Monday, September 9, 2013
Krka National Park to Zagreb
We left Sobe Carija just after the 10:00 checkout time,
regrettably, right behind everyone else who was trying to leave the
island. It took an hour to go approximately 2 kilometers to the
mainland. What a cluster. We loved this soba, but we wouldn't stay
there again because it was just too hard to get off Ciovo Island.
Just before we left, I picked a big bunch of grapes that were
growing outside our room. They were seeded but delicious, the best
grapes ever!
I haven't told Tom this because I'm afraid it will make him
nervous, but there's a minimum 250 euro charge if we lose the
rental car key we were issued, plus the obvious inconvenience of
having to get our only car key replaced mid-trip.
Before our trip, we'd read a lot about Plitvice and Krka National
Parks, and I wondered in our limited time if it was worthwhile to
visit both, but since there's no such thing as too many waterfalls,
we decided to go for it.
Just after noon, after stopping for directions twice, we made it to
the Lozovac entrance of Krka
National Park. We paid our entrance fee and boarded a bus that
took us 10 minutes down a curvy road to the bottom of the hill
where we followed a boardwalk trail winding through lush vegetation
and past multiple cascades. It was nice, we thought, but no
Plitvice. We stopped along the way and had a picnic.
Lovebirds
Lovebirds
Krka National Park,
Croatia
Then we got to Skradinski buk waterfall, a big waterfall with a
swimming area, and THAT was FUN, especially on this warm day. Nice.
In general, I found Plitvice more striking, but I love that at Krka
we could actually get in the water and play. A lot of the smaller
cascades and water holes here at Krka were dry. I'm sure it's more
spectacular in the rainy season, but then it might be too cold to
get in the water.
Skradinski
buk
Cascades of
Krka
Jana loving
life
At Skradinski buk we saw remnants of the former Krka Hydropower
Plant that began operations in 1895, just two days after the first
hydroelectric plant in the world went online at Niagara Falls.
Pathside
peddler
Photographing the
photographer
Colorful
cascades
Krka
River
Leaving Krka, we took the D8 north as far as Zadar before we
finally had to leave the coast for good. Turning east, we happened
upon a very striking area at Stari Most Maslenica, a very cool red,
arched bridge with awesome views.
Stari Most
Maslenica
Novigradsko More
Bay
Velebitski
Channel
At Maslenica we got on the A1, passed immediately through a tunnel,
and then the landscape changed abruptly, and the weather changed
dramatically for the worse. It was my turn to drive when we got on
the A1, since driving a stick on the expressway is easy, and I
ended up driving through a huge rainstorm. It was completely
nerve-wracking. I could hardly see in the rain and dark, and as we
got closer to Zagreb, the traffic started getting heavy.
Sveti Rok Tunnel through
the Velebit Mountains
After a couple of hours, just before the end of the toll road, I
turned the driving back over to Tom. The rain had died down, but it
was pitch black, and the traffic was crazy with the multi-lane
roundabouts, one-way streets, trolleys, and bus-only lanes, but we
made it to our accommodation with just a couple of wrong turns.
At 8:30 we gratefully arrived at Rooms Madison,
located right in the thick of things in Croatia's capital city of
Zagreb, population 800,000. We thought we were going to be staying
on the outskirts of town. Wrong. The hotel was a couple of miles
from the Old Town but still in the heart of the city. There's a
tiny parking lot adjacent to the building that they share with a
pizza place next door.
There's something very '70s/artsy/hipster/European about this
place. I like it! I'm not so sure about Tom. He's probably still
too rattled by the drive to tell. Downstairs, also a part of the
Madison “In” is a bar and coffee shop, deserted when we got there
except for the woman who checked us in. Tomorrow we'll meet Igor,
the owner.
Rooms Madison,
Zagreb
Our '70s
room
For dinner we went next door to Royal Grill-Pizza Pegor, where we
ordered a “slavonska” pizza. Translated into English, the pizza was
to be topped with ham, bacon, feferoni, and kulen. “Feferoni” was
pepperoni, just as you might guess, but we had no clue about
“kulen” and just hoped we could pick it off if necessary. It turns
out kulen is a small, pickled, hot green pepper. It was awesome. In
fact, this was the best pizza of the trip, at about half the price.
The food and beer in Zagreb is way better than on the coast and
much cheaper. We also had some excellent beer, Velebitsko tamno
pivo. Finally a beer worth mentioning! It's a dark beer, 6%
alcohol, and very tasty, especially after all the “Croatian Corona”
we had on the coast.
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