The Plitvice Lakes National Park is one of the most important sights in the Balkan region. Although it was quite a long drive from the island of Krk, where we were staying, I knew just had to go there.

And yes, it really was totally worth it — “It” meaning sitting in the car for almost eight hours that day!

I had pretty high expectations, since everyone has been raving about this national park and I was really hoping it would live up to them…

And it sure did: I had never seen so many beautiful sides of nature crammed into one place (although quite the vast place) before. The landscape variety ranged from completely still lakes with flawless reflections of the perfect October sky…

to powerful hidden waterfalls swallowing all noises even from far distance…

The colors were so sublime that I almost couldn’t believe they were actually natural ones: The bright red and orange of the fall leaves —

framed the views of  the surreal turquoise water amazingly…

And, the water… really, those endless shades of blue were insane! And it was so clear that you could literally count the fish in it — at least if you were up for that challenge!

The whole scenery was just breathtakingly divine…

and the mild fall weather — though I was a little skeptical about going to the park in October at first — made it even more perfect!

Some useful additional advice:

I was really happy that I decided against wearing flip-flops and changed them into sneakers in the last second, because walking on paths like this…

was a little adventurous at times (especially when having to squeeze past larger groups of people in the more crowed parts of the park).

I found the park’s website to be very helpful in choosing your trekking tour beforehand. We took the C route, but left that path from time to time to make sure we had seen everything. All in all, that took us about 4.5 hours.

Other than that — take a picnic and a lot of time with you. Both is really worth being extensively enjoyed in a ravishingly gorgeous place like Plitvice Lakes!

I had the best time — and Plitvice Lakes sure didn’t let me down! In the future, I will be one of those people raving about this place, too!