Split and Hvar Croatia
You did it! You flew into Croatia! Zagreb is the largest airport in Croatia and the country’s capital. That is where we fly into because the flights were the cheapest to do so. I use Thrifty Traveler to find discounted international flights. You can enter the airports you want to see cheap flights out of and it will email you alerts. It then takes you to google flights to find the airline that is the cheapest. Our flights were $550 through Lufthansa, but had to pay another $130 each way to check one bag. You get 2 free carry ons, so we utilized that and only had 1 bag to check.
We rented a car through enterprise for $350 for the week, not too shabby and it was a small suv so it was perfect size! I suggest not buying all the insurance through the car rental place, but you can actually buy travel insurance through your US car agent. I bought international travel insurance for $65 through our All State agent, I think this is a better deal than through Enterprise!
Ok let’s get started! There is not much to see in Zagreb, so we chose to fly in and drive immediately to Split (roughly 4 hours). Don’t be intimidated, the roads are great and driving is just like in the states. It was really easy and stress free to drive to Split. If you HATE driving Split does have it’s own small airport that you could fly directly into.
SPLIT
I was super excited to finally arrive to the coast and see the beautiful Adriatic sea, but to be honest Split the city itself wasn’t my favorite. To walk through the city and see some of the history really only takes about 2 hours.
Split has 2800 hours of sunshine, one reason it a great vacation spot. Where else do you get palm trees, sea and mountains?!
We decided NOT to do a paid walking tour in the city, but I would recommend it just to learn the facts about the history. We just walked around aimlessly which is fun too. But we did learn that this Cathedral of Saint Domnius is known as the oldest Catholic cathedral in the world from the 600s. Pretty remarkable!
HVAR - An Island Adventure!
The best part of Split is that it is close to so many beautiful islands. It was hard for us to choose which island to go to, but we chose Hvar but Brac was a close second which also looked gorgeous. IF we had more time, I would have done both. This is the ferry we rode on and because we went in the off-season (April) the ferry only had 3 trips a day from Split to Hvar and cost about $50/person round trip. You can look here to book tickets. If you are going in the busy season in the summer, I would book a couple days in advance. https://www.bookaway.com/routes/croatia/hvar-to-split?offer_id=34&aff_id=2070 The boat was easy to find, right in the marina area in Split, walking distance from the old town area.
The ferry takes about 50 minutes and offers coffee/beer/wine and snacks on it. It’s relaxing and offers great views of the sea. As you can see April was not very busy!
When we landed in Hvar, we could walk to our hotel, which was only a couple minutes away. The location of the hotel was perfect. To find out hotel information, check out the detailed itinerary in the store.
We rented bikes to explore the city, but many people we talked to were going on hikes to explore the ruins that you can see in the picture above. There are beautiful views from the top of the mountains and lavendar farms and small wineries dispersed throughout this beautiful island.
This it the view from our hotel room. They even gave us a glass of champagne upon arrival. We walked around the corridor you see here to hit up a couple of fun bars at night, one with live music and one with a fun dj. Even though it was pretty quiet in April, the night life was still booming.
We chose a restaurant right on the main strip for dinner, lots of fresh seafood to choose from at Plava Alga Hvar.
A great perk that we found out in Croatia, was all the hotels included free amazing buffet breakfasts! Again this hotel was only $200 in April with sea views and free breakfast, you can’t beat it!
We took the ferry back, got our car and started the drive to Kotor, Montenegro! Check out this next amazing Country!
