I am quite excited to write about our experience over our next two days in Croatia as they were two of my favorites. For me, personally, the place I was most excited to see in Croatia was Plitvice National Park. And I gotta say, it did not disappoint.

If you research 'Must-See Places in Croatia' Plitvice National Park will often come up on the top of those lists. It is so hard to describe. It is a National Park with basically wooden walkways built over the water, and it is just cascading waterfall after cascading waterfall, and the clearest, bluest water we have ever seen. We did not go during too high of a tourist season, so luckily it was not jam-packed shoulder to shoulder with people as it an be during peak times.

So, we got up early on Monday April 18 to take our private shuttle to Zagreb, and on the way stopped to hike through Plitvice. It was a couple hour drive there, and then another couple hours on through to Zagreb. Plitvice was so beautiful. And the photos do not even do it justice. You would just look around and be like, is this even real? The video footage I took was unreal as well.

It took a few hours to make the trek through the park. There is a start and end point, an actual "path" you take to see the whole place. It also included a short boat ride to get to the second half of the hike and there was a little place to eat lunch. The food was not good. Hard bread and boring sandwiches, but it was what it was for the only food place available in the park. Not complaining here, it is just the food in Croatia was so amazing everywhere we went, this stood out as disappointing after a long day of walking around and suffering the pretty cold weather to start the day.

After our day of walking through this gorgeous National Park, (we stayed with the group for the most part, but basically were on our own and just had to meet at the end point by a certain time) and of course stopping for every photo op imaginable, we met back up with our ride and continued on to Zagreb. When leaving the park, there was this really cool view from above to see the last final big Waterfall and other smaller ones with the beautiful trees and, so before leaving, we took one last look at this gorgeous place and really felt the calming force of nature. I can't say this enough, this place was UNREAL.

It was pretty late by the time we made it to our place in Zagreb. But we met to go out for dinner at a local burger place: Submarine, and this meal made up for the sad lunch we had the park. They had tons of vegan options and everything was out of this world. I got vegan sliders, and Jaime got regular sliders, and we shared truffle fries and regular fries with the group. It was a great and delicious way to end the day.

This brings us to Tuesday, April 19 and our one full day in Zagreb. I will be honest after taking the bus into town we saw the main part of town and were a little underwhelmed. First of all it was raining, and after the uniqueness of Split and Dubrovnik, being inland in a regular city felt kinda 'meh.' But the day changed our mind as we had a blast in this capital city.

The group took the bus into town and Ivance led us on the city walking tour. Something interesting about Zagreb is yes, its architecture and history, but they are known for the museums. Jaime loves museums, I do not, however it was not hard to convince me to go to the Museum of Chocolate once our city tour was done. First of all, was nice to get out of the rain, you can tell from the pics it was a pretty cloudy day. And the group (minus Emma, she still wasn't feeling well) all went to that museum together.

This was the most fun I have had at a museum! They gave you a box of chocolate that had little compartments, and each room gave the history of chocolate and its origins and we ate the corrosponding chocolate from our box. The rooms were so fun including a British Tea room, and a room where they had chocolate dispensers, and you just could help yourself to dark, white and milk chocloate tastings. Yum! One of the first rooms we were in was talking about chocolate and ancient times and there was this hat you could try on. So one of the photos is me in the hat and Jaime swithing his Dodgers cap for the hat, and us joking that we wondered if anybody would notice the hat switch. Haha.

As we left, I bought a box of their special chocolates that ended up being a lovely snack on the train ride over to Slovenia the next day. But back to the rest of our day in Zagreb.

After the museum, we split off from the group and Jaime and I were quite hungry. We found a mall with a really nice food court and as we just wanted something super quick, we ducked in there and I got made to order veggie quesadillas and Jaime got noodles and some soup. Really hit the spot on such a cold and gloomy day. The mall also had these really cool and unique flower displays (advertsing a store I think?) so it was nice to get some cool photos in there.

Jaime and I then continued to walk around the city. We found some cool street art, and somehow stumbled upon a dog park where it was super fun to sit after so much walking and watch some doggos play. Croatia was really dog friendly. We also made it to the Cathedral of Zagreb (didn't go inside) and browsed around the souvenir shops.

We headed back to rest and change before the evening. It started raining pretty good, so the other girls in the group opted to stay closer to our hotel and go back to eat at Submarine since Emma had missed it the night before. Jaime and I met Stu and Faisel at this strip of restauarants Ivance had pointed out earlier. Faisel was running a bit behind, so Stu, Jaime and I went into a bar where they had ridiculously cheap drinks. They had beer and I had wine, and it was just to pass time until Faisel met us for dinner, but when he arrived we ended up staying at the bar for quite a bit longer because we were having such a great time. We forgot we had come out to eat and realized how hungry we were, but it was getting late. Luckily this Sri Lankan restaurant called Curry Bowl was open, and we had probably our best meal of the whole trip at this place. Jaime got something called Sri Lankan Street Food, which was noodles, and cheese, and rice and some meat, I don't even know what it was but he said it was one of the best meals he had eaten ever. Mine was a vegan noodle dish and I would have to say the same, that it was one of the best meals ever. The flavors were so unique and amazing.

All around even though Jaime and I were little judgemental about Zagreb when we first arrived, it ended up giving us one of our favorite nights of just drinking and hanging out and one of our best meals ever. It was really fun hanging out with Faisel and Stu, and just talking and drinking and eating all night. Without even trying, most of what we did when we would split off from the group ended up being the four of us, and we always had a great time together. We consider ourselves lucky to have gotten along with the people in our group so well.

Be sure to check out the photos in the album "Plitvice and Zagreb, Croatia" to see the awesome pics from the park and capital city. The following day was a train ride across the border into Slovenia, more on our experience in that beautiful country in my next entry.