Eurotrip 2019 - Croatia
I began in Pula, mainly because the flights were cheap and I needed to meet Jen who had flown into Zagreb. Pula is a seaside city brimming with ancient Roman ruins, including an ampitheatre older than Rome's own colosseum. I met a guy who seemed friendly but turns out he just wanted a shag despite my protests so ended up spending my time avoiding him. I wandered the old town, had a swim in the sea, watched a movie in the ampitheatre, and took a day trip to Labin, a very quaint medieval walled town. Personally, I wouldn't recommend Pula, I don't think there was enough to do, and if you stay in the Old Town it's a 30 minute walk to the nearest beach, and Croatia's got much better beaches than this one.
I got a Flixbus to meet Jen and we drove to the Kuterevo Bear Sanctuary. This was awesome and well worth a trip, though it's a bit in the wopwops so I only recommend if you're kinda near and have your own transport. It's free to enter and the guy who runs it is super passionate about rescuing bears from zoos and people who keep them as pets. The bears are very active (unlike most bears I have seen in zoos who tend to sleep all day and look sad) and the place is definitely a labour of love.
We then headed down to Korenica where we stayed the night so that we could get up nice and early for our visit to Plitvice Lakes National Park. This has been on my bucket list for a VERY LONG TIME so I was excited to say the least. Top tip - if you want to keep your sanity, don't go in the high season. It's really expensive and really busy. If I were to go again, I'd go in shoulder season or even winter - much less people, and much cheaper to enter. In fact - I'd give this advice for the whole of Croatia - they bump up the prices of a lot of things in high season. If you do happen to visit in high season, GO EARLY and bring your own food and drink! We got there at just past 7, but the first tourist bus doesn't pick you up until 8am, but at least we were on the first bus. The bus picks you up from designated stops in the park for free - so we got the bus from the entrance to the top of the park and walked back down. You could have walked it, but it takes a while and we didn't see the benefit as by the time we would have got to the top, more people would have arrived in the park. It really is beautiful, the water is so clear and carves its own path down many waterfalls. It is the kind of place that if I were super rich I would pay to have the place to myself for a few hours, it's pretty magical. Unfortunately some of the magic was taken away when I spotted plastic water bottles stuck at the bottom of some of the falls, churning away for all of eternity. It blows my mind how places like this don't try and be more environmentally responsible - there were numerous cafes dotted about the place, all selling plastic bottles of drinks, and plenty of overflowing rubbish bins with no recycling bins in sight - imagine if they'd only sell reusable bottles with the Plitvice logo on it and there was water fountains to refill your bottle. One can dream.
After Plitvice we drove to Zadar, I think my favourite city in Croatia - having said that, I was only there one night and one morning. But the night I was there was really enjoyable - I wandered down to the Old Town and there was heaps of live music and street entertainers, including an old lady with a tiny monkey, some dudes with pretty parrots, an incredible brass band doing energetic covers of popular songs and a live band on a stage set up in some Roman ruins. It was awesome. Zadar also has an LED light installation near the sea, and a 'sea organ' created from holes cut into the sea walls, which emit eerie breathy notes when the waves roll through them. I took a video and it's saved on my insta highlights in Europe (@bloonoo)
After Zadar we headed to Split, a very cool Old Town, if a little touristy. You can spend hours wandering through the narrow alleyways imagining what it would have been like back in the olden days. We broke up our journey to Split with a stop off at a random beach we found, and spent a very enjoyable hour swimming in Croatia's famous blue sea.
I liked Croatia, but it didn't blow me away. Possibly I would have liked it more if it weren't so busy, or so hot - if I were to go again, I'd definitely try a different season, and I'd like to visit some of the islands. I deliberately skipped Dubrovnik this time round - the hostels were creeping up to $40 a night and I was a bit over walled Old Towns and tourists by this point. One thing we quite enjoyed was the changing of the landscape - Croatia's a long skinny country, in the north it is green and hilly, in the middle there's rocky mountains, and in the south it reminded me of Greece, it was quite arid with lots of olive trees and rolling hills.
Transport
Jen hired a car so we were driving around for most of it - there are lots of road tolls which at first seemed unnecessary, expensive and annoying, however since travelling in other Balkan countries, I realised and appreciated how good the tolls were in Croatia!! The roads were fast and well maintained on the whole, and I don't think Jen found the driving too difficult. I used public transport three times - to go from Pula to Labin and back, to get from Pula to Karlovac where I met Jen, and from Split to Mostar in Bosnia. It was easy enough, but the busses weren't the most comfortable and at Split it was mayhem - the busses were all delayed and no one seemed to know anything, I just had to trust it would all work out. Most bus stations had a left luggage section for a small fee but I had no use for them.
Food
We mixed it up by eating out sometimes and cooking dinner at other times, the supermarkets were reasonably priced and some offered bottle deposit schemes which I really liked. They also didn't have too many plastic wrapped fruit and veges. Whilst recycling facilities weren't prevalent, there were certainly more than I saw in the other Balkan countries. Eating out was reasonably cheap, though I wasn't a huge fan of the food - as in a lot of the Balkans, much of the food is centered around grilled meat, especially 'Cevapi', sausage shaped minced meat with onions and spices, served in this really tasty fluffy bread. But there were loads of bakeries (called Pekara) which were very cheap and did a variety of sweet and savoury foods which you could live off cheaply if you wanted!
Accommodation
We booked accommodation as we went, usually a day in advance. This seemed to work OK though sometimes we probably didn't have as much choice as we would have if we'd booked earlier. We used Airbnb and booking.com. With the exception of the fancy airbnb Jen booked in Split, most of the accommodation came in around £20-£25 per person per night, but it was basic - sometimes just a room and shared bathroom, other times a studio.
Any questions or anything you think I have missed? Comment below :)
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| Pula Ampitheatre |
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| Labin Old Town |
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| Labin |
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| View from Labin Old Town |
I got a Flixbus to meet Jen and we drove to the Kuterevo Bear Sanctuary. This was awesome and well worth a trip, though it's a bit in the wopwops so I only recommend if you're kinda near and have your own transport. It's free to enter and the guy who runs it is super passionate about rescuing bears from zoos and people who keep them as pets. The bears are very active (unlike most bears I have seen in zoos who tend to sleep all day and look sad) and the place is definitely a labour of love.
We then headed down to Korenica where we stayed the night so that we could get up nice and early for our visit to Plitvice Lakes National Park. This has been on my bucket list for a VERY LONG TIME so I was excited to say the least. Top tip - if you want to keep your sanity, don't go in the high season. It's really expensive and really busy. If I were to go again, I'd go in shoulder season or even winter - much less people, and much cheaper to enter. In fact - I'd give this advice for the whole of Croatia - they bump up the prices of a lot of things in high season. If you do happen to visit in high season, GO EARLY and bring your own food and drink! We got there at just past 7, but the first tourist bus doesn't pick you up until 8am, but at least we were on the first bus. The bus picks you up from designated stops in the park for free - so we got the bus from the entrance to the top of the park and walked back down. You could have walked it, but it takes a while and we didn't see the benefit as by the time we would have got to the top, more people would have arrived in the park. It really is beautiful, the water is so clear and carves its own path down many waterfalls. It is the kind of place that if I were super rich I would pay to have the place to myself for a few hours, it's pretty magical. Unfortunately some of the magic was taken away when I spotted plastic water bottles stuck at the bottom of some of the falls, churning away for all of eternity. It blows my mind how places like this don't try and be more environmentally responsible - there were numerous cafes dotted about the place, all selling plastic bottles of drinks, and plenty of overflowing rubbish bins with no recycling bins in sight - imagine if they'd only sell reusable bottles with the Plitvice logo on it and there was water fountains to refill your bottle. One can dream.
After Plitvice we drove to Zadar, I think my favourite city in Croatia - having said that, I was only there one night and one morning. But the night I was there was really enjoyable - I wandered down to the Old Town and there was heaps of live music and street entertainers, including an old lady with a tiny monkey, some dudes with pretty parrots, an incredible brass band doing energetic covers of popular songs and a live band on a stage set up in some Roman ruins. It was awesome. Zadar also has an LED light installation near the sea, and a 'sea organ' created from holes cut into the sea walls, which emit eerie breathy notes when the waves roll through them. I took a video and it's saved on my insta highlights in Europe (@bloonoo)
After Zadar we headed to Split, a very cool Old Town, if a little touristy. You can spend hours wandering through the narrow alleyways imagining what it would have been like back in the olden days. We broke up our journey to Split with a stop off at a random beach we found, and spent a very enjoyable hour swimming in Croatia's famous blue sea.
I liked Croatia, but it didn't blow me away. Possibly I would have liked it more if it weren't so busy, or so hot - if I were to go again, I'd definitely try a different season, and I'd like to visit some of the islands. I deliberately skipped Dubrovnik this time round - the hostels were creeping up to $40 a night and I was a bit over walled Old Towns and tourists by this point. One thing we quite enjoyed was the changing of the landscape - Croatia's a long skinny country, in the north it is green and hilly, in the middle there's rocky mountains, and in the south it reminded me of Greece, it was quite arid with lots of olive trees and rolling hills.
Transport
Jen hired a car so we were driving around for most of it - there are lots of road tolls which at first seemed unnecessary, expensive and annoying, however since travelling in other Balkan countries, I realised and appreciated how good the tolls were in Croatia!! The roads were fast and well maintained on the whole, and I don't think Jen found the driving too difficult. I used public transport three times - to go from Pula to Labin and back, to get from Pula to Karlovac where I met Jen, and from Split to Mostar in Bosnia. It was easy enough, but the busses weren't the most comfortable and at Split it was mayhem - the busses were all delayed and no one seemed to know anything, I just had to trust it would all work out. Most bus stations had a left luggage section for a small fee but I had no use for them.
Food
We mixed it up by eating out sometimes and cooking dinner at other times, the supermarkets were reasonably priced and some offered bottle deposit schemes which I really liked. They also didn't have too many plastic wrapped fruit and veges. Whilst recycling facilities weren't prevalent, there were certainly more than I saw in the other Balkan countries. Eating out was reasonably cheap, though I wasn't a huge fan of the food - as in a lot of the Balkans, much of the food is centered around grilled meat, especially 'Cevapi', sausage shaped minced meat with onions and spices, served in this really tasty fluffy bread. But there were loads of bakeries (called Pekara) which were very cheap and did a variety of sweet and savoury foods which you could live off cheaply if you wanted!
Accommodation
We booked accommodation as we went, usually a day in advance. This seemed to work OK though sometimes we probably didn't have as much choice as we would have if we'd booked earlier. We used Airbnb and booking.com. With the exception of the fancy airbnb Jen booked in Split, most of the accommodation came in around £20-£25 per person per night, but it was basic - sometimes just a room and shared bathroom, other times a studio.
Any questions or anything you think I have missed? Comment below :)
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