Krka National Park
I'll write more later, but a morning trip to Krka National Park, south of Sibenik on the Krk River. This is one of the more beautiful places in the world with dense forests, steep gorges, and seemingly endless waterfalls.
You can enter the park from two places now, a parking lot with shuttle busses that take you 5 minutes to the waterfalls, or the old enterance at the village of Skradin, where you can take a boat half an hour up the river gorge to the same place. The new gate is good if you're in a hurry, the old gate is much more fun, with an hour on the river. The price is the same either way, about US$20 for park admission.
The park is similar to Plitvicka Lakes NP in central Croatia, but here you can swim in the river which is nice, but the water isn't as pristine.
The village of Skradin is worth seeing in itself. It's been very well restored after being heavily damaged during the homeland war 15 years ago. The Croatians are really good at repairing and restoring buildings rather than converting them to commercial development during rebuilding. Subtile evidence of the occupation and liberation of the area can be seen though, patched bullet holes around windows, an occasional ruin of a bombed our building never rebuilt. This area was taken by Serbia at the beginning of the war, with many Croats killed our driven out, but there was equal violence against the Serbs later as the Croat troops re-took the towns in 1995. Now it's that interesting Croatian combination of village and high-end tourist resort that you see so much on the coast. Just about all of the homes have an apartment to rent during the tourist season, and a deepwater harbor makes a good stopover for everything from sailboats on a Mediterranean tour to mega yachts from around the world, with restaurants and accomidations for the full range, and of course the national park the everyone can enjoy.
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