Sunrise to Sunset: 2 Weeks in Croatia

Adam and I had an amazing time on our two week holiday in Croatia, and wanted to capture every detail. This is a post for ourselves, family and friends, so that we will never forget this trip of a lifetime we took just before turning 30. We also would love to encourage others to visit Croatia, and share what we learned through hours of research, planning, and first hand experience. Let’s go.

Marinkovac as part of the Pakleni Islands

Croatia

For me, Croatia was so beautiful, it felt untouched, undiminished by the masses of tourism. A colleague of mine told me before we left that Croatia felt “lawless.” In a way very true. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of rules or any safety standards per se. People seem much more free to make their own judgements, where to go topless, or when to deem a cliff worth jumping off into the blue waters. I was really impressed by a mutual respect for nature and the cities. Everything was extremely clean. One of our Uber drivers did remark “there are huge fines for littering… and the city was cleaned by power washers every morning.” I saw very few trashcans on the street, consistent with the cleanest of cities we’ve visited. I’ve learned there’s a reverse effect of trash cans on the street.

Exhibit A: New York City, one of the dirtiest cities in the U.S. with trashcans on every corner.

Exhibit B: Tokyo with nearly not a single public trashcan, and absolutely pristine.

Buza Bar in Dubrovnik, People sipping cocktails on a side of a cliff just outside of the Old Town Wall

Through many hours researching and developing an itinerary, we decided to stay in Croatia 14 days, 13 nights, with 5 destinations, an AirBnB in each. We arrived in Zagreb airport and departed from Dubrovnik airport. We took British Airlines direct from NYC with a short (read: risky) layover in London both ways. Overall, the trip worked out beautifully and we were consistently impressed with our ability to anticipate timing across each stop. As a side note: I am always happy to share my hour by hour itineraries I pour my heart into before each vacation.

Plitvice Lakes National Park & the Adriatic Highway

1 night

We arrived to Zagreb, the capital, in the early afternoon, and proceeded to pick up our rental car at Dollar Rental. Adam insisted we choose an American company in the case we needed to call customer service. We requested an automatic, which took a considerable amount of time for them to find. The manager ended up asking us if we minded jumping into a car with him to drive us to the old airport nearby to where his only automatic car was parked. Not seeing many other options, we shrugged and jumped in. He was friendly, but I was relieved when we were in fact taken directly to our rental car.

Now in our fierce Ford Focus we were our on our way.

The first stop on our two week adventure was Plitvice Lakes National Park and a long drive down the Adriatic Highway. We decided when planning the trip that we would skip, Zagreb, Croatia’s capital city. There’s a number of ways you can do Croatia. Our goal was to reserve as much time of the trip to venture into Croatia’s beautiful beaches and parks away from the cities, so our itinerary reflects this.

We started on our two hour drive to Plitvice Lakes National Park. Halfway we planned a little stop to eat at bistro in a Castle: Bistro Bar Castel. It was quite beautiful and a relaxing start to the trip to grab a beer and get some pub food. I certainly wouldn’t recommend the burger we ordered there or anywhere in Croatia for that matter, but the service was really friendly and the beer was crisp and cold.

Bistro Bar Castel, a stop in between Zagreb & Plitvice Lakes National Park

Onto Plitvice, we arrived at our first AirBnB. A very simple and small “apartman” as they call their accommodations, with a great view of the mountains surrounding the park, and only $75 for the night to boot. We stayed one night and headed to the park early the next morning with sandwiches packed to beat the dreaded large tours that arrived later in the day.

View from AirBnB Apartman Olga near Plitvice Lakes National Park

Standing at Park Entrance 1 reviewing the map, we decided to be overachievers on our first day at the last minute upgrading our trail route to a longer option, Trail C, which said would take 4 to 6 hours. I found this blog post by the Earth Trekkers extremely helpful when planning our visit that details all of the trails.

The park was absolutely beautiful, filled with hundreds of waterfalls and the most bright blue aqua colored water lakes.

Plitvice Lakes National Park upper Lakes

The pictures on the internet were in fact #nofilter, and this particular color of blue may well be seared into my memory forever.

Plitvice Lakes National Parks view from the Upper Lakes to Lower lakes

The only manmade infrastructure in the park was the wooden walkways that circled the lakes and often times were placed directly over the waterfalls. You would quite literally look down and see you were walking directly over a waterfall at any time.

The park was completely stunning, and a highlight of our trip. At the end of our journey, we were proud to have completed the trail including stopping for a picnic lunch just at 4 hours, and headed to the car in record time to begin our journey to Split.

Plitvice Lakes National Park lower lakes

From the park you can get to Split two ways. There’s the direct route that takes around 3 hours, or the scenic route which takes you down the Adriatic Highway that hugs the coast with views of the crystal blue beaches within 4-5 hours. We decided on taking the scenic route.

Winding left and right through picturesque mountains, one interesting antidote from the drive beyond the beauty, is at some point we started to pass what must of been a hundred cheese and honey stands. We didn’t stop, but funny to see the stands placed oddly ever few meters outside every farm down this long winding road in the middle of no where. We now wish we would have stopped to sample some. Next time.

We also learned quickly that Croatian drivers are quite ballsy. Driving down one lane roads for miles with little visibility around turns, drivers would pass us frequently near missing oncoming cars winding the corner. We got used to this, and was perfectly content when we came behind a RV making their way down the road much more slowly.

Once we reached the coast, we stopped in Zadar for a quick lunch and to visit their one touted destination, the Sea Organ. The Sea Organs are “an architectural sound art object, and an experimental musical instrument, which plays music by way of sea waves that rush in and underneath a set of large marble steps.” It was quite cool.

We had originally thought about staying in Zadar a night when we were planning our itinerary, but after seeing it I would skip it and move on to the many amazing cities in Croatia.

Split

2 nights

Once we arrived to Split with our AirBnB address plugged-in and a promise of open parking nearby, our plan was to drop-off our suitcases and then drop-off the rental car. We would no longer need it the rest of the trip. We drove straight down a tiny road in the middle of downtown that looked like it was really only accessible by people walking around rather than driving cars. With no parking in sight and a very frustrating few minutes on a one way road and no place to turnaround, we hightailed it out of there straight to the rental car place to ditch the car.

When we arrived to the Dollar Rental in Split though, the Dollar Rental was completely lights out closed. Apparently not open on Sundays. Not really sure what to do and fairly certain we would be charged another day if we kept the car past our drop-off time, we called the manager at the Zagreb airport who calmly said “It’s okay! Just park the car anywhere and drop the keys in the dropbox.” In our stress and fair share of frustration on where to turn and park over the last 30 minutes, we breathed and laughed a lot at the ridiculousness. Adam asked, “Anywhere? how will they know where it is?” The manager said, “Don’t worry, they will find it.” With that, we parked the car a five minute walk away and found a small mail slit with no label on the door, dropped the keys and walked away.

This was probably the most stressful moment of our trip, which ended up being quite funny in the end. They did in fact find the car the next day.

Finally at our AirBnB, we met our friendly host who led us down a small alley to a door to another alley, to another door, up a staircase to another door, a staircase and another door. What just happened? But once the final door opened we were in a great one bedroom apartment with an additional loft and a wonderful terrace in the middle of Split downtown.

We really enjoyed this AirBnB in Split and recommend staying if you have the chance.

We dropped our bags and headed straight to dinner to de-stress with some wine, and a classic “fish for two” dish. Ahhh…

The next day we planned another eventful day. We got up early to first explore Diocletian’s Palace for a few hours an obligatory must and ate lunch at a spot I can highly recommend called Bokeria Kitchen & Wine Bar.

We split two appetizers, the octopus and risotto, and left completely stuffed and deliriously happy.

The second half of the day was one for the books. We booked an experience through AirBnB to visit a Croatian family farm that our host, Marin’s family has owned since 1537.

After several generations, Marin and his family are still farming local produce, including figs, grapes, olives, pears and apples, eggs, goat cheese, and sausages from wild boars. He gave us an on-the-ground tour stepping into the history of the wars, the farm and how everything was grown today. We picked figs directly from the trees and ate as many as we wanted, which were absolutely incredible. Before this, I had only ate dried figs when provided on a cheese plate, and now forever changed by the freshly pulled from a tree variety.

We then gathered family style around a large farmhouse table with the five other guests that joined us and shared a generous meal with wine, fresh baked bread from his grandmother earlier that day, cheeses, excellent olive oil and an abundance of different types of schnapps all produced directly from his small farm.

We shared the experience with new friends from Croatia, UK, Romania, and Washington State all leaving with a deep appreciation of what we just had experienced. Truly an amazing experience.

A shared meal among new friends at Marin’s Farm

We highly recommend meeting Marin and booking this AirBnB Experience if you ever venture to Split.

Hvar

3 nights

Lugging our suitcases to the Jadrolinija ferry, our next stop was the island of Hvar. It’s worth mentioning we had packed two reasonable carry on suitcases, and two backpacks for the trip. These quickly started to feel like a lot moving from city to city, and the European’s version of a reasonable carry on seem microscopic compared to us Americans. All things considering though, I was proud of what I considered a light pack for two weeks.

Arriving in Hvar, we quickly fell in love with the city, vowing if we came again we would come quicker and stay longer to explore the island and bounce around to more of the islands nearby.

We checked into a modest AirBnB at the very tip of the island with the promise of a stunning sunset, which didn’t disappoint. We had the best view on the entire island, I’m certain.

The city with it’s winding streets and stairs felt like every turn of a corner was a place to discover with bustling restaurants lining the stairs all the way up and music seeping in. I had read a lot about Hvar being a party spot, which it certainly was, but the city was also a mix of both quaint and bustling full of great restaurants and shops. We had some incredible food and drinks throughout our stay at Falko Beach Bar, Fig Hvar, Dalmatino, and Giaxa, all which I highly recommend (in order of fanciness).

A note on the cuisine of Croatia. Adam says it’s best described as a cross between Mediterranean and Italian, pulling in the freshest seafood from the coast and the coziness of Italian food. To top it off Croatians, share Adam’s love of bread. Bread baskets and high quality olive oil are served at every meal (and constant refills). Could there be anything more glorious? Adam says no.

Our favorite day in Hvar and maybe of the whole trip, we rented a small boat to drive around the nearby Pakleni Islands. This is easily done without an international boating license for small motored boats, many them are simply steered by the motor in the back. We walked down the boardwalk and rented the first boat we spotted that was really well equipped with a steering wheel, cooler, spot to sun lounge upfront, and a proper shade.

We cruised though the crystal blue waters of each cove, anchoring in various locations and jumping out for a swim.

The crystal blue waters of the Pakleni Islands

The water in Croatia is gorgeously clear, and feels instantly refreshing like jumping into a clean spring. I easily rank it as my favorite waters I’ve ever had the pleasure to float in.

We finished our last days in Hvar at a local beach called President Beach that was secluded and beautiful doing absolutely nothing at all.

Pakleni Islands

3 nights

Our next few days of the trip were probably our most anticipated, as we would be staying on the Pakleni Islands in an AirBnB that was only one of three houses on the entire island. Planning how we would get there, anticipating the trip had us feeling as though we were about to embark on a deserted island.

Upon catching a small taxi boat over, the home was a dream of a bungalow blending into the natural beauty of the island. You could tell it was a labor of love with thoughtful handmade touches. Because it was one of the few on the island, we came prepared with water and food to cook. Though there were also a few beach bars and one restaurant on the island. It’s a really popular spot for sailboats and yachts to anchor for the day. Since we were on an island with little civilization, there were a few missing amenities like air conditioning and high pressure water. Water was filtered and hot after a few minutes and the fans were very nice though. Once we soaked in we were at the most beautiful beach in the world without a care in the world with the bluest waters and ocean breeze, this didn’t phase us too much and we went to be one with nature.

We found using the kitchen to make a homemade pasta dish and eating on the patio one of our favorite nights.

On the island, we walked five minutes down the coast to Mlini beach everyday renting beach chairs, sipping Mai Tai’s all day and grabbing lunch at the Mamato Beach Bar. I even read my first John Grisham novel in one day, The Associate, after finding it propped up on a shelf in the bungalow. Beach reads, adventures, and true relaxation for three days straight.

We highly recommend staying the Robinson House Nicolina if looking for the ultimate escape.

On our last morning, we called to order a small taxi boat to pick us up at the dock to take us back to Hvar to then catch the ferry to Dubrovnik. As we motored away, it started sprinkling rain between the early morning sunshine and the most beautiful full rainbow formed that touched the ocean on both sides. Adam, myself and the boat driver that spoke little English stared giddy in complete awe at it’s beauty. I shed a tear.

Dubrovnik

4 nights

Arriving in Dubrovnik from the Ferry, we headed to our final and last AirBnB - a complete splurge among all of our accommodations. As the host opened the door and we were hit again with the sweetness of cool air conditioning and modern finishes absent from our previous AirBnB, we ran to the terrace to look at the most amazing view of Dubrovnik (or as some you know as King’s Landing). Breathtaking. What did we do to deserve all of this!? This trip is amazing.

We highly recommend staying at Dubravka & Emilio’s AirBnB when in Dubrovnik or even to make a special trip to just stay there.

View from our AirBnB in Dubrovnik, Apartment Tullio

One thing to note about Dubrovnik is the sheer amount of stairs one must traverse to get around, and especially to our AirBnB. It had some of the best views in the city, meaning it was up really high. One night coming home from dinner, Adam and I counted the steps from Old Town to our apartment… over 400 steps! That’s 20+ flights of stairs. That said, we felt like we truly earned our dinner each night. While a workout, we were very encouraged along the way by the wildly cute overgrown population of Dubrovnik street cats. This group of kittens that hung by our apartment made it all worth when they greeted us everyday at the top.

On our last days of vacation in Dubrovnik we spent our days eating a slow breakfast on the terrace of toast, jam, and coffee / tea. Exploring old town. Eating an amazing Bosnian restaurant called Taj Mahal twice. And dining at a Michelin starred restaurant on the old wall called 360 Restaurant.

One afternoon we took a small ferry to the island of Lokrum, a quick 10 minute boat ride over from Dubrovnik to explore the nearby island. This was a truly fantastic and weird magical island. An old tale said monks that used to live here had put a curse on the island after being forced to leave years and years ago. Likely one of the reasons you can’t stay on the island at night. During the day though, it’s free game and I believe the tale completely. As soon as we were off the boat we noticed immediately the entire island was covered in magical bunnies and peacocks with zero fear of each other or humans. At one point a peacock walked right up to my beach towel, and we both had to hop up as it said hello and walked on by.

On our final few days we spent our days in the sun at a stunning beach called Sveti Jakov, only a quick Uber away from the city soaking in our last days until we flew back to New York, and of course had stunning sunsets.

Truly a trip to remember forever. Thank you to our friends, Julia and Bart for encouraging us to go with your amazing pictures and stories. We hope others will decide to go to Croatia as well, and we already are ready to plan our next trip with a group of friends ideally sailing away on a catamaran or small yacht to island hop to even more places we missed along the way.

Croatia

Plitvice Lakes National Park & the Adriatic Highway

Split

Hvar

Pakleni Islands

Dubrovnik

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