Croatia. What do I say? How do I even begin?
I travelled to Croatia with my mum and my sister right after I had finished an intensive fellowship. I was drained mentally as well as physically and Croatia gave me all the healing I needed. All I can remember about Croatia is how the country and the people were one with nature. Be it land or sea. Although tourism dominates the service sector in Croatia (especially after Game Of Thrones was shot there), Croatians really care about their environment and their biodiversity.
Places that I recommend you visit are:
1) Stradun, Dubrovnik
2) Split
3) Plitvice Lakes National Park
4) Blue Caves
To put simply, Croatia is made up of a lot of islands. And there are a lot of them. It's difficult to visit most of them. So choose a couple you think you would like to visit and research on how to get there. I would highly recommend you to book your accommodation via Airbnb and not a hotel. As the hosts in Airbnb are local, they recommend you places to visit or eat that are always a bonus especially when you're exploring a new place.
On arriving in Croatia we first stayed in Dubrovnik for 3 days. We visited Stadun, Old city, obviously did the GOT tour (which included visiting the King's landing) and visited Lovrijenac. Do ensure you walk a lot when exploring places like Stadun, Old City and Lovrijenac in Dubrovnik. It's an experience I must say. You do find good places to eat especially if you're walking. As these places are quite close to one another, as you walk around the place, it is easy to familiarise yourself with these locations.
After our stay in Dubrovnik, we booked a ferry to Split. The ferry was around seven hours, so we started in the morning and reached Split in the evening. We booked an Airbnb to rest for the evening.The next day, we had booked a bus from Split to visit Plitvice Lakes National Park. The bus dropped us to the location and brought us back to Split (it is a long drive to the national park, so do travel by bus if you're planning on visiting the park). The National park is huge. It is absolutely beautiful! The highlight of the park is that it has several terraced lakes joined by waterfalls. There are so many waterfalls and each one pinned against a different landscape. It is absolutely colourful and pristine.
One thing to keep in mind if you're visiting Plitvice is that, you can only walk by foot in the national park. There are small buses inside the park that take you from one place to another, but note that they do not take you around the entire park. Also, as a part to preserve the biodiversity in the park, no one is allowed to swim in the lakes or enjoy the waterfall. If you're vegetarian/vegan, I would recommend you to pack your own food, because we didn't many food options there for us. I hope to visit this gem of place in the near future. This place should definitely be on your bucket list!
The next day we had booked a Blue Cave tour which covered Blue Caves, Stiniva beach, Blue Lagoon, and Hvar all in a day. We left in a small boat from Split to visit these places. Initially we thought the tour was too packed to cover 4 different places all in a day, but the islands were actually very small and quite close to each other.
Blue caves is actually a mystery. It's a small cave. They will take you inside the cave through a fisherman boat because the cave is extremely small. You would expect a cave to be dark, because well it's a cave. But the water is a bright blue inside the cave. There is no natural or artificial light in the cave or in the water, so how is the water blue? It was such a mysterious experience.
Stiniva beach was right after. The Stiniva cove sets a unique 'sea entrance' into the pebble beach. The landscape is extraordinary. Because of how small the cove is, it restricts the entrance to the beach via boat. So boats will stop meters before the cove, and you'll have to swim your way to the beach through the cove. The turquoise sea makes the experience so worth it.
Blue Lagoon was a fantastic place for snorkelling and swimming. There are so many different species of fish, and a lot of small corals. It was like a rainbow in the sea. You must be careful while snorkelling because there were quite a lot sea urchins there. My sister had a couple of sea urchins barbs in her foot and we had to manually remove them. So do be careful when you're snorkelling.
The last place was Hvar. The Hvar port was brimming with boats and yachts. It was quite scenic. Lavender and olive are dominant cultivations in Hvar, and there were a lot of such products sold. Hvar had a lot places to eat in comparison to the previous islands and was actually quite nice to explore. I remember that lemon was also a seasonal fruit then, and I had tried lemon ice cream, which was definitely a one of a kind! There are a lot of places to buy beautiful hand-made bracelets and necklace there.
To conclude, this was by far one of the best trips I had. It was the place, the people and obviously the company I travelled with. I did fall in love with Croatia and now I'm going to show you why..
Now you know why :)
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