Nature's Waterpark

After a suggestion from a friend of a friend, we decided that going to Plitvice National Park in central Croatia was a must see of our one-week trip. We left Zadar and took a 2-and-1/2 hour bus ride away from the coast and into the mountains. Like many other stops on our trip, we took a blind traveler's leap based on one sentence from the guidebook on how to get to and from this living art work of the Earth. Blind because our travel book only said that buses run to the park - without any listed stops. I only had a rough plan of what to do if we got dropped off many miles from our hotel.

The pictures speak for themselves, yet even then, it's difficult capturing the true depth of the blues and greens in this "land before time." I kept waiting for a dinosaur to walk out from behind a tree or swoop through the sky. So sit back for a moment, imagine the smell of a fresh spring air and the sound of rushing water around every turn as you hike on boardwalks over lakes and waterfalls through Plitvice.



If these few photos do not satisfy your hunger for more, check out our full collection. You will not be disappointed!

Afternoon in the Park: Westpark

There are a lot of great parks in Munich - Englisch Gartens, Hirschgarten, park surrounding the Nymphenburg palace, etc. On Saturday, we decided to bike to one that was southeast of our place, West Park, which apparently was just completed in the '80s. It's a sprawling park and not as filled to the brim as Englischer Garten would be on a day like Saturday, but there were still a lot of people out.

I should explain that Saturday seemed to mark a turn in weather for Munich *hopefully*. We've been having weeks on end of drizzling rain or cloudy skies threatening to rain. So Saturday and the whole of next week with the 80-degree plus weather and sunny skies have been and will be a very welcome change. We're all ready for summer.

In West Park, we first rode up to the Asian section of the park with it's pagoda and Chinese garden. Then, we rode past its rolling hills and little lakes. We ate our lunch sitting on a bench by the lake filled with ducks, turtles and carp... plus one really crazy bird that looked like it was jittery from too much caffeine or something. Overall, it was a great day to be biking around and the park was quite nice, but I think we'll probably stick to our favorites - Hirschgarten or Nymphenburg palace grounds - when we want to go to a park.