Cameron’s bags either, they were just going to sit there with all the luggage. They were very upset when Marsha came back and told them to get lost, the woman went to get the conductor, who took Marsha's side and also told them to get lost. There were free seats in the next two rows back.
However, we eventually all got seats and made it to Plitvice. We were dropped off on the side of the road in what felt like the middle of nowhere. We walked up through the trees and immediately found all the public walking trails, and followed them into the park and to our hotel. There are only three hotels in the national park. I believe the park is a Unesco site, which means they can’t change anything. Apparently that includes the hotels. It was like being transported back to the late 70s, they must’ve been pretty nice hotels at that stage but they clearly haven’t had any kind of upgrade since then. Our hotel still had very classy brown and orange wallpaper, carpet, and furnishings; a lot of exposed wood; lots of square lightshades artfully grouped in threes; and yet it was always just a bit dark inside. I can’t believe I didn’t take any photos.
We had that afternoon and the following morning to visit the lakes, before we caught the bus to Zagreb at 130pm(ish). Within the park, there’s a system of I think thirteen lakes of varying sizes, which are all interconnected by streams and waterfalls. The entrance is in the middle of the lakes, and the walking tracks start from the opposite side of the closest one. There’s a boat that takes you to the start of the track, and another boat leaves from the same point to follow the river down a little way, if you want to use it. There are also buses which connect the entrance with stops at either end of the lakes, so you only have to walk in one direction. Bonus! There are miles and miles of paths, if you walk one way and take your time stopping for photos and the like, it’d take about three hours to walk from one end of the lakes to the other. Or, if you wanted to, you could spend days hiking around the place. However, you’re not allowed to swim or fish or anything, because they don’t want to disrupt the ecosystem.
I decided to walk from the front entrance, up to the biggest lake at the top. It was so nice. It was late enough in the season that there were times that you felt like you had the place to yourself. There were also times when school groups with no manners came past and you had to balance on the very edge of the bridge, which didn’t have a railing, while they went past you in groups of three across. Never mind, school kids will be school kids. It was also late enough in the season that there hadn’t been any rain for quite a while, so the waterfalls were not really in full swing, which was a little bit of a shame, but personally I enjoy looking at a calm lake just as much, so it didn’t really bother me.
The park was really beautiful and extremely well managed, there was very little rubbish and the pathways and bridges were well kept. It reminded me a lot of Waimangu Volcanic Valley, the park outside of Rotorua that my family has been involved with for 20 years, and my Dad still manages now. In comparison, I much prefer Waimangu. Less people. More interesting. More varied scenery. And Waimangu is even cleaner and tidier than this area was. That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy Plitvice, but I still prefer Waimangu. I basically grew up there though, maybe I’m just biased!
The next morning I opted for doing nothing until we had to leave. Mainly because I was in such a foul mood, but also I felt like I’d seen as much as I needed to of the lakes. We were all a bit concerned that when the bus turned up we were going to have a major scrap on our hands if we wanted seats, so Sara organised three of the men to help with getting bags on and the rest of us were instructed to just get on and get seats, and save spares. There were at least 25 people waiting for that bus, but when it (eventually) arrived, it was surprisingly empty. No scraps then. Disappointing. And so we made our way to Zagreb...
No comments:
Post a Comment