Croatia

[lightanddreamy]

I’m not a very experienced traveller but I’ve decided I’d like to go to Croatia with my family this year - either at Easter or in August.
I can go for up to two weeks. I’d like to island hop and roughly travel between Split and Dubrovnik. I’ve found one travel agency offering a package like this - and it tells me I need to pay £13,000, plus flights, for a family of 4! Now I wasn’t expecting the holiday to be cheap but that’s over twice what I was expecting to pay. Has anyone done a holiday like this and if so, please could you advise where to get started to make this as simple as possible? And do I really need to budget that kind of money to have a nice time?

We did Split, Hvar and Brac as a family but arranged it all ourselves and it didn’t cost even half of that. We wanted to avoid Dubrovnik because we had been told that the cruise crowds are worst there in the summer. We stayed at Waterman Beach Village on Brac and Valamar Amicor on Hvar. I can’t remember the hotel in Split without looking it up, but the other two were fantastic and I’d recommend.

We have been to both Dubrovnik and Split on separate holidays the last two years. We booked flights separately and accommodation using Airb&B. There are ferries you can book for transport to and between islands. We hired a car on both occasions but found Ubers very easy in both Split and Dubrovnik (didn’t visit the islands).

It sounds to me as if the travel agent was one specialising in luxury group travel. It shouldn’t cost you anything like that.

No need to do a package. Work out your itinerary and book yourself. We booked accommodation through booking.com and boat tickets and car hire ourselves. Trying to remember the ferry website but it’s quite easy to find.

However just to warn you - Croatia is blooming expensive- definitely much more so than Greece for example. Dubrovnik is Central London prices and Hvar Town will be similar.

Both will also be extremely busy with cruise ship tourists and other holidaymakers especially in August. Dubrovnik we found unbearably hot and busy between 10am to 5pm in July.

I love Croatia but in August I would stick to the (somewhat) less busy islands like Sipan and Kolocep near Dubrovnik, and Brac and Vis near Split.

We’ve done both in the past couple of years. I love Croatia but wouldn’t go to Dubrovnik in August. September was bad enough for the crowds. Far too hot and far too busy. Not a cheap place to visit anymore either.
We also loved Trogir and Cavtat. No need to book a package.

Weather will be much better in August, maybe verging on too hot, but it's not really beach weather in April and ferries might get cancelled if weather is not great. However driving/parking will be much easier in low-season. Last time we went to Croatia we hired a car in Split and drove to Pulu via Plitvice Lakes, and spent a bit of time exploring Istria, so opposite end of the country. Driving was fine, this was October and car parks were empty. It's easy to book the hotels yourself, in April you should be able to do the entire trip for significantly less than 13k, I'd expect to be under 6k, unless you book fancy hotels.