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Published: December 7th 2010
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CROATIA
15/07/10
SPLIT
We arrived in Split at 0730, Mike thought Croatia was a good temperature until it got to about 1100 and the day had heated up and it was like an oven. We checked out the markets and the fantastic looking produce and cheese and clothes. Afterwards we had a look around the Diocletian's Palace, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the worlds apparently most impressive Roman monuments. There were dozens of bars, restaurants and shops amid the old walls. The main features include the Peristyle (colonaded square) Temple of Jupiter and the Cathedral. At the north palace gate is the 1929 statue of Gregorius of Nin.
The plan was to visit Hvar Island for a couple of nights, but because we were behind on time we decided to check out the coast line. We drove up the coast to Trogir and checked out an island connected to the mainland by a causeway. Here we saw some buzzing beach lines and lovely views. The Croatian coastline also appeared to be quiet rocky. After lunch we carried on to Sibenik and camped on a small peninsula just before the town at Camping Resort Solaris.
The resort had a campground, apartments, hotel, restaurants, bars, pool, mini golf and a private beach. We went for a swim but it was painful because of the rocks and I stood on a mussel bed and got little bits of shell in my toe.
16/07/10
Today we drove to Plitvice Lakes National Park, which is believed to be one of the most beautiful national parks in Europe, and it was absolutely stunning! The park is full of dozens of tiered torquise lakes whcih are really clear and full of small trout. Between each tier is a beautiful waterfall. We had to pay about $30 each to enter the park but it included a bus to the top of the tiers and a boat ride acros one of the larger lakes. It took us 5hrs to do the walk including transportation.
We spent the night at Autocamp Korana which was next to the National Park. For dinner I tried the localk trout, they arent that big so I had the whole thing, and it was really yum! Finally, a fish overseas that I liked!
17/07/10
Today we drove from Croatia to Slovenia. Our first stop was
the Postojna Caves, which consisted of a vast underground cavern over 30,000 years old. We took a small train like at a theme park to the centre of the cave (5km in) then walked around within the cave for 1.5km then took the train out again. Inside the cave were massive pillars (staligtites and staligmites have joined) It takes 100yrs to form 1cm of a staligtite and the cavern was 50 - 100mtrs high. We werent supposed to take photos so I dont have many good ones.
After the cave we drove 9km to a castle built into a cave which was really neat. The castle was under seige for 1 year and never conquered because the owner would sneek out the secret passage to get supplies. The castle was kept as an original working castle with furniture and manakins, the cellar even had its own wine which we brought some of. In the town below the castle everybody was dressed up. Every year the castle and town have a festival where locals dressed up and storm the castle, have sword fights and jostling and dancing. This just happened to be happening that night, so we joined in the
festivities and drank lots of local beer. We were able to camp in a farmers paddock for free that night. It was a fantastic night!
18/07/10
We jumped up early this morning because we heard thunder, we had the tent half way down and the rains came. From here we drove to Ljubljana, Slovenias capital. It was a pretty grey day and being that it was a Sunday everything was closed. We drove across the Dragon Bridge and up to the Ljublijana Castle and had a look around and took in the views of the city. We didnt go inside because we were pretty sick of castles by this stage and this particular castle didnt look overly exciting. We had planned to spend the night in Ljublijana, but instead drove about 4 hours to Vienna via Slovenia's Lake Bled. Lake Bled was a pleasant lake and town. There was a monestry on an island in the middle of the lake which you could take a boat too and there was a castle up on a cliff.
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