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Category Archives: Croatia
A tale of two capital cities
On Friday morning, April 5, we treated ourselves to breakfast in the campsite restaurant in Plitvice Lakes National Park in Croatia. It was a feast of omelettes, meat, cheese, bread, fruit and yoghurt for only €14 each. We had enough food to provide for lunch over the next two days! Having filled up with water as we knew we wouldn’t be in a campsite for a few days, it was time to move on. Just before we set off we noticed that the engine oil light came on so we checked it and found she needed a bit of a top up. Not bad going as we’d done over 14,000 miles since her last oil change.
We had decided that Zagreb would be our final stop in Croatia before moving onto Slovenia. Whilst Belgrade and Sofia had underwhelmed as capital cities, Zagreb didn’t disappoint. It felt a lively, buzzy place helped, no doubt, by the warm, sunny Spring like weather. Even so, there were large parks, interesting tunnels under the city streets, cathedrals and grand architecture. We had found a parking spot in a central car park that only changed €2.80 per hour and had no height restrictions (P4N#233856). It was a bit tight getting in and eventually we found a spot – our fault for arriving at 13.00 on a Friday! A short walk later and we could take in the sights.
Plitvice and pesky passports
We left Belgrade around 08.40 on Wednesday morning to drive to the Plitvice Lakes National Park in Croatia. The Serbian motorway wasn’t particularly busy but again 5km out from the border the lorries started to queue to get into the Schengen area. It wasn’t too bad for us and only took about half an hour. The Serbian side weren’t too interested in us and the Croatian border control seemed even less so.
After we had sailed through we realised that the Croatian border official hadn’t stamped our passports so there was no record of when we entered the EU again after leaving it in Greece. This might not matter but, again, we had heard some horror stories of people trying to prove how long they were in the EU/Schengen area when their passports had not been stamped. We hadn’t realised until we were already on the motorway and gone through a toll. There was a rest area nearby that also went back towards the Croatian border so we turned around and headed back through the toll. We had only been on the toll for maybe 5 miles each way but obviously the system didn’t realise that and charged us the full amount of €25! We got back to the Croatian border, parked up and went to find the chap who had inspected our passports. Luckily, he was happy to just stamp them this time so we could avoid going back out of Croatia, into Serbia, back out of there and back into Croatia. It all could have been very messy!
Dora The Explorer 