“The Plitvice Lakes is the oldest and the largest national park in the Republic of Croatia. The exceptional natural beauty of this area has always attracted nature lovers.”

Yep, you can see the number of attracted nature lovers from the very beginning when you try to find a parking space 🙂 

The national park covers almost 30,000 hectares and offers different routes from 3,5 to 18 kilometres (2.2 to 11.2 miles).

If you are fit, healthy and do not carry little kids, you can just enjoy yourself and walk as much as you like. If you have any health concerns then you might want to plan your route carefully. We chose the simplest one and still it turned out challenging for Ksenia after COVID.

We started at Entrance 2 intending to walk to P1, take a boat to P3, then walk to Entrance 1 and  back to St1, take a train to St2 and walk back to our car. Well, walking to the jetty took much longer than we anticipated. Don’t trust schemas, consult with proper maps!

Time estimates from the park map are for hikers, not for nature lovers. You are likely to stop frequently, enjoy the view and take photos. You also need to include waiting time for boats and shuttle which can be pretty long.

We had to skip the last part of the route, because we were running late for the last train. However, the last train also was running late and arrived 30 minutes later than expected by everyone gathered at the station. And, please, do not expect Hogwarts Express, it is just a truck with a carriage.

As mentioned above, the Park is huge. We could only imagine how amazing the long route is, but the short one is also great.