Croatia: Dalmatian coast is beautiful

[samclem]

I just got back from a few weeks of w*rk in Croatia on the eastern side of the Adriatic Sea. I can recommend it (the place, not the w*rk)--the weather in September is very nice (a lot like Southern Cal), the pace of life in the nearby towns was slow and relaxing. Costs seemed fairly moderate.

I also visited Zagreb on my way home, but didn't see enough to make a judgment. The area in the center of town is scenic, with plenty to do and within walking distance. There are also plenty of truly ugly concrete apartment buildings to remind one of the Tito-Communist past.

The Croatian people I met were uniformly friendly and helpful. English isn't as widely spoken as it is in countries further west, but the usual tactics (hand gestures, a few words of Croatian, and map pointing) worked fine. Italian is helpful--many of the older folks speak it, as much of the Croatian Adriatic coast was in Italian hands for about 20 years before WW-II.

I didn't get down to Dubrovnic, that will have to wait until next time.

 

[heyduke]

thanks samclem for a nice "different" perspective on others in our midst...

 

[jphripjah]

I was in Dubrovnik for a night about six weeks ago. Nice looking old town, but absolutely crawling with European tourists. I've never seen anything like that. It was horrific. Then a taxi driver told me "This is nothing, we're getting 10,000 more tourists coming on a cruise ship on Friday."

 

[deserat]

samclem - should have waved to you - I was just in Trieste for a couple of days on a consulting job. Oh my - it was quite warm (I had driven from Germany where fall has definitely started) and everyone ate outside - awesome fish and pasta - great wine - nice people. It was a very intense couple of days for me as I squeezed in the tourist stuff along with the working part (very interesting work at that, as well). I came home with great Italian foodstuffs and a desire to go back for a longer amount of time. Additionally, I drove through the Austrian/Italian Alps - just love that, being in the mountains.

 

[Nords]

I just got back from a few weeks of w*rk in Croatia on the eastern side of the Adriatic Sea.

samclem - should have waved to you - I was just in Trieste for a couple of days on a consulting job.

Were you guys on opposite sides of the same operation/exercise?

Trip reports!

 

[WhoDaresWins]

I traveled down the Dalmation Coast 36 years ago on a crazy 6 week trip from Italy to France to Germany to Austria to Hungary to the former Yugoslavia then back to Italy with my father and my sister. We had no reservations or fixed plans, just a Eurail pass and a plane ticket to Rome and back home again on a charter flight. We would get off at a train station and Dad would spy a pensione and say "That looks good" and it would be our home for a few days. We spent a couple of days in Split and the same in Dubrovnik. I remember Diocletion's Palace in Dubrovnik was some kind of a discoteque. Mom stayed at home with our elderly, sickly dog that summer. The previous summer she went to Europe with a couple of her teacher friends, Dad stayed at home then and kept an eye on us. No way the parents would ever have traveled together and left us behind unsupervised for any reason even though I was a very sedate college student and my sister was in her early twenties and a school teacher. The OP is right, the area is beautiful. I don't remember crowds or cruise ships at all. In Split I remember visiting an artist's studio, Ivan Mestrovic, I believe, right along the rocky coast.