Last weekend, on Friday, March 3rd, Dan and I left for a weekend trip to Zagreb, Croatia! Zagreb is only a 4 hour bus ride from Budapest so it's been on our radar for a couple months now. We booked the bus tickets and the AirBnB about a week in advance. FlixBus is the company we have used most often over the last six months when traveling around central and Eastern Europe. It's very convenient and affordable, I recommend it to travelers on a budget who don't mind long bus rides.
Both Dan and I work until around 2pm on Fridays so the earliest bus we could take had us leaving Budapest at 6:30 pm. The bus ride felt fast and comfortable. I downloaded some shows and movies on my iPad prior to leaving and ended up watching "The Swimmers" on Netflix. "The Swimmers" is about two Syrian sisters who flee their war torn country and end up swimming in the olympics. I loved it and highly recommend!
Once we arrived at the Zagreb Bus Station, we walked about 20 minutes to our AirBnB. We stayed in a small apartment in central Zagreb which was beautifully decorated. Once we got there and put our backpacks down, it was about 11:00 pm. At that point, the night was still young in our eyes and we wanted to head out to see some of the city at night. We stopped at a couple bars for drinks.
We went to bed and got up around 8am the next morning ready for a day full of adventure! We booked a day trip to Plitvice Lakes National Park. Plitvice Lakes was one of the suggested day trips from Zagreb and when we googled it, it looked insanely beautiful so we knew we had to go. We love living in Budapest but being in the city away from nature and the great outdoors can be challenging at times. The national park is open year round although it is most popular during the peak season (the warmer, summer months). Therefore, there's buses from Zagreb to Plitvice a few times a day. We left on the earliest one possible- the 10:30 am one which had us arriving to Plitvice around 1pm. We bought our tickets to the park online on their website during the week before.
Once we arrived, a park ranger helped us with checking in and provided us with the recommended route. Although it's a big park, most of the trails especially the ones close to the lakes and waterfalls were closed due to the winter season. The route we took ended up being about 3 hours long and included a boat ride.
Upon entering the park, this is the view from Entrance 1. It's absolutely breathtaking! There was a lot of snow on the ground but the temperature wasn't too bad.
We had the best time at Plitvice Lakes and want to come back during the summer months to enjoy and experience while it's hot!
Our bus back to Zagreb left around 5:30 pm. During the day, we met two other travelers who we ended up hanging out with once we got back to Zagreb! After a quick pit stop at the AirBnB to change out of our wet socks, we met back up with our new friends for dinner and drinks.
After a fun night out, we got some rest and woke up on Sunday morning for our last few hours in Zagreb. We booked a free walking tour for 11am that day. The walking tour was very informational with several different stops around Zagreb.
Overall, we learned a lot on the tour and stopped for a quick bite to eat at Heritage- Croatian Street Food and Shop. It came highly recommended from different sources on the internet. It was delicious and the people were really kind! Afterwards, we made our way over to the bus station because our bus was leaving at 2pm back to Budapest.
We got back home later that evening around 7pm. We had an amazing weekend in Croatia and have already decided that we need to go back and explore other parts especially the coast. Thank you so much for reading!
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