Our Croatia Trip

2 weeks ago we took a little vacation to Croatia. We visited a couple different cities including Zagreb (the capital), Pula and the Plitvice Lakes.
We only stayed in Zagreb for one night as it was a stop in between where we really wanted to go at first, the Plitvice Lakes.
These lakes are a chain of lakes and waterfalls that vary from 2 meters in height to 30 meters in height. The lakes and falls are a national park and it took us about 5 hours to walk around the whole park. I am not sure if you can see it from some of the pictures we took (as it rained pretty much the whole time we were there) but the water was turquoise and so clear. The park also had a series of walkways, some on land and some man-made walkways that went over the water, some of which went right over some of the falls. It was so cool to be walking on the wooden walkway and look down through the cracks in the boards and see the water rush by only inches below.
After the national park we went to the Istrian peninsula and went to a city called Pula. This was an old roman city and still had roman buildings/artifacts there. We were able to see some old roman arches, a temple, and they also had a Colosseum. It was shaped like the one in Rome only not as big. This Colosseum was great though as you could go right down on the arena floor, where the gladiators would have been, and walk around. They also let you go under the stadium to where all the gladiators would have been before they went out for competition. Today it is like a very small museum where you can see things from the past but it was cool to be under the arena where the gladiators used to be.
Pula is also right on the coast and is why it used to be a very important roman city - it was a major port leading to the land to the north. Because it is on the coast there are quite a few beaches. And because it was high 70's, maybe even the low 80's we took advantage and visited a couple of them.
The beaches over there are a little bit different than most beaches you go to though. Over on the Istrian peninsula where Pula is the beaches are not sand but rather rocky beaches. When I saw rocky I am not talking about little pebbles I am talking about rocks that are about the size of your fist, smooth of course from all the water that has washed over them, but big none-the-less. Next to the beaches there were bigger rocks that you could lay and sit on and because we didn't have a mat or a couple towels to put under us we choose the bigger rocks as the little ones didn't look to comfy. Here we were able to get a little color and just relaxed. I tried to stick my toes in the water but after 2 minutes they came out red and almost frost bitten. It was cold. The lady next to us tried to go for a swim but she made it in to her knees and that was that.
Our trip to Croatia was great and we had a good time. We also really enjoyed taking the train through the different countries and seeing a different part of them than you would if you were driving on the roads. We would definitely recommend it to someone else.