Croatia - The So Called Promise Land

Throughout our journey, all the fellow travelers we have encountered have expressed their profound love for Croatia. Obviously, after so much praise we felt it necessary to see what all the fuss was about. With our days dwindling as we speak, we were only able to allot 4 days to Croatia, this so called paradise land.

In pursuit of Croatia, we faced many obstacles (aka several forms of transportation).

Itinerary to Croatia:
8:12am-10:43am: train from Salzburg, Austria to Villach, Austria
10:50am-12:32pm: bus from Villach, Austria to Ljubljana, Slovenia
2 hour layover in Slovenia at the ole faithful McDonalds
2:53pm-5:25pm: Ljubljana, Slovenia to Rijeka, Croatia

We'd like to stop here to tell a tale about 2 girls, 1 1/2 bags, 1 nightmare. Once upon a time 2 American sweethearts got off a train in Rijeka, Croatia expecting paradise only to find the European version of downtown Detroit. Talk about a heart-breaker...oh wait there's more. With the heat ablazin' and peg-leg Gertrude lagging behind, we roamed the streets in search of our hostel. We finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel (our hostel), only to find it was not a light but a mere mirage. After pounding on the door for 5 straight minutes we had to face the fact that no one was there.



Thankfully, a friendly neighbor called a lifeline and spoke to the owner who claimed he was 5 minutes away. 45 minutes later, when almost all hope was lost, Marco arrived. The next obstacle we encountered was how to get to Plitvice National Park. We had 2 options: take a 4 hour bus at 6 AM or rent a manual car and drive. We chose neither. Like modern day Robert Frost's, we took the road less traveled. We heard through the grapevine that 2 Spaniards staying at our hostel had rented a car and were headed South- we instantly saw 2 new friends in our future. After 2 minutes of bonding time we had plans to head South with our new amigos. That next morning, while in the car we exchanged names and were South bound!


3 hours and a couple of wrong turns later, we reached our destination. Now we've seen first hand, what all the rave was about...keep in mind folks this is a lake.