Driving To Croatia – Day 2

We wrote about Day 1 of our drive to Croatia a few days ago - Croatia Online - Driving To Croatia Day One - and also about our first night’s stop in Eisenbachtal - Croatia Camping Guide - Driving To Croatia Day One

After a full on first day of our drive across Europe, we decided to have a little spring clean, rest and enjoy our campsite so we did not leave Eisenbachtal until 1 20 pm. That’s the joy of exploring off season in a campervan – you can do pretty well what you like, when you like, according to need and mood.

Having rested and recovered, we drove on into the evening and hoped to find a nice quiet place for a short overnight rest so we could leave fairly early in the morning and make up some time. Neumarkt turned out to be the perfect location and we stopped there at about 7 pm having found an ideally flat parking space, by a field, not to far from town. After 24 hours on various combinations of ham, cheese and bread, we felt we needed something more interesting and decided to treat ourselves to dinner out. Lo and behold, the first restaurant we came across in this small German town, between Nuremberg and Regensburg, was Restaurant Plitvice, named after one of Croatia’s most beautiful natural attractions - the Plitvice lakes and National Park. It seemed too much of a coincidence to ignore so we went inside, only to find it empty apart from its owner who, you guessed it, was Croatian.

Ivo Gavić, like many compatriots, left Croatia several years ago to make a better life in Germany but continued with some of his favourite Croatian recipes. I had a delicious dish of “Croatian pork steaks” and then a couple of feisty home made rakijas (herb brandy) with Ivo whilst we chatted in a mixture of Croatian, German and English about the things we missed most about Croatia.

You’ll find contact details etc on Ivo’s facebook page Restaurant Plitvice and what a great way to whet your appetite for your visit to Croatia!

On day 2 we drove a mere 212 miles but there’s no point getting there exhausted and we slept well and were rested for the next leg.

Diesel cost us €1.159 a litre, there were no tolls to pay on the German motorways so the only other expense we had was food. My dinner at Restaurant Plitvice was €13.80 which included a huge salad as well as my pork medaillons, a beer and a big glass of wine. The rakija was a gift from Ivo.