Croatia

The final segment of our trip was spent in Croatia. It was an exciting phase of our trip because Croatia was off the "tourist track", especially compared to Italy. We were curious what the people would be like and wondered if we'd see signs of the Balkan War that devastated areas of Croatia in the mid-1990's.

Croatia is a very rural country sprinkled with small towns and cities.

Although very picturesque, sadly there are areas you don't dare hike due to land mines leftover from the war.

Croatia has a well kept and lightly traveled network of highways.  Above shows a land bridge to allow animals to migrate.

You could see that the area had not completely recovered from the war.  During the war many people fled towns to never return.

Driving though some towns was a little eerie.  People standing outside in their yards would stop what they were doing and watch you drive through their town.  Especially in very rural areas, I believe they are suspicious of outsiders.

We stayed at a rental just outside of the Plitvice Lakes area.  This particular house is not our rental, but the owner's house.

Our rental.  We occupied part of the first floor.

Making friends.

Upon entering our room we were greeted by an ex-bear put on display by our trigger happy rental owner. Evidently, there are bears in Croatia.   The owner invited us downstairs to chat in front of a fire place.  I was given Elderberry juice while my mom and dad were given an alcoholic beverage. The owner was very opinionated.  He talked about the war and his bee keeping hobby. 

Our cozy room.

There weren't many dinner options in the area, but luckily there was a nice restaurant just down the road from our rental.

It turned out to be great food and drink, but what made it even better was the family-friendly service we received.  The staff was eager to please and were very funny.