Angie

Angie is the resident foodie of Living the Dream. She seeks out local food, restaurants, farmers markets, and cooking classes wherever she travels. Angie has been on one long-term trip of 465 days along with her husband Jeremy.

Why You Should Book a Plitvice Hotel and Stay In the Park

Before we even started our RTW trip, we knew that Plitvice Lakes National Park in Croatia was one of our must-see stops. The logistics of planning a trip to this remote location were slightly trickier, however.

At first we considered visiting the park on a day trip from Zagreb. With only a few hours in the park, we wondered if the trip was worth the cost ($50+/person).

Our next thought was to stop at Plitvice on our way from Zagreb to Zadar, but the bus schedules still would have only allowed us a few hours in the park and it would have cost about the same as a day trip.

We finally realized that in order to see the whole park we'd have to spend a night there, and that meant booking a Plitvice hotel.

After researching accommodation options we found that there were a select few more expensive hotels within the actual park, and cheaper options farther from the park. 

So to help you make the best choice for your stay in Plitvice, we're summarizing them here and including information we did not find online and only learned after our stay at the national park.

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Things to Do in Vienna – 4 Musical Must-Sees

Vienna is undoubtedly the world capital of classical music. The Classical movement started here, and many of the great composers lived and worked here for at least part of their lives.

Even today, the Vienna State Opera and the Vienna Philharmonic continue the classical tradition and are some of the best performers of classical music in the world.

With this long and rich history, it can be daunting to find all the best musically themed things to do in Vienna. After all, you can only visit so many museums and listen to so many performances before getting burned out.

During our stay in Vienna, we checked out four of the best music spots in the city. If you're looking to experience the music scene during your stay, we'd like to recommend these as a perfect starter!

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6 Delicious Bulgarian Food Items to Try When Visiting

After being underwhelmed by the food in Turkey when I had expected to fall in love with it, I took my first bites of Bulgarian food skeptically.

Sure, it was served in an adorable, colorful ceramic pot, but how good could it possibly be? Wasn’t Bulgaria supposed to be the home of meat stews and brown sauces? As it turns out, my first Bulgarian meal was not only good, it was so good that I practically left the restaurant skipping with joy.

This scene was repeated after nearly every meal I enjoyed while traveling in Bulgaria, and six foods stood out among the rest as being delicious no matter where we tried them.

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Seven Rila Lakes – Hiking Tips for Hiking in Rila, Bulgaria

The seven Rila Lakes in BulgariaOne of the things I was most excited about doing in Bulgaria was hiking. Logistically, hiking in the Rila Mountains made the most sense, considering the other Bulgarian cities we wanted to visit were nearby (Plovdiv and Sofia).

The Rila Mountains are the tallest mountain range in Bulgaria and have tons of hiking opportunities such as the 7 Lakes, Mt. Malyovitsa, Mt. Musala, and Scary Lake, just to name a few.

With these hikes in mind, we started researching towns in which to stay as well as more information about the hikes.

Planning this portion of our trip to Bulgaria was the trickiest, as not a whole lot of information about the hikes and the region is available online. So to fill that gap, here is some of the information that we found that I wish would have been available to us when we were planning our trip.

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