Quirky Croatia

We have returned from our 2-week romp about the central coast of Croatia, and here are some photos and short highlights from each location! Our first week was spent in a suburb of Zadar, and week two was on the island of Pag, with a day trip to a national park in between. Naturally we spent many days on the pebble and rock beaches, but also putted around a bit in our little blue car and explored!

Downtown historical Zadar

Zadar has been around since Roman times, was then an important trade city for Venetians in the 1400s, and thereafter spent many years under Austrian rule. Now the city boasts a sea organ, an impressive harbor, a university and a bunch of tourism each summer. The planned streets of its old city area have been the same since the city came into existence and the white stones on the street are worn smooth and shiny by all the pedestrians over the years.

Ship sailing into the Zadar harbor

The sunsets (it was vacation, I did get up to see any sunrises) were absolutely breathtaking, with different colors and cloud formations each night. In this one you can see a neighboring island behind the ship sailing into the harbor.

Plitvice Lakes National Park

The location of many a "spaghetti Western" - Western films produced by Italians - as well as the set of the famous German film version of the book Der Schatz im Silbersee by Karl May, this national park boasts around 15 levels of lakes that all feed into each other through an elaborate network of waterfalls. The water was aquamarine and you could see all the way to the bottom of the lakes (some even up to 10 or 15 meters deep). The park also has fantastic wooden walkways that snake you through and around the areas with the most waterfalls. It's the closest thing to paradise I have ever seen.

Pag

The town of Pag on the island of Pag is known for its hard goat cheese, salt and handmade lace. The craggy landscape on the Eastern side of the long, squid-shaped island looks much like the surface of the moon. Winds rushing down from the mountain range on the mainland blow so hard that any vegetation that tries its luck there is blown away. On the Western side (pictured here), you find some trees and bushes and human civilization.

We chose this destination for our vacation this year because we heard it offered a bit more bang for your buck than travel through Northern or Central Europe. In the end, it's one of the few places that I feel I would actually love to visit again (normally I'm a new-place-each-holiday kind of gal). The people were warm and helpful and had a fabulous sense of humor, very tongue in cheek and self ironic.

... and so ends another quickly-written post before I begin packing up our boxes for the big move! In a few short days I will be calling Heilbronn my new home.