Afternoon at Plitvice Lakes and Rastoke: Small-Group Tour from Zagreb

You step off the air-conditioned van into a hum of water—rivers threading through wooden houses, small mills turning with polite insistence. The first stop, Rastoke, feels like a village that grew from a watercolor: moss-dark stones, shingled roofs, and waterfalls that chatter as if telling local stories. After a leisurely lunch in a riverside konoba, the road opens and the world shifts again; Plitvice’s forests close around you, the damp air smelling of pine and limestone.