A thousand islands, and a ferry timetable. Start with the boat.
Which Blue Cave run actually gets inside the cave. What the Elaphiti lunch cruise costs before the drinks. Whether Plitvice or Krka is the better single day away from the coast. Reviews of every tour you can book in Croatia.
The photograph is from this reviewBlue Cave Small-Group Boat Tour from Dubrovnik★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · from $84 Krka, the Blue Cave, the Elaphiti lunch run, King’s Landing.
The four bookings a first Croatian trip is usually built around. What each costs, and what the people who went say about it.
01The waterfall daySplit: Krka Waterfalls Trip with Boat Cruise and SwimmingKrka from Split, with the boat leg and an hour in the water at Skradinski Buk. The cheapest of the big days out.- 02The cave morningBlue Cave Small-Group Boat Tour from DubrovnikBiševo by small boat out of Dubrovnik. The light inside only works before about noon, which is why the early departure sells first.
03The lunch cruiseFull-Day Dubrovnik Elaphite Islands Cruise with Lunch and DrinksThree Elaphiti islands, lunch and drinks on board, back in Dubrovnik by early evening. The day nobody regrets paying for.
04The Westeros walkDubrovnik: Epic Game of Thrones Tour + Lokrum & Saver OptionTwo hours around the walls and the staircases the show used. Lokrum is the add-on worth taking.
In Croatia the good day starts at a pontoon, not a bus stop.
Four kinds of day afloat, what it costs to get on each one, and which coast it leaves from. The cave runs and the island cruises are different animals and people book the wrong one all the time.
★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · Full-Day Dubrovnik Elaphite Islands Cruise with Lunch and Drinks
Island hoppingThree to six islands, swim stops, lunch somewhere with a harbour.
The Blue CaveBiševo before noon, when the water under the rock still glows.
Sunset sailingsOut at golden hour, dinner or drinks on deck, back after dark.
Sea kayaksUnder the walls, round the headland, into a bay with no road to it.
All 439 days on the water →
Six places to base a Croatian trip, and the best day out from each.
A walled city at the bottom of the coast, a Roman palace people still live in, the island everyone means when they say the Adriatic, a lake park inland, the Kornati archipelago off Zadar and an amphitheatre in Istria with its outer wall still standing.
The Blue Lagoon, Šolta, the Pakleni channel: the water Split goes out to.
The lagoon off Drvenik is shallow enough to read the bottom through, the Pakleni islands sit twenty minutes off Hvar town, and the five-island speedboats string the two together with the Biševo cave in the middle. This is the busiest booking on the coast and the boats differ enormously.
Dubrovnik: the walls at opening time, the boat by ten.
The whole Dubrovnik shelf →
The old town is small, shadeless and full by eleven, so the city rewards an early circuit and an afternoon somewhere off the stone. These three carry more travellers than anything else on this stretch of coast.
The walls, and when to walk them
Two kilometres of rampart with no shade and one way round. First entry or late afternoon are the only two comfortable slots in summer, and the queue at the Pile steps tells you which one you picked.
King’s Landing, on foot
The Jesuit staircase, Lovrijenac, the Pile harbour: a walk that works even if you have never seen an episode, because the locations are the city’s best corners anyway.
Three islands, lunch on the deck
Šipan, Lopud and Koločep in one slow loop, with swim stops and a grilled lunch somewhere on the way. The classic Dubrovnik day out, and the one that fills earliest in August.
Roman Croatia is not a ruin. People still live in it.
Diocletian built a retirement palace at Split and the city never moved out of it, so the cellars are bars and the peristyle is a square. Pula has an amphitheatre with its outer wall intact, and Dubrovnik has the rampart everybody else lost.
All the old-town walks →
The days out this country sells most of.
The whole Croatian catalogue →The tours more travellers take than anything else in the country, one per kind of day so the list is a shortlist and not eight versions of the same boat.
1
Split: Krka Waterfalls Trip with Boat Cruise and Swimming
Spend nine hours traveling from Split to Skradin, cruising to Skradinski Buk, walking Krka National Park with a guide such as Ante, Leo, or Gianna, then swimming or exploring Primošten. The tour includes an air-conditioned bus, guide, insurance, and boat ride. Park admission depends on the option you book.
From · $31
Read our review →
2
Blue Cave Small-Group Boat Tour from Dubrovnik
from $84
3
Full-Day Dubrovnik Elaphite Islands Cruise with Lunch and Drinks
from $78
4
Dubrovnik: Epic Game of Thrones Tour + Lokrum & Saver Option
from $25
5
Blue Lagoon & 3 Islands Cruise with Lunch from Split
from $78
6
Dubrovnik: Old Town Walking Tour
from $23
7
Montenegro Full-Day Trip from Dubrovnik with Optional Boat Trip
from $72
8
Zadar: Plitvice Lakes Guided Day Tour with Tickets
from $88
What a Croatian day out actually sets you back.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. The gap between a ticket and a full-day boat with lunch is the whole planning problem on this coast.
Old-town walks, park and arena tickets, the short kayak runs and a few waterfall trips.
Where the coast lives: island cruises with lunch, Plitvice with the ticket, rafting, the cave speedboats.
Private guides, chartered sailing days, truffle hunts and the Pelješac oyster runs.
Three things Croatia has that nowhere else does.
Coastline and old towns exist all over the Mediterranean. Sixteen lakes pouring into each other over growing rock, a sea cave that turns the water to neon, and a capital city that doubled for the Red Keep do not.
The Plitvice Lakes
Sixteen lakes drop into one another down a staircase of travertine, a rock the water itself keeps building out of moss and algae. Boardwalks run right across the falls, which is why the park sells timed entry and why the tour that includes the ticket is worth more than it looks. Go for the first entry slot: by eleven the lower boardwalk moves at one speed, and it is not yours.
- 1Zadar: Plitvice Lakes Guided Day Tour with Tickets★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 3,148 reviews
- 2From Split: Plitvice Lakes National Park Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 3,002 reviews
- 3From Zagreb: Plitvice & Rastoke Guided Day Trip with Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 2,955 reviews
The Blue Cave
Sunlight enters the cave on Biševo through a second underwater opening and comes back up through the water, so the whole chamber reads as lit from below. It works between roughly ten and noon and not at all in swell, when the harbourmaster closes the entrance. Every operator sells the same twenty minutes inside; what you are actually choosing is the boat, the group size and the islands they string on either side of it.
- 1Blue Cave Small-Group Boat Tour from Dubrovnik★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 9,360 reviews
- 2Blue cave, Mamma Mia and Hvar, 5 islands speedboat tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 7,150 reviews
- 3Split: Blue Cave, Vis & Hvar Full-Day Trip by Speedboat★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 976 reviews
Westeros in Dubrovnik
The Jesuit staircase is the walk of shame, Lovrijenac is the Red Keep, and the Pile harbour is Blackwater Bay. Filming ran through the old town for six seasons and the guides who worked as extras give the better tour, because they can tell you which shots were the city and which were a set in Belfast.
- 1Dubrovnik: Epic Game of Thrones Tour + Lokrum & Saver Option★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 5,995 reviews
- 2Game of Thrones Extended Tour with Swords and Props★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,118 reviews
- 3Split Game of Thrones Tour: City of Dragons★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 556 reviews
Pelješac reds, Ston oysters, Istrian truffles.
Croatia grows grapes nobody else bothers with and farms oysters in a channel the Romans already knew about. Book the Pelješac cellars for the Plavac Mali, the Ston beds for the oysters straight off the rope, and Istria between October and March if the truffle is the point.
Four Adriatic bookings that will not wait for you.
Most of this country can be sorted from a konoba table the night before. These four run on entry caps, sea state and a season that shuts, and none of them care when your flight lands.
- 01Zadar: Plitvice Lakes Guided Day Tour with TicketsThe park sells a capped number of timed entries a day and the morning slots go first. A tour that includes the ticket is buying you the slot, not just the driver.
- 02Blue Cave Small-Group Boat Tour from DubrovnikThe cave takes one small boat at a time and closes in swell. Operators hold fixed entry windows, so a late booking means a late window, when the light has gone flat.
- 03Full-Day Dubrovnik Elaphite Islands Cruise with Lunch and DrinksOne lunch sitting, one boat, and the Dubrovnik cruise ships arrive on the same mornings. In August the good departures are gone a week out.
- 04Truffle hunting & cooking tourTruffle hunting runs with the dogs and the season, which is autumn into winter for the black and October to January for the white. Out of season there is nothing to find.
When the bura blows, the boats stay in.
The bura comes down off the Velebit in hard, dry gusts and it takes the catamarans and the cave runs with it, sometimes for two days at a time. Shoulder season adds the other problem: half the island operators stop in October. Both have the same answer, which is to keep a land day in reserve.
By place: the coast, the islands and inland Croatia
By kind of Croatian day: deck, karst, cellar or canyon
Zagreb down to Dubrovnik: the run almost everybody does first.
Newest on the Croatian shelf.
Keep going down the new pile →
Walls Of Dubrovnik: Small-Group Walking Tour With A Local
Read our review →
Walls of Liberty: A Self-Guided Audio Tour of Dubrovnik
Read our review →
Dubrovnik Game of Thrones Walking Tour: Filming Locations&Stories
Read our review →
