Croatia | holiday | living - All about Croatia

The Velebit Mountains stretches from Senj 145 km along the Adriatic coast in the southern direction, the whole area was, in 1981, declared a nature park, inside the nature park there is two national parks, national park Sjeverni Velebit and national park Paklenica.

The National Park Sjeverni Velebit is the northern national park, placed inside of the large nature park Velebit. The national park is home of several endemic species and a large botanical garden, inside the 109m2 large park, visitors can follow a number of mountaineering trails, among other the Premužić’s trails, which was constructed in 1933 by a scientist.

The Park offers visitors, an astonishing view on the Adriatic cost, a unique flora and large number of wild animals, like Bears, wolfs and snakes, for non experience hikers we strongly recommend to book the affordable guide tours offered by the park experts.

Here you can download our guide to:

© Solitum - Holiday in Croatia

The National Park Brijuni situated on 14 islands west of the city Fažana in Istria, was not always a national park! For centuries the island was used as a stone supply chamber by the different rulers, like the Roman Empire, Venice, Austria and France, in 1815 the Austrians build a fortress and started to use the islands for military purposes.

The change for Brijuni came in 1893 when the islands was bought by the rich Venetian businessman Poul Kupelwieser, who within two decades, turned the islands into a top resort for the European upper-class, on the island he build first class hotels, beach resorts, a casino and even an 18 hole golf course.

From 1930 the Brijuni islands was owned by the Italian state, but after WWII the islands became part of Yugoslavia and was turned into to summer residence for Tito, actually he did not only used It for summer residence but spend up to 6 month a year on the island, where he received a larger number of state heads and movie start as guest.

Tito liked animals so many of the guests brought exotic animals like elephants, tigers and lions as presents, the animals was kept in a safari park on the island, some of the animals and part of the safari park can still be found on the island.

If you are making holiday in Istria, you should for sure consider paying a visit to National Park Brijuni, our small guide which you can download below, could be quite helpful

© Solitum d.o.o

The Kornati National Park – is Croatia nautical national park, the 89 Islands makes the park a perfect spot for sailors to enjoy the beautiful nature and to practice there manoeuvring skills.

The main part of the Kornati Island and it many reefs and Islet was declared national park in 1980, the park covers and area of 220 Km2. As the park has some quite strict rules for visitors it is advisable to consult the official homepage before visiting. (Most of the visitors rules you will also find in our guide)

A large number of registered tour operation enable non sailing tourist also to visit the island on organised day trips, most part of trips are organised from Murter, Zadar and Sibenik.

The Nobel literature price winner George Bernard Shaw, described the Kornati islands like this!

“On the last day of the Creation God desired to crown His work and thus created Kornati Islands out of tears, stars and breath”

Enjoy your trip to the Kornati National Park

The National Park Mljet is an amazing place to see; here you can see the salt lakes which are unique natural phenomenon. It was proclaimed as national park in 1960 and represents the first institutionalized attempt to protect an original ecosystem in the Adriatic. The rich vegetation of the island explains why Mljet is also known as the Green Island. On the official homepage of the National park, www.np-mljet.hr, you find detailed information about the park in general.

The easiest way to get to National Mljet with the ferry from Dubrovnik to Sobra, the trip takes about 2.5 hours.

Enjoy your trip to National Park Mljet

© Solitum d.o.o

National Park KRKA is one of the places that you must to visit when you are on holiday in Croatia – here you will see the beautiful nature of Skradinski buk, Roški slap, and the small island Visovac where a Franciscan monastery, with is valuable library is situated, inside the national park you also find an ethno village with water mills.

Krka, which sometimes is reffered to as small Plitvice, was declared national park in 1985.

On the official homepage of the National park, www.npkrka.hr you find detailed information about wildlife and the park in general.

For first time visitor we have made small guide which could be quite handy to bring along.

Enjoy your trip to National park Krka.

What is useful to know if you want to visit the National Park Plitvice Lakes?

Entrance fee

• Adults 110 Kuna (app. 15 Euro) / winter (01.11-31-03) 70 Kuna
• Children over 7 years 55 Kuna (app.7.5 Euro) winter / 40 Kuna

Entrance and Parking:

The park has two entrances with large parking areas (fee 7 kuna/hour), at the entrances you find maps with predefined tour/routes which you can follow:

Entrance 1 is starting point for program A, B, C, G2 and K (which is the largest tour).

• A (2-3h) is lower parts of national park, only walking
• B (3-4h) is lower part of national park including sailing on lake Kozjak
• C (4-6h) Walking, bus to upper parts of national park and sailing on lake Kozjak
• K (6-8h) Walking around Whole national park.
• G2 (3-4h) Walking Sailing and bus, lower and mid part of park.

Entrance 2 is starting point for program E, H, F, GI, and K.

• E (2-3h) Upper parts of national park, only walking
• F (3-4h) Like B tour. Only different starting point
• H (4-6h) Like C tour. Only different starting point
• K (6-8h) Walking around Whole national park.
• G1 (3-4h) Walking Sailing and bus, Upper and mid part of national park.

When is the best time to visit park:

National Park Plitvice Lakes is a beautiful sight whole year, so I can’t really recommend best time to visit, in the summer the park has around 11.000 visitors a day so I can get a bit crowded, so I personally prefer to visit the park at other times of the year.

Here you can see our summer photos of the park: Plitvice Summer photos

Here you can see some autumn photos of the Park Plitvice Autumn

Staying overnight at Plitvice:

HOTELS:

The following hotels are inside the park area, so by staying overnight here you have the National park at your “doorstep”. – But you also pay for that!!

Hotel Bellevue - 60 rooms (38 double, 16 triple, 6 single)
Hotel Jezero - 210 rooms + 7 suites + 5 disability
Hotel Plitvice - 51 rooms + 1 senior suite
Hotel Grabovac - 31 rooms (23 double, 8 triple)

CAMPSITE:

6 km north of entrance in the city/area Korana you have a large campsite. With 42 “bungalows”, 550 camping units on a land plot of 35 hectares.

PRIVATE ACCOMODATIONS:

The cheapest option for an overnight stay is private accommodation, in the area around National Park Plitvice Lakes, there are plenty of private accommodations to choose between; personally I like to stay in Korona which is beautiful area 6 km from entrance nr.1, here you have pure nature, small waterfalls outside the window and here you might ending up looking first hand at a bear!!!

Here is where we stayed at our last visit to National Park Plitvice Lakes:

You can contact owner at info(at)sankorana.com, his name is Ivica.

Other thinks which might be useful to know.

• No need to say you need to bring some good walking shoes, around the park you will walk on wooden paths, with lots of short steps, so good footwear is a must.
• Bring plenty of water and consider bringing your own lunch; you can buy food and drinks at the park, but prices are relatively high and in summer I can get crowded at the park restaurants.
• Notice the park is very clean, so do yours to keep it that way, there are plenty of garbage dumpsters.
• Stay at that marked paths, mind you are in park with wild animals, like bears, wolves and 19 different kinds of snakes.

Hope this was helpfull, Enjoy Plitvice!!