Rush Hour In Nature, Beautiful Hotels Past Their Best, Plitvice Lakes NP

NEX-5 (36mm, f/8, 1/320 sec, ISO200)

Like mentioned in my previous post: Signs lie sometimes. Photos sometimes lie too or at least the tell not the truth or the full story. Like my pictures of the Plitvice Lakes national park. All you see is beautiful waterfalls and cascades and an almost empty foot bridge on a sunny day. What you don’t see is that I have to wait for about three minutes to take the second shot as photographers were lining up to get to the spot. What you don’t see is that I waited till the right amount of people were on the foot bridge at the first shot as I neither wanted to show a big crowd or an empty path.

If you look carefully at the 4th picture you see the line that has built up on the way to the big waterfall. The Plitvice Lakes are a wonderful and quite unique place of breathtaking beauty. Unlike South Georgia they are convenient to access and it’s rather cheap to get here. This results in a massive amount of tourists. It’s like Venice. A great place but spoilt by tourism. We have been here in June and I can not imagine how this place will look like in July or August.

On narrow paths we had to wait to let tourist pass that were moving in the other direction. Sometimes it was almost as busy as the subway in Moscow during rush hour. Ok. That is a lie too. Nothing is but the beauty of nature is in stark contrast to the masses. Maybe we are spoilt by our vacations in Ireland, Scotland and Canada. Nature is extremely beautiful there but it is far less crowded. I remember that we walked a long white sandy beach in Ireland ( I’m not going to tell you where ) where our footprints were the first and it was about lunch time!

FinePix X100 (23mm, f/11, 1/30 sec, ISO200)
NEX-5 (22mm, f/8, 1/250 sec, ISO200)
FinePix X100 (23mm, f/11, 1/50 sec, ISO200)
NEX-5 (21mm, f/6.3, 1/125 sec, ISO200)

The Plitvice Lakes have a long history in tourism. First hotels were built in the late 50s. Some of the hotels were abandoned and because nobody has torn them down the slowly decay. Like the beauty in the image above. One of the oldest has been restored and I recommend to stay there if you come here. It’s the hotel Plitvice. Don’t be put off by it’s 2 star rating. The hotel is looking great and while you sacrifice some comfort you get an idea how traveling was in the 60s. There was less comfort but people were less demanding and simply enjoyed traveling maybe for the first time in their live.

We did not get a room when we visited the place but stayed right beside it. We went there for lunch and this is how the place looks like today. Everybody with a sense for design from the 50s and 60s will be very pleased. I prefer such a place to any of todays soulless modern 5 star hotels.

This was the last day of our trip. The next day we headed back home. The weather forecast predicted some rain in Austria. Home again.

How was our vacation. in one word: Great! I did not expect it to be that good. Great places , friendly people, very good food – to put it simple: Croatia is a great place to spend a vacation and best thing is that it is located at our doorstep. How was it to leave my big photo gear at home? What did I miss? Will I do it again? I will answer this questions here soon.

NEX-5 (18mm, f/3.5, 1/30 sec, ISO250)
NEX-5 (24mm, f/5, 1/60 sec, ISO200)