Croatia

I just returned from an incredible week of exploration with my family along the Croatian coast. We live half an hour from the border with Croatia and it is only about an hour drive to Zagreb, the largest city. Crossing the border was easy and we quickly found ourselves zipping along a nice highway heading south toward Dalmatia through beautiful rolling hills. There were very few homes – just miles of green. We were impressed with the presence of wind farms and “wildlife bridges” that were essentially tunnels with untouched land on top for bear and wolves to use as a crossing point. These wildlife bridges were placed about every 15 km or so for most of the stretch of the highway. As we neared the coast the weather became warm and balmy and the vegetation Mediterranean with low shrubs and jutting rocks.

We stayed in a nice apartment in Brela with amazing views of the Adriatic. The water was an intense turquoise color with beautiful pebbled beaches, palm trees, agaves and cacti. The weather was mixed so we swapped outdoor time with visiting the cities nearby. Our first day on the coast we played on the beach and visited Makarska - the largest town close to where we were staying. We explored the local seafood restaurants (one of the main dishes is octopus salad!), looked at the boats and played on the beach. We also ended up going into Split which is a sprawling industrial town on the outskirts hiding a beautiful city surrounding the “old town”. In the center of the old town is Diocletian’s Palace dating back to 295 AD. Diocletian was a son of slaves who proved himself in the Roman military and became emperor in 284 at the age of 39. Our son was excited because near the old town, we found a pizzeria that had the best pizza that we had eaten so far on our trip – and we have eaten A LOT of pizza!

Our big travel day was exploring Dubrovnik at the far south end of Croatia. To get to Dubrovnik we had to go through 9 km of Bosnia-Hercegovina, which we didn’t realize, but was interesting. Dubrovnik, of course, is incredible. It was first settled in the early seventh century and has been occupied since then by many different groups. The large wall around the city has protected it for centuries. An earthquake in 1667 killed about 5000 people and destroyed many of the buildings. During the break-up of Yugoslavia, Dubrovnik was occupied by the Yugslav People’s Army. Unfortunately, the ancient city was heavily bombed and many buildings were destroyed. Amazingly it is hard to see any damage today as Croatia worked swiftly to rebuild the city, a great source of national pride. If you look at the picture of the roofs, the bright red roofs are new and the orange ones date back to the 16th century.

On our drive back to Maribor we stopped at Plitvice National Park in Croatia, a spot that came highly recommended by friends. It was definitely worth the stop. We wandered through the rain among 8 km of beautiful calm lakes hemmed by densely forested hills and an incredible sequence of rushing waterfalls. What a wonderful trip.