Marčana

Overall, Croatia has always been high on our list of places to visit, but that doesn’t mean we had any idea what to expect. Culturally, the influence of Eastern Europe is the most prominent, people are stoic but friendly, and they all speak English. We ended up getting to experience three very different parts of Croatia, all of which had their perks. We were curious to go out onto the Kamenjak peninsula, south of Pula. Sarah found an amazing apartment on Airbnb in Marčana, which was close enough, for only $35/night! Ironically, we found that the peninsula was overcrowded and hard to get to, whereas Marčana had a few magical coves that changed our lives forever. We felt like we were in the middle of no where when we first got to our apartment, but a few adventures out towards the coast on roads that don’t even show up on Google maps (can you imagine!?), yielded a private little inlet with the most beautiful water we had ever seen. For the next few days we would return to spend the day at our secret cove with our lunch, swim goggles and Sarah’s inflatable tube.

Korčula

After Marčana, we drove about 9 hours down to Orebić to catch a ferry to the island of Korčula. We stayed in three different places on the Island, Lumbarda and Korčula on the east coast as well as Vela Luka on the west coast. It’s a great island about 47×8 km, which takes about an hour to drive across. We explored the towns, took a ferry to an uninhabited island called Proizd and rented our own little boat to cruise around in for the day. There is a lot of tourism on the island, so it’s not always easy to find a genuinely good restaurant, but they’re around. Pretty much every place serves up fresh local fish, and that’s hard to get wrong.

After a great week on Korčula, we had to catch a 6AM ferry back to the mainland and then drive a couple hours to get to the 7 hour ferry back to Italy. We were concerned that it was going to be hell to be stuck on a ferry for that long, but it turned out to be bearable. We had the best seat on the deck in the shade and the weather was gorgeous, so time passed quickly. We even saw dolphins swimming along with us for a while! Croatia is a must if you’ve never been.

WE RECOMMEND

Our Marcana Airbnb