Croatia is one of the Mediterranean’s most stunning hidden gems. Located along the northeastern border of the Adriatic Sea, across from Italy and north of Greece, it has perfect climate, stunning coastlines, crystal clear turquoise waters, stunning terra-cotta roofed ancient cities and most importantly it all comes at a very reasonable price compared to some of the more expensive coastal areas along the Mediterranean.
Now, as absolutely stunning, incredible and amazing as Croatia is, I would be remiss if I didn’t at least briefly mention the ways in which Croatia falls short of some of the other great destinations in Europe. Croatia has a long history going back thousands of years. It’s not uncommon to find yourself standing in a building that was built in 6- or 700 AD. Croatia’s oldest still standing building, The Temple of Augustus, was constructed around 20 BC.
So Croatia does not lack for history. However, in modern history, Croatia spent the second half of the 20th century swallowed up by the communist regime of the Soviet Union. Croatia did not obtain its independence until 1995. Even 25 years later, two generations of repressive communist rule has had a visible and noticeable effect.
When you travel to places like Italy and Greece, you almost feel like you’ve taken a time machine to a forgotten period and are seeing the past reverberating through the present. There seems to be such a strong connection to ancient ways of doing things and traditional ways of living. There seems to be a linear connection between the people and their ancestors. They’ve been making their wine and cooking their food the same way for 100s of years. Their traditions are deeply ingrained in their cultures. When you visit a vineyard in Greece you’ll hear the wine maker tell you how his parents and grandparents and their parents before them have been making wine in this same spot in the same manner for hundreds of years. There is a quaintness and a charming quality to that experience that oftentimes feels missing in Croatia.
In Croatia, however, all of their culture seems to have arrived out of nowhere in 1995. There appears to be no connection between the people living in these cities now and their ancient ancestors or culture. The culture is distinctly mid to early 90’s. You feel not like you’re visiting a distant time, but rather, visiting a 90’s style discotheque that just so happens to be situated around and within thousand year old buildings. It certainly does not ruin the experience at all and I would still 100% recommend going to Croatia in a heartbeat. It’s an absolutely incredible country and one of the coolest places I’ve ever traveled. But, despite it’s beauty it does have a very different “feel” than many of the other countries in the area give you.
Anyways, now onto more practical recommendations that will help you plan your trip. The first thing to do when planning your trip is, as always, look at a map of the country:
As you can see, Croatia is a thin and long country that stretches along the coastline of the Adriatic Sea. As such you should either fly in to your northern-most destination and work your way South or, vice versa, fly into your southern-most destination (most likely Dubrovnik) and work your way North. For the purpose of this post we’ll work our way from South to North, assuming you fly into Dubrovnik and then work your way to Hvar, Split, Krka National Park and Plitvices Lake. We’ll include a section on Zadar since we stopped here as well on our trip, just in case you end up here on yours, but I honestly wouldn’t recommend going out of your way to add Zadar to your itinerary.
The three main cities you absolutely should include in your trip are Dubrovnik, Split and Hvar. I’d feel like you were seriously missing out if you failed to stay in all 3 of those cities. Additionally there are two national parks that are of interest in Croatia. Plitvice Lake is an absolute can’t miss. You absolutely HAVE to visit Plitvice lake. You can see the vast majority of it in just 4-6 hours. You can do it as a day trip or stay over for a night and explore it even more in depth. But, whatever you do, make sure you go to Plitvice. Krka is very pretty and well worth a couple hours of your time. However, it is often overrun with tourists and kids and there really isn’t much to the park. It’s a great place to take kids swimming, the main waterfall is very pretty, but if you had to pick one National Park to take a day trip to, make it Plitvice and not Krka.
Dubrovnik, an incredibly well preserved medieval walled city on the coast, actually exists on a piece of land that is separated from the rest of Croatia from the small land bridge that allows Bosnia to reach the sea. Therefore if you have to drive from Dubrovnik to the rest of Croatia, just know that you’ll need your passports on hand to cross into Bosnia and then back into Croatia as there is no direct connection. A much easier way to deal with this is to simply take the ferry from Hvar to Dubrovnik.
The island of Hvar is a gorgeous island where you’ll find some of the richest people in the Mediterranean parking their mega yachts. The old town of Hvar is one of the nicest places to visit in all of Croatia. Split has some of the coolest ancient monuments, some great restaurants and really cool historical sites to visit. We never made it to the Northern cities in Croatia, but have heard great things about Pula and Rijeka if you’re looking to extend your trip up North. The island of Korčula is known for their fantastic wines. Zagreb is also a good place to spend an evening before flying out of the country as it is home to the country’s biggest airport. Ultimately, we’d recommend flying into Dubrovnik and then taking the ferry to Hvar and then Split before heading on to the National Parks and then flying out of either Pula or Zagreb. Or, simply do a similar trip in reverse order by flying into either Zagreb or Pula and working your way south to Dubrovnik.
Below you can click on photos of each place to visit in Croatia and get more detailed plans for each spot.
