A guide from your hosts
Zadar to Plitvice in a day, without the stress
Plitvice is the day trip nearly every guest wants, and the one with the most ways to go slightly wrong. Here is how we tell our guests to do it, from years of sending people up the A1 and hearing how it went over breakfast the next morning.
The short version
Leave Zadar around seven. Drive an hour and three quarters, most of it easy motorway. Be at the park when it opens, walk the lakes for four or five hours, and be back at the villa in time for a swim before dinner. That is the whole trick, and the early start is most of it.
The park sits about 130 km inland from Zadar. You take the A1 north and come off at Gornja Ploča for the local road to the entrances. There are two of them, called simply Entrance 1 and Entrance 2. Entrance 1 sits by the lower lakes and the big waterfall, which is where the postcard views are, so if the day is short, start there.
Tickets, and why you should not wing it
This is the part that catches people out. In summer the park limits how many visitors can enter each hour, and you book a specific time slot. On an August morning the good slots are gone days in advance. Book on the official park website as soon as your plans firm up, and treat the printed time seriously, because they do.
Your ticket includes the electric boat across the big lake and the panoramic train that brings you back along the valley, so there is no need to retrace your steps. Parking at the entrances is paid by the hour.
If you would rather not manage any of this, tell us. We arrange Plitvice excursions for our guests at a discounted rate with the tickets handled, and some guests find the day genuinely better when someone else is doing the driving after five hours of walking.
Walking it well
The marked routes range from a couple of hours to a full day. Our usual advice is the circuit that takes in the lower lakes first, the boat across Lake Kozjak, and a stretch of the upper lakes before the train back. That is around four hours at an unhurried pace with photo stops, and it covers everything people come for.
The boardwalks have no railings in places and get slippery near the falls, so wear real shoes, not sandals. Take water and something to eat. There are places to buy food in the park but they are few, plain and busy, and the nicest lunch we know of is the one you brought yourself, eaten on a bench above a lake nobody is photographing.
One more thing: between about ten and two the main paths carry the tour bus crowds, and the boardwalks are single file. This is not a reason to skip Plitvice. It is a reason to be inside the park before the buses arrive, which the seven o'clock alarm buys you.
What to bring
- Booked tickets with a morning slot, on your phone and printed if you like being safe.
- Real shoes. The boardwalks are beautiful and occasionally treacherous.
- Water and a picnic. Options inside the park are limited.
- A layer. The lakes sit at altitude and mornings are cooler than the coast.
- No swimsuit. Swimming is forbidden in the whole park, save it for the sea back home.
Staying with us? Say the word at breakfast and we will sort the tickets, the transport, or the whole day.