Anyone been to/from Croatia

[acidfast7]

With this summer travel talk on the forums...

We're seeing some sweet deals on train tickets from Munich to Zagreb (29€ per person each way). We're interested on traveling down the Adriatic coast to Dubrovnik.

I'm assuming this is quite easy by bus?

Anyone have any experiences they'd like to share?

TIA

 

[SDub90]

I'll be doing something similar in early august.... so I'd like some advice as well.

 

[Don't panic]

done something similar on a motorcycle years ago.
the coast is great (especially the islands) and drubovnik is a fantastic town.

a bus ride from zagreb should be fine, but you have to cross the bosnian border twice to get there by land, so ti's going to slow things down

consider renting a car instead, as you can go and see many interesting places.

A cool alternative would be to island-hop (hvar is great and you can get to the Pelijesac peninsula by ferry from Ploce, bypassing Bosnia

 

[acidfast7]

done something similar on a motorcycle years ago.
the coast is great (especially the islands) and drubovnik is a fantastic town.

a bus ride from zagreb should be fine, but you have to cross the bosnian border twice to get there by land, so ti's going to slow things down

consider renting a car instead, as you can go and see many interesting places.

A cool alternative would be to island-hop (hvar is great and you can get to the Pelijesac peninsula by ferry from Ploce, bypassing Bosnia

excellent advice. keep it coming!

 

[Scepticalscribe]

To a certain extent, it depends on what your interests are, and what you like to see and do on holiday.

Croatia is a stunningly beautiful country - the entire Adriatic coast is spectacular and well worth taking several days to travel along. I was there on a good number of occasions in the years immediately after the recent Yugoslav wars, and so, tourism, at that time, was only beginning to recover.

The east of the country is less beautiful, and also, less historically interesting; for those with a sort of perverse interest in "war tourism", Vukovar can be rather unnerving.

Zagreb is a very nice city - but, frankly, not a patch on Belgrade, which makes it seem what it was, a regional capital.

For my money, I'd start with Pula, up in Istria, the Italianate influenced north east of the country, just across the Adriatic and work down the coast. The scenery, food, architecture are all Venetian influenced, (Venice ruled this region for several centuries), and before that, the legacy of Rome is still evident.

Anyway, Pula has a nice harbour, some amazing Roman arches, and one of the finest extant Roman amphitheatres still standing. It was simply spectacular. I visited it in January 2000 (I've observed several elections in the country), and they opened the amphitheatre specially for us. It was an amazing experience to be able to walk on the sand, and admire the perfect acoustics and flawless sight-lines of a building constructed in the days of the Roman Republic.

Split - about halfway down the coast - is incredible, and the old town is really beautiful. Diocletian's Palace - actually, the old town, an amazing warren of streets, is inside Diocletian's Palace - is spectacular, and the views from the harbour exquisite.

Further down, you have elegant old towns such as Makarska (where the fruit brandies of the region come from), and of course, the peerless Dubrovnik.

Dubrovnik is well worth visiting, but, as DP has already pointed out, Bosnia's tiny coastline intrudes on the way there if you are travelling south - necessitating two border crossings. The food is excellent, as the the wine.

Island hopping is also recommended, as some of the islands are really beautiful and well worth a visit.

You'll have a great time as it is a truly beautiful country; enjoy your trip.

 

[r1ch4rd]

Split - about halfway down the coast - is incredible, and the old town is really beautiful. Diocletian's Palace - actually, the old town, an amazing warren of streets, is inside Diocletian's Palace - is spectacular, and the views from the harbour exquisite.

I'm going to be in Split at the beginning of September this year, I am going as part of this -- http://split.ramshacklerally.com/

 

[Djentleman]

done something similar on a motorcycle years ago.
the coast is great (especially the islands) and drubovnik is a fantastic town.

a bus ride from zagreb should be fine, but you have to cross the bosnian border twice to get there by land, so ti's going to slow things down

consider renting a car instead, as you can go and see many interesting places.

A cool alternative would be to island-hop (hvar is great and you can get to the Pelijesac peninsula by ferry from Ploce, bypassing Bosnia

Yeah my family and I did this by rental. Split is a beautiful place. Not necessarily advice, but just solidifying the advice and experience the man gave.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

An odd thing to note about both Split (the old town) and the old paved streets of Dubrovnik is that with the cumulative effect of millions of feet over thousands of years, the street flagstones have been worn quite surprisingly smooth. This means that they are - or can be - surprisingly slippery, especially if it has just rained.

In Split, in the midst of the Old Town, there is an antique circular Catholic Church which used to be a Roman temple. Attending a service (Mass, actually) with two colleagues was an extraordinary experience in an exquisite building that was around 1600 years old.

Diocletian's Palace is just incredible - and I found it simply marvellous that this extraordinary building - and the warren of streets and alleys it embraces - are still living, thriving, lived in, more than a millennium and a half after it was built.

Give yourself time to savour it and enjoy it.

Croatia is one of the 'coffee-culture' countries of Europe, so coffee shops (serving extremely good coffee), along with excellent wine (which they produce themselves), brandies, very good beer (many Croats worked in Germany and the German influence is, perhaps, stronger than might be expected), are to be found everywhere.