Plitvice is a national park in Croatia that has 16 natural lakes and 90 waterfalls! I didn’t know how many waterfalls were in the park until I was reading about it after, but it was almost overwhelming in the park seeing waterfall after waterfall- I literally cried because I was overcome by the beauty that is abundant in this park. And don’t worry, I took an exorbitant amount of pictures for you to enjoy!
The hiking paths, which are mostly boardwalk but sometimes gravel, lead you up and down and around the varying layers of the park. The highest point of the park is Seliski Vrh (4,196 feet /1279 meters and the lowest point is the Korana Canyon (1,204 feet/ 367 meters). The park covers, in total, around 73,000 acres, and it is pristine despite the high volume of people .
Plitvička Jezera National Park is located in the middle of the country and is about 70 miles, or around 130km, from the capital, Zagreb. It took 3.5 hours to drive from Rovinj to the park, and a good hour of that was through winding countryside roads. We bought tickets to enter ahead of time and it was for a specific time, but we arrived after the time scheduled. Erin was very concerned that we had missed our entrance window (11am-12pm) and it was even more stressful for her because the parking lot is HUGE and it took 20ish minutes to walk from the parking lot to the entrance to the park. However, the entrance times seem to be more of suggestions rather than strict rules, because they scanned our tickets with no issues (though I imagine you can’t enter BEFORE your scheduled time, but I could be wrong).
There are two parking lots entrances, aptly named 1 and 2, and from both of those entrances there are 4 accessible hikes- so there are at least 8 different hikes you could do around the park, each of varying lengths and difficulties- the shortest being around 2 hours and the longest about 8 hours. We chose hike H because we read it would take 4-6 hours, though we finished in about 4.5 hours without rushing.
Route H, which starts from entrance 2 includes a bus ride to the Studovac site near the Proscansko Lake. Here you start your hike along the Upper Lakes to the Kozjak Lake and it is from that lake that you take a ferry about 15 minutes to the second part of the hike. After the ferry, you continue walking along the lower lakes to the Big Waterfall. And you finally return to your starting point by shuttle bus. The route was a total of 5.5 miles / 8.9 km long. It was a great hike, I’d love to go back and try another one so I could have more feedback about how different they are. All hikes, no matter from which starting entrance, seemed to intermingle at varying times throughout the park, but not for too long. The park was busy, but not annoyingly so, we definitely had times of solitude, but we also had times were there were masses of people trying to squeeze past each other on the small boardwalks.
Click the link to get more information about the different Hikes that are available in Plitvice National Park.
The price for Plitvice Lakes varies depending on when and what time you go. At the winery we visited we met some Americans who suggested that we go after 4pm because it’s less crowded and the price is half-off. Erin had also read that there can be long queues for tickets which is why she wanted to buy them in advance. Our tickets were $38, but that did include the tray and ferry rides that we had in the park. We also were visiting during high season in the middle of the day so I’m assuming that is the most expensive ticket. Erin bought our tickets online a few days in advance and there were already arrival times and entrance 1 tickets blocked off, but we secured entrance 2 tickets for 11am. When we drove by entrance 1 it looked much busier than the entrance 2, so I think that was the correct way to go. And it was only 10 minutes further away. We had to scan the tickets before every transportation point so make sure wherever you get your ticket, don’t lose it!
Here was the part of the park where we were just hit over and over with amazing waterfalls. The first one sprayed us with water but we were joyfully squealing. The second one was when I got overwhelmed by all the beauty we were seeing in such a small timeframe that I began to cry. Tears of joy and bliss of course, just appreciating and being thankful for all that God has created. 
One of my favorite things about the park were the walking paths. Just like at the Vintgar gorge a few days prior, the walkway crisscrossed around the park, going over bubbling streams, hugging mountain sides and taking you over steep descents. But it really made the experience more incredible because you were almost part of the environment, without harming it.
Below is the ferry that took across across the lake about halfway through our hike. Again, not that all the transportation INSIDE the park is included in your ticket. There are ferries and a small tram that will take you from one side of the park to the other, but parking is not included.
There are several restaurants inside the park, especially after we got off the ferry halfway through our hike, it was a huge picnic area with restrooms, several food options and souvenir shops. However, you could be like Erin and I and buy gas-station sandwiches on the way to the park and sit on a bench or tree-stump and eat them during your hike (this was opportune for us to wait out big bunches of crowds that would all emerge at the hiking path intersections. No matter what path you take, they all meet up for various times before eventually leading off their own way).
It’s no wonder that it is the second largest tourist attraction in Croatia (after Dubrovnik) and is a UNESCO heritage site- there was a bounty of breathtaking views, a myriad of fauna and the unique blue/ aqua/ turquoise waters stunning.
Catching Katie 