the waterfalls

After two days of enjoying old buildings and historic sights we were taken inland to Croatia's most beautiful national park, a UNESCO World  heritage site called Plitvice Lakes.  It's a beautiful forested area with 16 (according to the guide book) terraced lakes.  Because the lakes are on different levels everywhere you look there are waterfalls - not huge Niagra Falls type waterfalls but long beautiful streams of water plunging from one lake to the next.  We took a two hour walk around the lakes and saw countless falls, sometimes 20 or more along the wall of rocks between one lake and the one on the next lower level.  Some of the falls were babies, only 4 or 5 feet tall while others appeared to be at least 30 feet or more. It was a lovely place to visit and we stayed overnight in the hotel there.  Our guide commented that, being a state run facility, it still had something of the communist feel about it and I could see what he meant, everything was perfectly clean, the food was good but not exciting, the people who worked their didn't seem to smile as much as in other places we stayed.  Maybe the falls themselves used up all the exuberance that was allowed.