Ok, so I feel a little bit bad about skipping Croatia. Croatia doesn't deserve that. Croatia is great. Really Croatia, it's not you, it's me. . .

When we left Mostar, we headed to Dubrovnik. Dubrovnik has the reputation for me as being one of my mom's favorite places. I don't know how many times I have heard how wonderful it is. Alexi and I talked a bit about this, what makes a place great (or not great) for different people. A few months ago, in addition to posting my plans here, I sent out an email to all of my friends and family getting advice for my upcoming trip. The response I got was great. I got a few tips on places to stay or poeple I could stay with, a few people passed on my message to another friend with more info and a lot of people told me about places they have travelled. I really loved getting these messages, but it was kind of funny, because sometimes I would get completely contradictory advice about a place. It could depend on so many things. How do they like to travel? What was the weather like that day? Who were they with?
I bring this up because I liked Dubrovnik. I didn't love Dubrovnik. It rained both days we were there (crazy hailing thunderstorms) and things were a bit expensive for me. For example, to climb the old city walls and walk around up there cost about 10€. That seemed a bit steep to walk around the city (in the pouring rain no less) so we skipped it. Also because of the rain, we didn't get to go to the beach, one of the things I was really looking forward to in Croatia.
My favorite part of Croatia was Plitvice national park which is in between Zadar and Zagreb. A lot of factors went in to my general "like" of this place. First, it is insanely beautiful- it is a system of lakes connected by waterfalls that you walk across and through on raised wooden platforms. Second, we stayed in a great guest house outside of the park with the softest beds and best shower I've had in ages (especially compared to the bus station floor we slept on the night before).
We skipped Zagreb, partly because we were short on time, partly because we arrived with perfect time for the last train to Budapest, but mostly because we got more "don't bother" reports than "I loved it!" reports. . . But who knows, maybe we would have loved it.