Croatia

How many days do you have?

I'd say Plitvice National Park is must see but that's far from Dubrovnik.

Perhaps reconsider basing in Dubrovnik and splitting where you stay, but it sounds like your flight to Italy is locked in. Hvar is three/four hours from Dubrovnik, and you may want to pick something closer, like Lopud.

If you're going to Mostar, stop at Kravica Waterfall if you aren't already. Others say Kotor is worth a visit.

Offbeat. Head to Kupari and use the beach by bombed out abandoned resorts.

Plenty of good food. Though funny enough, most of the widely regarded restaurants are in Istria near Italy and are Italian restaurants.

For Dubrovnik we ate at Restaurant 360, Nautika, Arsenal, Restaurant Panorama (these names aren't very creative ) and at our hotel.

I'd recommend Restaurant 360 (request to sit on the wall), Nautika (obviously first row on the patio), and our hotel (Hotel Excelsior Dubrovnik). Panorama is fine for the view, but I ate lunch there. Same for Arsenal, can't give it a fair review. Taj Mahal (again with the names) is supposedly good Bosnian food, not Indian but we ran out of juice as my wife was pregnant.

5 days is a lot for Dubrovnik IMO, but in your case it's not really five days.

If you end up adding time to Split I can recommend some restaurants there. If you want to get really far about on your transfer from Dubrovnik to Split and don't care how long it takes there's the Blue Cave near Vis Island and a beach there called Stiniva for the Instagram, but that's considered far. However, you said "can't miss" so I'm throwing the sink at you. I didn't make it to all these places but I do a lot of research on places I go.

We're doing Bosnia next spring, and likely Montenegro and Croatia. Interesting enough, we met several of the staff on our Viking Cruise in May from Serbia and Bosnia. They helped us map out some great suggestions.

Croatia. We went to Opatija on the coast. Beautiful town.

Plitvice National Park is one of the "Seven Wonders Of The World" (Mine!). Any trip to this region has to include that.

Keep us posted with the planning!

Selected Photos!

We liked it. Favorite of our trip, though the first hotel was a communist government hotel at Plitvice. The second one was a neat heritage hotel in Split (Hotel Vestibul Palace) but you don't get grand views in a place like that.

The concrete "beach" platform they have is great. I hate sand!

I stayed in a Villa Odak Deluxe Room with seaview and terrace. My only complaint was there is a "walkway" in front of your terrace that guests in neighboring rooms and staff use, so don't expect privacy from the outside if your French doors are open.

So no boom boom looking at the ocean if that's your idea in that room

Speaking of nice hotels and Hvar. Palace Elisabeth looks awesome, if wanting something less resorty.

If anyone drives there are a bunch of cool small beaches along the coast between Split and Dubrovnik. Very pretty drive. We stopped at Plaza Duba. The town of Omis is a cool stop as well. I had a nifty little stick shift Skoda. I asked for automatic but I drove a stick for years but if you haven't, be prepared for that. I didn't push back since it wasn't a problem for me, but no idea if they had any autos.

We did a road trip from Zagreb down to Dubrovnik over a 10 day period. I gotta be honest, Dubrovnik was our least favorite stop. It was so much more of a tourist trap feel to it than the rest of the places we visited along the way, everything seemed to be more expensive there too. We stayed 2.5 days there and I probably would have been happy with 1-1.5.

The views from the Panorama are a must, that may have been the highlight of that stop. There's also a Homeland War Museum up there nearby Panorama that was pretty interesting. If your into Game of Thrones at all, we did a GOT tour. Mixed in with seeing where different scenes of the series were filmed, we got to see and learn about the bulk of the highlights in old town as well as visit the Lovrijenac fort which had some real good photo ops.

Croatia as a whole was an amazing trip though, I cannot wait until my daughter is a few years older and we can make a trip back. Here is a link to my TD trip review thread if you hadn't seen it. We went to Hvar for a few days too.

LINK /

Great review.

If you had it to do all over again, what would you do?

If I was doing my first trip over again, I really wouldn't change anything except remove a day from Dubrovnik.

My wife would say use the extra day in Zagreb. It was more of a quick stop since the airport was there and not really on our radar since we were more after the coastal towns/scenery, but after experiencing it she would have liked a little more time.

I'd say an extra day in Zadar. It was probably my favorite of the cities we visited on the mainland, less touristy and more cultural experience than Dubrovnik. But it was also within a short drive of some amazing scenery and beaches.

Yes we were on the go alot but the scenery was so breath taking on every drive that the riding in the car was just as enjoyable as being in each location.


If we were planning my second trip back, based on having already seen alot of the highlights:

Zagreb
Zadar (Pag Island included here)
Hvar and possibly other nearby islands
If I went any father south i'd probably drive right past Dubrovnik and visit Kotor, Montenegro to check off another country.

I'd skip Plitvice, seen it once don't need to see again. Middle of nowhere. Same goes for Krka NP.

Split was cool for a quick see but not much to see or do, i'd skip it other than hopping the fairy.

Mostar Bosnia was awesome to see and check off another country visited but was a little out of our comfort zone there, much poorer feeling country. No desire to go back again.

Dubrovnik skip altogether, much better cultural experience in other cities with similar architecture and views and cheaper food and housing.

I sailed Croatia on a catamaran for 10 days in 2013. Best trip of my life.

quote:

---

@Warheel. Doing the same trip at the same time but in reverse. Starting in Italy flying to Split and working our way down to Dubrovnik

---

Maybe there will be some college football on somewhere

quote:

---

Yes. Got back from a 7 day catamaran trip a month or so ago. Sail to different islands and anchor - then dinghy into the island or just stay at a marina.

---

I'll have to do some research on this type of trip, really intrigued by it. Seems like a great country to do it for too.