Exploring the Croatian Coast

Over the last week, we had the great pleasure of exploring the south coast of Croatia, on a seven day cruise, departing from Split.

In short, we had a brilliant time and there is so much to see in this part of the world. Beautiful beaches, incredible cultural and historic landmarks and stunning mountains jutting out of the sea are just a few examples.

Here is an interactive Google Map of our journey.

Our original itinerary from On the Go (Sailing Split) ended up a different route to what we ended up taking but most of the sites were still covered.

We started out from Split, travelling by road to Trogir where we spent the first night.

The second day took us to Stari Grad on the island of Hvar.

On the third day we then travelled to Mljet Island, where there is a beautiful lake.

Day four took us to Dubrovnik, which was a magical place, though haunting on another level. The old walled city bears many scars from the war in 1990-91, where you can clearly see where there is damage from grenades and shelling.

Day five we went to Korcula Island, the birthplace of Marco Polo. It is a lovely little place and the old city is very cute. Here are a couple of pics.

Day six we headed to Makarska. This town is on the mainland and a very popular tourist destination in the summer. The mountains in the background make a stunning backdrop. Here is a statue of St Peter with the keys to the city.

Day seven we returned to Split via Bol on the island of Brac, where we stayed on the boat one more night before completing the cruise.

After the cruise was completed we stayed another night at the Gardens Apartments, which we highly recommend.

We really enjoyed our trip and we are considering coming again another time, perhaps just to relax by the sea, maybe in Brac. The Adriatic sea is very clean and clear and we did manage to have a swim in the shallow waters not far from Korčula. The water temperature was ideal for swimming even if the weather was not quite hot enough for me.

In conclusion, I have deliberately omitted the not so great aspects of this tour as this post focuses on the geographic sites. I have also referred to this trip as a cruise rather than a sailing trip as it was falsely advertised. If you would like to read more detail about the tour itself, head to TripAdvisor. My only other comment about this review is that it was extremely difficult to find the appropriate area to post this review and TripAdvisor removed a version of this post as they do not cover tours.  We think they should as it is important to find out what other travellers have experienced. I also submitted a Forum post on TripAdvisor titled Why doesn’t OTG, Katerina Lines and boat owners play fair?.