A summer spent exploring Croatia

We spent 12 days exploring Croatia in mid-July and soaking up the sun. We started our trip in Zagreb, where we met my sister and her husband who were staying with some of his family there. Zagreb is a small capital city with limited sights to see, so it can easily be seen in just one day. What made it great was spending time with locals and getting to know how people live in Zagreb; I find the local experience always makes travel better. We had a barbecue one evening and discovered the delicious Ajvar, a Croatian sauce made from red capsicum/bell peppers and eggplant. It was so good that I’m considering trying to make it. We spread the sauce over bread that had been toasted on the bbq, and enjoyed it with some local barbecued meats - yum!

While walking around Zagreb, we explored the Museum of Broken Relationships, which I’m told is the most popular museum in the city. This quirky museum displays a compilation of submissions from people all over the world, including an object that symbolises their broken relationship, and an explanation of what happened. Some of the objects are certainly odd, including one woman who kept the scab of an ex for over 20 years!

Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Zagreb

The gardens in Ledeni Park, Park Josipa Strossmayera and Park Zrinjevac are particularly pretty, and well worth a walk-through. Ledeni Park also houses the beautiful Hrvatska academija znanosti I umjetnosti (Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts), but unfortunately, it was closed while we were visiting. We walked through the city, which is fairly easy, but does involve a few stairs. St Mark’s Church is considered a must-see for its stunning tiled roof, however, the rest of the building was covered in scaffolding when we visited.

We went for a walk through Gric, the tunnels that run beneath the city. As a self-confessed claustrophobe, I didn’t want to spend too much time down there, but I have to admit it’s worth a walk-through. These tunnels were used during WW2 for hiding from bomb raids, in the 90s for raves, and now they’re a tourist destination and used as part of the Christmas lights show.

We also visited the Zagreb City Museum, which was much more expansive than I was expecting. The museum takes you through a lot of Croatia’s history, from medieval times to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, its time as Yugoslavia, and now, as modern Croatia. We found It quite interesting and a great place to escape the heat of summer for an hour or so.

The architecture in Zagreb reminds me a lot of Austria, with many buildings remaining from the Austro-Hungarian Empire times. This is in contrast to the coastal Dalmatian architecture, which looks completely different. The food in Zagreb also reminded me of Austria, with a lot of meat and potatoes, sometimes crumbed, sometimes in a stew. We had a nice traditional meal at Gostionica Ficlek, a new restaurant that specialises in traditional Zagreb cuisine. I had the Zagrebi cutlet, which is similar to a cordon bleu, with a side of potato salad.

Traditional Zagrebi cuisine at Gostionica Ficlek

We then headed off to Plitvice to explore the stunning lakes. This national park is located up in the mountains halfway between Zagreb and Split, and benefits from a slightly cooler climate than other parts of Croatia. Depending on the options you take, completing all paths covers over 20km. As we arrived on an afternoon, and we due to drive to Split the following afternoon, we decided to break the hiking up over two half days. We were advised by our hotel to visit the bottom half with the big waterfall in the morning, so we did the top half first. The maps assume that most people will walk to the end point and then take transport back to the starting point, but we were keen to walk the whole thing. The benefit of doing this is getting the trails almost to yourselves for the second half, which is a pleasant change from the busy paths on the first half of the walk. The trail does form a loop, so you don’t need to retrace your steps, it seems this is just a less popular choice. The top loop was roughly 9km, while the bottom half was more like 12km to walk the full loop.

We stayed at Hotel Jezero, which is located within the national park right near the mid-point where the hikes start. The hotel is relatively basic - it hasn’t been updated in probably 30 years and doesn’t have air conditioning, but it was incredibly clean and the staff were all very friendly. The real benefit of staying in this hotel is that the guests get the park entrance for free, which is a huge saving, given the entry fee is around €50 per person. It also only takes about five minutes to walk from the hotel to the starting point, which is a great time-saver if you’re just staying one night. I would say Hotel Jezero is definitely worth it if you’re just staying one night, but you may not want to stay multiple nights without air-conditioning in the height of summer. We drove to Restaurant Petar in the evening and had a delicious dinner of grilled meats and vegetables, one of my favourite meals on the whole holiday.

We then made our way down to Split, where we stayed one night in Alba Residence, a lovely serviced apartment on the port side of the city, making it easy to get to our ferry the next morning. The apartment was very spacious and had a beautiful view of the sea. It also came with breakfast, which was served on the stunning rooftop terrace. We had dinner at Konoba Korta, where I tried a traditional gnocchi and seafood dish, which came complete with a bib!

We took the ferry the next day from Split to Korcula Old Town, which takes about 2.5 hours with one stop at Hvar. The picturesque, round old town is situated on the water; it’s relatively small and easy to wander around. We were initially quite surprised by the prices; be prepared to pay a lot if you want to eat at one of the nice restaurants, especially for grilled seafood and meat. We stayed at Aminess Liburna, which is about a 15-minute walk around the bay into the Old Town and has a stunning view. The staff were all very friendly and the breakfast spread was quite good by European standards (I’m yet to stay at a hotel in Europe with breakfast as good as in South-East Asian resorts).

On the first night, we ate a Konoba Adio Mare, which is located on a pretty outdoor terrace on the first floor of an old building. This is a nice restaurant to eat grilled seafood and enjoy the view, but we found the waitstaff to be a bit unpleasant, they ignored us when we arrived and then seemed disappointed when we told them we had a booking. The bill was also hefty so after this experience we decided to look around for some other options. As we had a hire car on our first full day, we made the most of it by driving to Konoba Mate in Pupnat, further inland but only about a 15-20 minute drive. This turned out to be a great choice, the food was amazing, using local ingredients, and the staff were all incredibly friendly and accommodating. It certainly lived up to its Michelin Star rating and left us feeling like we had both a great meal and experience. I highly recommend trying the goat cheese ravioli if you do visit. We also visited Restaurant Dida, a casual seafood restaurant just out of the Old Town (although still with old town prices), and Konoba Skver, which was the cheapest of the restaurants we went to in Korcula, but also had a more simple menu of pasta, risotto and fried calamari, but not grilled fish, etc.

We had three full days to explore Korcula and chose a different way to enjoy the sea each day. On day one, we hired a car via our hotel and drove to the highly recommended Papnatska Luca beach. The beach sits in a cove with crystal clear water, which is just the right depth and very easy to swim in. There are also two options for food and drinks, we went to Beach Bar Mate, which is owned by the same family as Konoba Mate. While it was very busy, I had one of the best cheeseburgers I’ve ever had, made with delicious bread, sauce, pickles and salad, and a cooling drink. Most of the beach is covered with sun lounges and umbrellas for hire, but it’s not a beach club with food and drinks service to your sun lounge.

The next day, we headed out on a boat trip around the nearby small islands, and to a shipwreck. We did seriously consider a boat trip to Mljet, but after realising that it lasts nine hours, we decided the shorter six-hour local trip would be less exhausting. It was great fun, with a lot of good swimming spots, endless drinks (including wine and beer) and lunch was included. We also stopped at the pretty Badija Island, which is owned by the Catholic Church and features a picturesque monastery on the water’s edge, and friendly free-roaming deer. The water surrounding the island is also great for swimming.

Our final day was spent using the water taxi service to visit to small islands off Korcula that we hadn’t yet been to, Vrnic and Stupe. We chose this taxi service as it was one of the few that went to Stupe, which was my favourite island. Stupe is completely uninhabited and is essentially a beach bar and restaurant, with dancers and all-day music. I really loved the vibe on this little island, and it also has a great spot for swimming right in front of the restaurant. As you would expect, a restaurant on a remote island does charge accordingly, with some of the seafood dishes being €140+. Given we had a huge hotel breakfast, we opted for a light lunch (salad, a starter one side and bread between two of us), which came to a more reasonable price, but it’s certainly not the place to eat if you’re budget conscious.

Vrnic is a formerly inhabited island, which also has a nice restaurant, and is scattered with old houses, some which look abandoned, but many seem to have been turned into holiday homes. The restaurant looked very popular, with most of the tables all reserved. There are also sunbeds for hire, and plenty of seats to rest and order drinks from the restaurant. The beach at Vrnic is quite unusual, it has about two metres of shallow water and then quickly drops off like a shelf to a depth I couldn’t determine. My husband took his snorkel out and found a large school of small fish, which was more than we had seen at other beaches in Korcula. And that drew our time in Korcula to a close, before heading back to Split.

We had three nights in Split, which at the time seemed like a good idea so we could do some sightseeing. Little did we know at the time of booking that Split would be reaching 33-34 degrees each day we were there, with even the nights remaining quite hot. We ended up doing a small amount of sightseeing but also a bit of swimming to keep cool. We stayed at Casa Costabella, a small hotel located within an old apartment building. The hotel itself is incredibly clean and modern, and the location was ideal. The only thing I didn’t like was the lack of breakfast since Split isn’t exactly an easy city to go searching for breakfast - huge numbers of tourists result in long queues for the few breakfast cafes with high ratings. Thankfully, there was a bagel shop nearby, which we went to two out of three mornings to save time.

We arrived mid-afternoon and after checking into our hotel, took a bus a few stops to the Ivan Mestrovic Museum. Known as the “Michaelangelo of Croatia”, Ivan Mestrovic was a prolific sculptor, with many of his works housed in his former summer home in Split. It’s worth visiting even just to see this palatial home and the stunning view over the sea. I really liked the sculptures in the garden, especially the rocking horse by the entrance.

The next day, we ambitiously decided to visit Trogir, a small walled city just on the other side of Split Airport, and squeeze in a beach visit at the nearby Grojir… Flixbus was the fastest way to get there, other than taking a taxi, so we pre-booked our ride, boarding in Split at 10.30am and departing Trogir at 3.30pm in the afternoon. Trogir is very pretty but you don’t need to spend too long to walk the lanes of this small walled city. After deliberating in the shade for a while, we found Okrug Gornji Beach; which seemed to be about 15 minutes away by bus. The beach had small pebbles so still required reef shoes, but didn’t have sharp rocks. It was incredibly busy and is lined with takeaway food outlets and beach bars, so you can more or less find everything you need there. It was easy enough to get to, but once there, we really only had one hour before we needed to get a local bus back to the Trogir bus station. Of course, we managed to miss the return bus and with the buses only running approximately hourly, we ended up speed walking in the hot sun for 35 minutes back to the bus station. Thankfully, we didn’t miss our Flix Bus, but if you do plan a trip to Trogir, it’s worth keeping the limited public transport options in mind. In fact, this applies to Split as well, where the buses headed to the beach are also incredibly infrequent and not necessarily on schedule.

After the stress of the Trogir day and given the heat, we decided to keep things simple on our last full day. We had brunch at Bepa!, a cafe in the Split Old Town, after discovering the long queue at our first choice cafe. We then found Kasjuni Beach, about 15 minutes by bus from where we were staying. This beach has a lot of trees running along it, which means you can potentially find shade without needing to bring an umbrella or hire an expensive sun lounge. We managed to claim what seemed to be some of the last shade left around midday and stayed for four hours. One downside of this beach is that debris eventually washes into the shallows - it wasn’t like this when we arrived, so it seemed to be more of an issue in the afternoon. The water is a bit murky, but it’s a good depth for both wading and swimming. There’s one cafe on the beach which doubles as a beach club, but you can also opt to take food back to your spot on the beach.

Our favourite dinner in Split was at Deep Shade, a restaurant just out of the Old Town, with a large alfresco dining area. We both had delicious seafood here and found the price to be fair, given what you can pay at a tourist hot spot in Croatia. On the final night, we had a slightly more expensive dinner nearby and while the surroundings were very nice, including live music in the square, I actually preferred the food at Deep Shade.

After nearly two weeks of soaking up the sun in Croatia, our holiday came to an end. The highlights were definitely Korcula and Plitvice, both for their natural beauty. I enjoyed Korcula for its quiet atmosphere and beautiful beaches. It’s not likely to be the top pick of someone looking for a party, but it’s a great choice if you’re looking for a relaxing beach break.

Some general tips for holidaying in Croatia:

It’s very behind London in the transition away from cash. Bring plenty of cash with you, as you’ll find many restaurants will only take cash, as well as taxis. This is my number one complaint about Croatia!
It can be very hot in summer. If I’d realised how hot it was likely to be, I would have only stayed two nights in Split and stayed longer on Korcula or another island. Split is naturally hotter than the islands but the beaches on the islands are better than Split.
The public transport isn’t great so a hire car will be helpful. We hired a car to drive from Zagreb to Plitvice and then on to Split. We also hired a car for one day in Korcula to visit Papnatska. If you’re planning to spend a whole week on an island like Korcula, it may make sense to just hire a car for the whole time so you have the flexibility to drive around the island, as public transport doesn’t exist.
The food around the tourist hot spots has a significant markup. I can understand why, given the islands really only have tourists for about five months each year, so all of the businesses are trying to make their annual profits in less than half a year. If you do have a hire car, you may want to consider driving away from Korcula Old Town to eat. Our best meal of the entire trip was at Konoba Mate, which is a Michelin Star restaurant in Papnat. While I wouldn’t describe this as cheap, we enjoyed good food for what we paid, while we paid a similar price for much less in the Korcula Old Town.