First of all, so sorry for the lack of posting this summer.  It had turned out to be so much busier than I anticipated.  From research and school work to beginning contract work on the side, it’s been challenging to stay on top of posting.  I have a plan in my head to catch up on posts, but for now, I’ll just give you some monthly highlights (with photos), and I’ll fill in the details in more posts on a regular basis now.

But before the monthly highlights, I just returned from the Cook Islands the other day, for a quick 6-day island getaway. My story of how the Cook Islands came to be seems to be an amusing one.  Last year on Black Friday (after-Thanksgiving Day sale), Air New Zealand had a fare sale to Auckland, NZ, for under $400.  Sales were posted to Twitter around 6 am, Eastern time.  Being in California for Thanksgiving, by the time I woke up in Pacific time, they were sold out.  There were Twitter rumors that Air NZ would have another sale for Cyber Saturday the following day.  So I turned on my notifications and set a light alarm on my phone for 4 am Pacific time (7 am Eastern time).

$490 RT LAX to RAR?  For the week of my 36^th birthday?  (9 months in the future, at this point)  Sure, why not!  The Cook Islands sound like a great idea.  And it totally was!  More on CI soon, but it was wonderful!  It’s a Polynesian paradise, without the crowds and big resorts.  I will definitely be going back in the near future!

So now, that recap of my travels since April 2018!

April

• Oaxaca, Mexico with a friend!
• Eating all the corn-based tortilla products one can find!
• Day trips visiting Hierve el Agua, the Tule Tree, Mitla and Monte Alban
• Watching a donkey go round and round in circles, grinding agave for mezcal, in a roadside, artisanal mezcal distillery

• Big Island, Hawaii!
• Hives on the flight…
• Photographing the Kilauea volcano and Milky Way in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park
• Epic hike on lava fields
• Above the clouds, on the world’s tallest mountain, Mauna Kea.

May

• Back to school! In Vienna
• Visit to lovely but crowded UNESCO village, Hallstatt, in Austria
• Relaxing weekend in Budapest, with a friend that I met in Nepal!
• Quick jaunt to Bangkok for some Thai massages and relaxation!

June

• Unexpected and amazing time in Slovenia!
• Cloudy, sunrise hike over Lake Bled
• Hiking at and amazing scenery in Lake Bohinj and Triglav National Park with one half of travel bloggers, Rambles on the Go
• Eating dumplings, walking around Ljubljana and recording podcasts with the Postcard Academy!
• And then, almost the whole month in Croatia!
• Starting in Zagreb, with awful allergies, lots of sneezing, and seeing the remains of failed relationships.
• Full day hike with lakes and waterfalls in Plitvice Lakes National Park, with new Canadian friends!
• Eat lots of amazing pork afterwards at Pri Zvonou, a Zagreb institution within walking distance of my Airbnb
• On to Pula, for sunsets, Roman architecture, and boats
• But wait! I was stung by a sea urchin and had to dig out all the spines from my foot by myself (cue sound: womp womp)
• Chasing sunsets in Zadar
• Hike up to Manita Pec cave in Paklencia National Park
• Lots of balcony time and strolls along the beach in Okrug Gronji

July

• Visiting with Rembrandt in the Rjiksmuseum and friends in Amsterdam
• Crashing a friend and fellow bridesmaid’s family vacation in Milan!
• Taking breaks between eating gelato, pizza, burrata and prosciutto to see Italian Renaissance classics at Pinacoteca Ambrosiana
• Hiking above Lake Como, hearing tales of Italian-Swiss border smugglers and getting stung by way too many mosquitos
• Crashing the tail end of a different friend’s (and also fellow bridesmaid in the same wedding actually…) 3 week European vacation, in the amazingly beautiful and wonderful alpine town of Innsbruck, Austria!
• Hiked an incredibly difficult mountain in the Zillertal Alps… (story coming soon)
• Relaxation at Aqua Dome, sparkly things at Swarovski Kristallwelten, and frequent trips to Himal Nepali restaurant, in Innsbruck
• James Bond, mountains, and Milky Way in Soelden, Austria
• Watching Carmen, performed over Lake Constance as part of the Bregenz Festival, in Bregenz, Austria! Bucket list (CHECK)
• And then, back to school in Vienna!

August

• Stumbling upon the Pride on the Canal parade in Amsterdam!
• And finally, back to America for family time and R&R!
• Watched the Perseid meteor shower and shot the Milky Way at Anza Borrego Desert State Park, an international dark sky park
• Chased a particularly foul bucket list item to disappointment, at the Huntington Library, in San Marino, California.
• Celebrated being another year older and feeling particularly thankful for the experiences I have in life
• Crossed the Pacific to the Cook Islands, where I found the perfect paradise, without overwhelming tourists and large resorts.
• Took a day trip to Aitutaki where they have the bluest, clearest waters I have ever seen in my life!
• Sat in the cockpit on the way back from Aitutaki because the owner of my villa in Rarotonga happened to be the co-pilot on the flight!
• Made friends with a group of people that kept running to each other on the island, and happened to be all on the same flight back to LAX.

And now, today, September 5th, I am in Mexico City for a few days before I head back to California!  My life will be a bit more structured starting next week, so stay tuned for (more regular) posts and thanks for your patience!  Hope everyone had a great summer!

Lannie

Lannie is a perpetual wanderer and loves to share her travel adventures and the food she eats along the way with everyone.  She works during the day while bouncing around the world and dreams about new places and faces at night!  She has a home on the magical Isle of Islay in Scotland, where the whisky flows freely and happily.

Click on the blue icons below to follow her on social media!

lanniesfoodandtravel.com/index.php/about-me/

There are many tours that will take you there or renting a car is certainly an option.  But going from Zagreb to Plitvice by bus for a day trip is completely doable, quite easy to do, and incredibly cost effective! So, if you’re up for an adventure, read on! I’ll give step-by-step instructions on how to go from Zagreb to Plitvice by bus.

1. Zagreb to Plitvice Lakes by Bus

Buying bus tickets from Zagreb to Plitvice is easy enough.  A roundtrip ticket on Arriva, was 112 kuna | < $18 USD  | 15 EUR.  My 5:45 am departure (which arrived shortly after 8 am) meant that I’d have to leave my Airbnb around 5 am, in order to arrive early enough to figure things out…just in case.  My ticket was emailed to me as a PDF and included the platform number (#405), and sure enough, there it was.  Large luggage will cost you 10 kuna to put underneath the bus. My large 50 L backpack was fine as a “carry on.”  And then we were off! From Zagreb to Plitvice by bus!

There are 2-3 ten minute stops along the way, but I never left the bus fearing a) losing my seat, and b) the bus leaving without me.

Along the way, you drive through small villages and if you look closely, you can see sprays of bullet holes covering the village houses.  Rising ethnic tensions between Croatians and Serbs sparked with the death of a Croatian army commander.  The result was the Croatian War for Independence, which began in Plitvice, late March 1991.  Both sides had only 1 death each, during the “Plitvice Incident” or the “Plitvice Bloody Easter”, with over 20 wounded and 400 tourists evacuated.

2. Arriving at Plitvice Lakes

After a little over two sleepy hours on the bus, we finally made it from Zagreb to Plitvice Lakes. So excited!

Plitvice Lakes has been a national park since after WWII, and became a UNESCO world heritage site in 1979.  After the Croatian War for Independence, the parks were swept for mines and all of the remaining mines were removed.  Over 1 million people visit the park annually.

When I went to Plitvice in June, the cost of admission for adults was 150 kuna | < $24 USD | 20 EUR.  In July and August (the country’s high season), that jumps to 250 kuna | $40 USD | 34 EUR if you enter before 16:00.

2.1 Entrances to Plitvice

There are two entrances to Plitvice, smartly named Entrance 1 and Entrance 2.  The bus driver will call out the entrances to the passengers.  Depending on what you want to see in the park, different entrances lead to different attractions. The side of the road where you exit the bus is the same side of the road as the entrance to the NP. 

And remember, that means at the end of the day, when you’re waiting to catch the bus back to Zagreb, the bus stop is on the opposite of the road.

2.2 Hiking Plitvice Lakes – Choose your walking program!

You can go hiking in Plitvice Lakes either for a leisurely walk, or an immense (almost) 20 km hike! The national park has 8 different “lake tour programmes”, with the “K” programme being the longest at 18.3 km, with an estimated completion time of 6-8 hours.  I was able to finish in about 5 hours, with breaks in between.

EXPERT TIP: MAKE SANDWICHES AND BRING YOUR OWN FOOD AND WATER.  
There are long stretches with no food or water.

3. The Long Hike – “K programme”

It’s always strange going on a long hike on your own.  Granted, there were other people around, because most of the various lake programmes criss-cross each other and overlap.  But I guess not many people wanted an ambitious “Hiking Plitvice Lakes Day.” There were very few people on the “full K programme.” Most of the trail was on wooden planks along or over the water, and when the K goes off into the green wooded area, there are easy to follow paths.

From P3 (around the middle of the map), I had to take off my shoes and cross over a small section in the water.

And from there towards where it continues well into the green, I met one person and one dog on the K trail.  (The dog did not belong to the person). 

4. Not alone at Plitvice anymore!

At some point, hours later, I met C and K, who were two travelers from Canada and they graciously agreed to let me walk with them.  They were also doing the K programme, but started at Entrance 2. Hiking Plitvice Lakes alone – mmm, ok on the fun level. Hiking Plitvice Lakes with fun people – even better!

5. Thoughts on Hiking Plitvice Lakes

The hike ended with a short 5 minute ferry across the water (gushing towards the finish line!) Ok, maybe not such an exciting finish. But, I will say hiking Plitvice Lakes was an amazing way to see so many of the waterfalls. Plus, being off the beaten path was a great way to avoid the mass of tourists. 

Small warning, though… every time you are about to come across a waterfall, the crowds increase and the pace slows, as everyone tries to pose for a picture.  It can get mildly overwhelming.

I finished the hike around 13:30, and was able to catch an earlier bus back to Zagreb.  In the morning, the bus from Zagreb to Plitvice dropped me off next to the entrance. The bus going back is on the opposite side of the road.

Luckily, I had some time to buy an ice cream before the bus arrived. The bus left around 14:45, and I was able to make it back in Zagreb for a shower and amazing dinner.

So in the end, if you love to walk, enjoy waterfalls and crystal clear waters, PLITVICE IS THE PLACE FOR YOU.  Especially if you’re alread in Zagreb, the bus to Plitvice is easy and a completely manageable day trip!

Add it to the bucket list!

6. Resources on going from Zagreb to Plitvice Lakes by Bus

Bus tickets and schedules
Sample Zagreb to Plitvice bus departure/arrival times (weekend schedules differ):

• 5:45 am – 8:08 am
• 6:30 am – 8:40 am
• 7:30 am – 9:45 am
• 8:30 am – 11:07 am
• 9:15 am – 11:30 am

Sample Plitvice back to Zagreb bus departure/arrival times (weekend schedules differ):

• 2:45 pm – 5:05 pm
• 3:45 pm – 5:55 pm
• 5:18 pm – 7:50 pm

Information on Hiking Plitvice Lakes National Park and entrance fees:

• Lake walking programme description and maps
• Price list

REMEMBER BRING YOUR OWN FOOD AND WATER

Recap on my Zagreb to Plitvice Day

5:45 am Bus leaves from Zagreb to Plitvice Lakes
8:10 am: Arrival at Plitvice, Entrance 1
<< walk walk walk walk walk walk walk >>
1:30 pm: Make it back to Entrance 1
2:45 pm: Bus to Zagreb
3 pm: Rain, and feeling thankful to be on a bus and on the way home.  The man I encountered on the K trail, with the dog that was not his, went back to Zagreb on the same bus.
5:15 pm: Arrive in Zagreb
6:30 pm: Finish shower and eat amazing food at Pri Zvoncu
8:30 pm: Sleep.

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Lannie

Lannie is a perpetual wanderer and loves to share her travel adventures and the food she eats along the way with everyone.  She works during the day while bouncing around the world and dreams about new places and faces at night!  She has a home on the magical Isle of Islay in Scotland, where the whisky flows freely and happily.

Click on the blue icons below to follow her on social media!

lanniesfoodandtravel.com/index.php/about-me/

The other day, the original plan was to go on a boat to visit a national park.  However, due to choppy waters, the boat was cancelled at the last minute.  The boat was scheduled to leave at noon, and I didn’t have a Plan B for the day.  So, I decided to ask my Airbnb host whether she could recommend any good beaches around.

1. Selecting a Beach outside Pula

Now, Pula is on the coast.  But the coastline is more or less industrial, due to its large shipbuilding industry.  There aren’t any beaches in Pula itself, but there are some just outside of town.  In order to figure out the right beach for me, she asked two questions: crowded or quiet beach?  Rocky or pebble beach? The first question was obvious and of course, I chose a quiet beach.  The second question, however… rocky or pebble?  I wasn’t really sure how to answer.  I know that pebbles on a beach were annoying, so was a rocky beach the right choice?  It was the only other alternative, so sure.  Rocky beach it was.

For 50 kunas | $8.50 USD, my Airbnb host offered a roundtrip ride to the beach, so away we went.  And after a few minutes ride outside of town, we arrived at Lungomare.

2. Lungomare, the Rocky Beach

There was a small ladder, like in a swimming pool, leading into the water.  And although the water was brisk, at best, I decided to go in completely.  Go big or go home, right?

And wow.  The water was choppy.  But not only that, because it wasn’t a sandy beach that I was used to, the surface below was uneven, at best, and of course, still large rocks.  I was in the water no more than 5-7 minutes being tossed about, and even scraped the bottom of my foot at the surface of one of the underwater rocks.  Enough was enough.  I was here to relax, and sometimes listening and watching the sea are more relaxing than being in it.

As soon as I stepped foot on land, I knew something was wrong.  A stinging sensation from my right foot as I made my way over to my towel.  As soon as I sat down, and wiped the debris off my feat, I could see the spikes.  It wasn’t a scrape at all.  It must have been a sea urchin.

WARNING: 

there are ugly pictures of my feet coming up… stop now if that grosses you out

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I spent the next 20 or 30 minutes removing the spikes.  There was about 10 of them, no larger than a mechanical pencil lead.  One had gotten underneath my pinky toe.  That one hurt to pull out.  But the rest of them came out relatively easily.  But there was still something left underneath the surface.  A black dot where each spike had once been.  I sat there squeezing and scraping, as if it were a small splinter underneath the surface, until I could do no more without any tools.  I was googling sea urchin spikes and what to do, and there is a reason the black specks were left.

This is the site I referenced, and if you ever step on a sea urchin, READ THIS SITE.

You only see the sea urchin spike as a spike, but the tip of it is actually more like a barb.  Although you can pull out the spike itself, the barb is still left in there.  I decided to leave it be and to enjoy the warm weather and sounds of the sea.  Whatever venom was pumping through my body couldn’t have been much due to the small nature of the spikes itself and the fact that there were only 10 or so of them in my feet.  But, as a fair warning, people have known to die from being stung by sea urchins. I guess if I were truly honest, I didn’t want the Airbnb host to think I was a dumb tourist, for being stung by sea urchins within the first 5 minutes of being dropped off at the beach.

After about an hour and a half or so, I texted my Airbnb host, told her what happened and asked her to pick me up.  I asked whether she could bring me some vinegar or take me to the market to buy some.  From what she told me, almost everyone in Pula has been stung by sea urchins at some point.  That made me feel exponentially better.  And honestly, mine was not bad compared to some of the stories she told me.

3. Vinegar foot bath

When I got home, armed with a giant vat of vinegar and hot water, I began my foot bath.

For those who know me, know two things: One, I hate vinegar and everything to do with vinegar.  Two, I get very squeamish when there are injuries related to feet.  So this foot bath is literally my worse nightmare.  And the smell… Awful.

Soak your feet 30-45 minutes and the remaining spines should dissolve from the vinegar.  (Side note, this is also true if you accidentally get a fish bone stuck in your throat… which, ironically has also happened to me.  You should drink vinegar or something extremely acidic to soften the bone, so it will go down…).  Anyway, wanting the maximum effect from the vinegar, I soaked my feet for an hour.

4. Foot Surgery

The black specks were still in my feet after the vinegar bath, and I was getting conflicting advice on whether the skin would eventually push it out on its own or if I should continue my efforts to try and remove it.  I decided better safe than sorry, and thus began the “surgery.”  After disinfecting a needle and my nail file, I first filed off a layer of skin and then began removing the black specks one by one.  After a few hours, I finally removed them all (or so I thought).  Gross, I know.

In the next few days, as more of the spine came to the surface, I had to go back in with a needle and remove some of them.  So now, for the most part, it’s all gone.  I will say that the spines definitely go in deep, and you have to use the needle to get under the spine and push it out. 

5. Recovery

The next few days, I slept more than normal, not sure if that was effects of the venom coursing through my body or just physical exhaustion recovering from an injury like this.

In the end, I survived.  I think the important lesson to remember, especially when traveling alone, is that you have to remain calm.  Google is your friend.  You’re not the only person in the world that has undergone such an ordeal, and panicking will do no good.  Searching for a solution to solve it yourself is easy, if you can manage to stay calm.  Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to stay at the beach, with the venom coursing through my veins, but that was all I could do to remain calm given the circumstances.  In the end I survived, and if this ever happens to you, you will too.

Lannie

Lannie is a perpetual wanderer and loves to share her travel adventures and the food she eats along the way with everyone.  She works during the day while bouncing around the world and dreams about new places and faces at night!  She has a home on the magical Isle of Islay in Scotland, where the whisky flows freely and happily.

Click on the blue icons below to follow her on social media!

lanniesfoodandtravel.com/index.php/about-me/