Goodbye, Zagreb; Hello, Split!

After rousing the students who had a late night out, we boarded the bus and headed out of town. While we all thoroughly enjoyed Zagreb, I think most of us were eager to get going and see more of Croatia. We made a couple of stops on the way to Split. First we stopped at a war museum from Croatia's war of independence in the 1990s. The guys were really into the tanks, as you can tell by this photo. We also took a short break and stretched our legs at a scenic mill town.

Next we spent a couple of hours at Croatia's most beautiful national park, Plitvice Lakes. It was gorgeous! We walked along the numerous lakes with cascading falls. It felt so good to walk in the fresh mountain air, and the sky was bright blue. The good thing about going this time of year is that there weren't really any other people (it looks like it's really bustling in the summer). The bad thing was that some of the upper lakes were closed due to snowmelt and flooding, and there were no leaves on the trees. We did see some primrose blossoming and some pussy willows. We also took a very slow boat ride across one of the lakes. To top it all off, we had to climb up 300 steps to get back to the bus!

We spent about 3 more hours on the bus and pulled into Split in the early evening. Our accommodations are quite sumptuous! A few of us just returned from dinner at a seaside restaurant in the Diocletian's Palace area. Split feels more urban than Zagreb even though it's smaller. Tomorrow we'll have a guided tour and learn all about it.