A FEW GREEN VIEWS OF CROATIA

 My first few days in Croatia were in the capital city of Zagreb, after a scenic train ride from Ljubljana, Slovenia.  Zagreb city center area is mainly made up of Vienna style buildings built over 200 years ago and is showing its age.  Still, it is obvious that money from the growing tourist trade is being used to upgrade the city which is still recovering from an earthquake in 2020 as well.  A big plus in the city are its many parks in which the locals were enjoying the last warm days of a long summer.  I just loved the Zagreb Botanical Park which is over 100 years old and very much the early style of botanical parks where there is a huge collection of different labeled plants as a resource to university students.  From Zagreb I took a day tour to Plitvice Lakes National Park.  I had never heard of this park before going to Croatia, but the beauty of the place is just mind blowing.  Plus, it was Autumn, so all the fall colors of the trees made it even better.  Word must be getting out about the beauty of the place as the park is resorting to online reservations now to limit the numbers of people hiking each day in the park. 

From Zagreb it was a 5-hour bus ride down to the coast.  In the last hour of the trip, we changed from green farmlands to a very Mediterranean coastal landscape below rocky mountains.  It seemed every garden there had olive and mandarin trees in them.  The mandarin trees were loaded with gold fruit, and it was harvest time for the olives so you could see a few people concentrating on harvesting from one tree at a time with a net spread out on the ground under the tree.  Cabbages and Swiss chard seemed popular in vegetable gardens. I wish I had photos of these gardens, but I was viewing them from a moving bus. Newly picked Mandarins were cheap in the markets. Shelled walnuts and dried small figs were also cheap and seasonal, so I bought an ongoing supply of them for my snacks while on the move. Something to balance all the goodies I was buying at their wonderful bakeries.

Zagreb Botanical Park

Zagreb Flower Market

Zagreb Produce Market
The red umbrellas are traditional and symbolic of the city.

One tiny corner of the Plitvice Lakes National Park

House and outbuildings at Rastoke village

House entrance in the alleyways of Split

A roof garden in the old city of Dubrovnik as seen
 from the top of the city walls.

Harvest time at a Mandarin orchard.

Aloha