I’d like to preface this post by saying that I once proclaimed that I had little interest in traveling to Croatia.
The thought behind this was that when traveling to Europe from North America, there is a significant cost in just getting across the Atlantic. There were other countries that I would have chosen to travel to first, such as Italy, Spain or Germany.
We decided to visit Croatia with the plan to connect with a former co-worker from Canada who was visiting family.
After being in this beautiful country for two weeks, I am embarrassed to admit to feeling this way.
We planned two weeks of traveling to Croatia, with the intention of staying a few days in three different places.
Traveling to Croatia was booked immediately on the heels of our visit to the Low Countries (Belgium and The Netherlands). The busy nature of that trip directly influenced our decision to take a more relaxed approach to Croatia.
The beaches here are touted as some of the best in Europe and we wanted to have time to enjoy them.
We flew into Split and rented a car to drive south down the coast to Dubrovnik.
This is where we would spend the first six days while traveling to Croatia.
It was apparent to us that the decision to give ourselves more time was the right one. It was the first time that we didn’t drop our bags at our accommodations and start running around to see things.
That first night, we walked down to the beach to dip our toes in the sea and stopped in at the closest shop to get a few things to make dinner.
I should warn anyone looking to visit Dubrovnik – everything is expensive. Be prepared to pay up to double for a beer compared to other cities in Croatia.
The restaurants are also very pricey, not quite double but close. We already had planned on getting groceries and cooking for ourselves. Not just for cost effectiveness, but also to just make some better choices with our diet.
Some people can eat out and choose a salad or other healthy options, I am not one of those people.
The Airbnb was very well located in the Old Town, with a very picturesque view from the terrace.
We enjoyed having more space than we would in a hotel room. It was great to be able to eat on the terrace and just have a comfortable space to spend our down time. We have never been interested in “hanging out” in our hotel rooms.
Often there are too many things to see in a short time.
If you stay in a basic room, which we do to save money, there normally isn’t anywhere to sit other than a desk chair and the bed. So it was a nice change to feel like there was a place to be, that felt more like a home.
We hadn’t planned an itinerary for this trip, so it afforded us the freedom to do what we felt like doing from day to day.
We had planned what we wanted see, but not at any particular time.
The first full day started with a trip just out of town to visit a local supermarket. This was an interesting experience. There was no English on any labels, so it was up to common sense to figure out what it was that we were looking at.
Thankfully gluten-free products have a fairly universal logo on them and we were able to muddle our way through it.
We had this store suggested to us by asking our Airbnb host where we might be able to find some reasonably priced groceries.
This is definitely a great way to have a little local experience. The money saved by not eating out for every meal was significant, especially with the restaurants in Dubrovnik being so highly priced.
But it’s still great to get a taste of the local cuisine too.
Just before lunch we took the ferry over to Lokrum Island,
Lokrum Island is a nature reserve with an old monastery from the eleventh century. It is remains of a fort built by Napoleon dating back to the early nineteenth century. There is also a lovely restaurant where we had a sea food lunch before going for a swim.
There is a small salt water lake on the island referred to as the “Dead Sea”. It really is more like a large pond which is fed by water through caves. It was however, named years ago without my consultation!
I found the water to be frigid, so I mostly sat on the bank and watched Hayley swim.
There are also quite a few different spots to swim on the perimeter of the island. I found the water much more enjoyable there and did spend more time swimming.
Once we had our fill of the sea, we explored the island more. The walk up to the remains of the fort follows along a path that was featured in a scene of Game of Thrones.
This is not a path. It is a cardiac-event-inciting mountain! Neither of us expected to need hiking shoes. So, sandals were our choice of footwear for the day and it made the climb tricky.
After surviving the ascent, we explored the area for a while before slowly descending the mountain. It really wasn’t a mountain, but a steep hill in flip flops may as well be.
Spending time on the island had made for a great day. The sun was setting during the fifteen minute ferry ride back to port.
After a day in the sun, we didn’t feel much like cooking.
Although we had everything we needed, we decided to just go out to a restaurant that was suggested to us by a friend of a friend. Traditional Bosnian food was our choice, and it was an excellent meal.
I had ćevapi (pronounced “chevapi”), which are little sausages, served a variety of different ways. This meal served them in a warm flatbread with onions and a cream cheese spread. I had them before back in Canada, but having them in Croatia was much better, probably because of the close proximity to the country of its origin.
Hayley had a veal dish, tender pieces with apples, prunes and raisins. She said it may have been one of the best meals she has ever eaten!
(Click here for our suggestions on where to eat in Croatia!)
The following day we joined a free walking tour.
Our guide Marko was very knowledgeable and shared many stories and pointed out points of historical significance. He had grown up in the Old Town. Learning from him about Dubrovnik was more interesting than reading facts online.
The tour was two hours and although it was free, Marko did accept tips. He won’t ask for them but it is appreciated. Marko is not paid by any tour company to do these tours. He suggested a couple of other places for us to visit while in the city.
We took his advice and spent the rest of the day at a quiet beach (yes the water was cold, no I did not swim, of course Hayley did) and enjoying a walk down a promenade along the water. It was a great day and ended with a home cooked meal eaten on the terrace of the Airbnb.
Our third day started with a walk on the Walls of the Old Town
This walk started on top of the two kilometer perimeter that surrounds this medieval city. It was full of moments of terror for me as I struggled with the height.
I wondered many times why there were no handrails anywhere. How many times a year do people fall off these walls? Am I the only one concerned about it? (Hayley says yes).
It took about two hours at a leisurely pace to make our way around the walls. It really is surreal to think about what these walls have seen since they were first raised in the fourteenth century. They have held up so well as they were built to withstand the test of time. Not to mention attacks and a strong earthquake in 1667.
We bought the “Dubrovnik Card”.
These are available in 29 cities across Europe and allow access to multiple attractions and often include public transportation for the length of the card purchased.
This gave us access to the Walls, as well as Fort Lovrijenac and a few museums. These cards are worth the investment. We paid as much for the card as we would have to just tour the Walls.
Fort Lovrijenac or St. Lawrence Fortress which played an important military role, is an incredible, yet basic structure that was built sometime in the eleventh century and was completed in just three months.
Let that just sink in for a moment.
An entire fortress was constructed without modern tools or machinery in less time than it took me to renovate our kitchen back in Canada. Just amazing.
The remainder of the day was spent visiting the museums included in the “Dubrovnik card”.
This included the Maritime museum and the Rectors Palace (a museum that took us through the history of Dubrovnik). We took some photos of the area in the Old Town that served as the filming location for “Kings Landing” in Game of Thrones, and strolled down Cersei Lannister’s Walk of Shame from the first season finale.
That took us into the late afternoon, where we spent a couple of hours lounging at a beach before having dinner again on the terrace back at our Airbnb.
The final day of our stay in Dubrovnik left us with no plans.
Our host had mentioned a local beach that was about a half hour drive south. We decided to follow up on her suggestion and make the most of our last day. Thank goodness for Google maps and GPS. There was little chance we would have found this secluded area by doing it the old fashioned way (paper map).
The entrance to this beach opened up to a narrow path along the side of a cliff, which also had little to no handrails or indications of safety. The path continued on and took us through a small opening in the rocks. When we stepped out we were in awe of the beauty of this little beach nestled in a rocky cove.
It was stunning.
The pathway there was treacherous but well worth the risk. There were fewer than twenty people on this beach and the water was crystal clear and warm.
We met a wonderful Irish couple, Emma and Kevin, who have spent the last year travelling through Europe in their camper van. (Here is their Instagram link).
It was very cool to hear their stories and listen to them talk about their nomadic lifestyle. We did relate to them on many levels about the need for adventure and what it was like to be away from home.
It is always amazing to make these kinds of connections with fellow travellers and we hope to be able to meet up with them again in the future after exchanging our social network details.
This brought us to the last night of our stay in Dubrovnik.
After a good night’s sleep we were ready to drive north, back up the coast to our next destination on the island of Čiovo.
We had been treated to superb weather and old sights to feed our appetite for history. Traveling to Croatia was a great decision. There was still over a week left of this trip and we were looking forward to seeing more of what Croatia had to offer us!