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Getting to Croatia

We start with how to get to Croatia from the neighbouring countries. The easiest and expensive option is by flight – through Zagreb or Split or Dubrovnik and use flights for the rest of the journey. You can use any booking website to look at available options. In this blog we will cover how to use trains and buses and make the most of them to get around Croatia.

From Budapest, Hungary: Our itinerary of Eastern Europe led us from Budapest to Zagreb. We had the option of taking a bus which would take about 5 hours (excluding the time for immigration at the border) or the train which was a similar duration but was more comfortable. We chose the train for two reasons: first, to enjoy the countryside and second, the train would stop at the border and we would have to switch to a Croatian train for the rest of the journey to Zagreb – this was something we wanted to experience.

The train from Budapest

For booking all your train tickets anywhere in Europe, we would always advise you to go to the official website of the railways as they will always give you the best and cheapest options. In this case, head to www.mavcsoport.hu (the Hungarian railways website). To guide you through how to book tickets here, check out this detailed account by The Man in Seat 61 – the go to place if you want guidance on train travel anywhere in Europe. Do note that you will not get an e-ticket for this train. You need to keep the code you will get by email and collect the tickets at automated machines at the train station in Hungary. We recommend booking the tickets in advance so that you don’t have to figure out travel options at the last minute. You also get cheaper tickets on advance booking. Budapest has multiple railway stations – you can catch the train to Zagreb at Budapest Keleti (Keleti Palyaudvar) railway station.

From Austria or Italy: The best option would be to travel to Zagreb via bus. The journey would take you through beautiful Slovenia and if you are lucky, you would get a long enough break to explore the beautiful lake town of Bled.

Now that you’ve reached Croatia, buses and ferries are your lifeline to get around.

Travelling in Croatia – Buses

Croatia has a good network of buses which are convenient to get from one place to another. Two very good websites for booking buses are Flixbus and GetbyBus. These guys are basically aggregators which will show you options from various companies. Do check out the ratings and reviews of the operator to make sure you pick the right bus for your travel. They can charge you for heavy luggage, so keep change handy.

Pro Tip – Split to Dubrovnik

You can choose to take a bus from Split to Dubrovnik and back. However, the road route crosses a tiny patch of Bosnia and Herzegovina. What does this mean? You are exiting Croatia and need to re-enter to continue the journey which means two rounds of immigration checks. This also means that if there is a hold-up for a single person in the bus, the entire bus needs to wait. The travel time from Split to Dubrovnik is 4.5 hours excluding the wait at the checkpoints. We wanted to avoid this bit and planned it in a way that we used boats both ways. Check out our complete itinerary here.

Travelling in Croatia – Ferries/Catamarans

We took catamarans from Split to Hvar and onwards to Dubrovnik. There are two major operators – Jadrolinija and Kapetan Luka. We used both for different legs of our journey and would recommend both equally. Both connect the mainland to all major islands along the coast and you can plan all the legs of your journey accordingly.

A jumbo Jadrolinija – the one we travelled in was smaller

Other Tips

Make sure you keep enough buffer between transfers in your journey so that you don’t miss out on a bus/boat. It is always better to reach a place early than deal with the frustration of missing a connection.

We always recommend making your bookings atleast a week or two in advance to ensure that you get a seat (preferably, a reserved seat). Also, advance bookings can get you some good deals! Keep your eye out for these.

Where to Stay

The sweet spot for us while booking a place to stay is to have it close to the main attractions with access to the transit systems. The access part is kept at higher priority as it is convenient when you’re moving in/out with your luggage. In Europe, it becomes much easier than most other places as the cities have been designed with great connectivity.

Zagreb: We picked an Airbnb at a walkable distance from the bus station (which is also close to the railway station). We had an early morning flight out of Zagreb and chose to stay near the origin point of the bus.

Plitviče National Park: The park itself does not have any options for stay but there are a couple of villages right outside the main gates. We picked Rastovača which is a 10-15 min walk along the highway from “Entrance 1” of the park. The buses from Zagreb stop at Entrance 1. Make sure you reach when there is still daylight as the highway goes through a dense forest and you don’t want to be stranded here in the dark! Rastovača is a beautiful village with some nice cottages where you can find rooms on Airbnb. We stayed at a lovely little cottage called House Spehar (where we had some amazing breakfast the next day!). You can also choose to stay in some of the hotels near Entrance 2 – we didn’t go for these as most of the crowd enters the park from here and the best way to explore it would be start at Entrance 1 in the opposite direction of the crowd. For more on how to make the most of your day at Plitviče, click here.

Split: When in Split, try to stay as close to the Old Town as possible. Split has an active nightlife which is concentrated in this area. As the public transportation dies down quite early, having your room close to the Old Town is a major plus. On one of our stays, we couldn’t find a place close enough and we had to walk back almost 4 kms (couldn’t even find cabs!).

Hvar: The island of Hvar is quite big – however, the preferred places to stay are near the port for ease of movement. With some effort, you can find some beautiful Airbnb’s with amazing views. Be wary of the stairs as there are many in the area! Hvar also has some amazing seafood places, but more on that here.

This should get you going on your tickets and accommodation in Croatia. For more on the itinerary, the places you should visit and the food you shouldn’t miss, check out our other blogs on Croatia here.

Do leave your thoughts in the comments section below. Feel free to shoot your queries as well! To catch all our latest travel stories, follow us on Instagram @fridgemagnet.tales

The first image that pops up when you hear the word “Dalmatian” would be the black and white spotted dogs made famous by the Disney movie. The origin of this breed is from a region of the same name in Croatia. The historical Dalmatia region is along the Adriatic coast and covers most of the southern half of the country. The major cities in this region are Split, Zadar and Dubrovnik. There are many beautiful islands off the coast, some of the best ones being Hvar, Brač and Korčula.

Split

We started our holiday from Zagreb where we spent half a day (enough to see all major attractions). We then spent an amazing day at Plitvice National Park. A 4-hour bus journey from Plitvice took us along the coastal cities of Zadar and Sibenik to Split. We were picked up by our Airbnb host from the bus stand who had come along with his two cute kids. Nino – our host – was super-friendly and a really nice guy. He gave us a mini tour of the city and told us how to get around. As we entered the residential neighborhood, we noticed gardens behind every house with vines wrapped around the garages. And on these were grapes!

Coming from Indian city life, it is indeed a wonder to see grapes growing freely in every house! We left our luggage in the room and walked back to the old city.

As we entered the old town area, the vibe itself changed. The tiny streets transported us to another age as we walked around looking for a place to eat. We always read up about the best places to eat so that we experience the best foods in the limited number of days we spend. We arrived at our destination, Villa Spiza – a small restaurant in a tiny lane. For a place so tiny, there was a lot of crowd waiting to get a table. As we waited (40 mins in total), we saw the owner come out and strike off some items from the menu. We learnt that their menu changes every day based on what they get fresh from the market. Luckily, the dishes we had our eyes on were still on the menu when we got our table. And it was totally worth the wait! Delicious pork chops and minced lamb pasta and amazing wine to go with it! All food pics are available on the Food page. After dinner, we walked around, got an ice-cream and saw some hostelers partying out on the lanes – looked like this one was going all night long.

Our second day at Split was mostly spent exploring Diocletian’s Palace and the walled city.

We first headed to the farmer’s market where we picked up some fresh fruits for the day. The Palace itself has a lot of interesting elements – sphinxes from Egypt, a temple dedicated to Jupiter and actors dressed up as Romans putting on a show for the visitors.

We also spotted some of the shoot locations of Game of Thrones there. If you get tired walking, there are plenty of little restaurants and takeaways. We ended our day by taking a bus back to Zagreb.

Pro Tip: To get a panoramic view of Split old town and the port, head up to Park Marjan. We started our day here walking all the way up to the observation deck. The early morning light gave us a beautiful view of the city. From here, you can climb down the steps and get to the Riva Promenade.

Panoramic View of Split from Park Marjan

Hvar

We had planned to visit Hvar, Dubrovnik and come back to Split – so we decided to leave our luggage at the Split port instead of lugging it around all the way. Look out for lockers near the bus stand where you can leave your luggage for a daily rate. We took the 9:45 am Jadrolinija catamaran from the dock. Wondering how to book tickets for these? Check out our guide to local travel in Croatia.

The boat was good and the ride was smooth – it cut through all the waves and almost glided through to reach Hvar in just under an hour. We walked up some steps near the port to our Airbnb where we left our bags and went to explore the town.

Walking along the coast-line itself is a soothing experience. The water is so clear that you feel the boats are floating in air!

We continued to explore the old town area and a series of stairs led us up to the Fortica. The climb up is quite tiring but the end result is worth it – you get a view of the entire town with the coral tiles roofs, blue skies and the blue sea merging into it, rugged terrain along the coast and cactus plants with beautiful flowers all around!

Steps! There are a lot of these in Hvar!

We walked into a restaurant for lunch where we had some amazing fried calamari. We headed back to our room as the sun was beating down on us. We met our host, Zora who suggested some off-beat places on the island. There was a beach which was a good 30 mins walk along the coast on the southern part of the island which she recommended. We passed through a neighbourhood of premium apartments and some remote roads along the coast to reach the beach. The beach was full of white pebbles and the water was perfect for a swim.

We took care not to step on the sea urchins! After spending a couple of hours here, we took a shortcut by climbing over a hill to cut across.

For dinner, we headed to the Marinero bistro which is just off the old town centre. The food we had here was possibly the best we had on the trip to Croatia. Grilled tuna fillet, calamari with tartar and house wine – the memory of the taste makes us want to go back there! Food pics here!

We spent some time at the beach spotting stars and constellations (the sky was so clear!). As we walked back to our room, we saw many people dressed up getting on boats to go to Carpe Diem – one of the craziest party places around. We had to catch a boat the next morning and decided to skip it – best to leave it for later!

Dubrovnik

We took the Kapetan Luka catamaran from Hvar to Dubrovnik at 8:45 am. This time we sat on the upper deck where we enjoyed views of the coast and the islands of Korčula and Mljet. As we got closer to Dubrovnik, we saw not one, but many cruise ships off the coast. Oh no! Cruise ships could mean only one thing – crazy crowds!

As you exit the port at Dubrovnik and cross the road, you will see a visitor information centre and a counter from where you can buy bus tickets. We got our tickets and boarded bus 1-A to the Old City (Stari Grad). The walled city welcomed us in a manner that we expected – full of tourists. There were multiple Game of Thrones tours going on along the walls and inside as tourists tried to recreate the scenes. We explored the city for the better part of the day – the inner walls, the cathedral, the port (of wildfire), drawbridge and lots of steps (including the Shame, Shame ones).

The restaurants are all tourist traps with super expensive menus and even the exchange rate here was the worst we had seen in Croatia. After lunch, we took Bus number 3 back to the port where our boat to Split was waiting.

As mentioned in our top post, if you are crunched for time, you would do well to skip this journey to Dubrovnik as the crowds will put you off. If time is not a constraint, stay for 2 days and start exploring the walled city early in the morning before the cruise crowd hits.

One place we would like to mention here is the Mlinar bakery – it came to our rescue more than once when we were starved and couldn’t find a decent restaurant and also as a place to stock up on supplies before we hit the road/boat. For more on places to eat in Croatia, check out our post here.

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Getting Around Croatia – Travel and Where to Stay