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Croatia

Add your Croatia budget hotel or guesthouse to the Hostel Directory

Hostel in CroatiaIf you own or operate a Croatia budget hotel, hostel, guesthouse or any other budget accommodation – or if you know someone who does – you (or they) should consider entering the information into the new worldwide Hostel Directory . This will be a huge and global directory of budget hotels, hostels and other budget accommodations. Don’t worry about spam from it but you should expect some extra bookings.

This is a new site but part of a big travel network, so it should worth some of your precious minutes. Go to this Hostel Directory entry page for Croatia and submit the property to the listings.

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Croatia

Mljet Park

path_summer_warm_280404_m.jpgIf you believe the legends, Mljet Park is a magical, mystical land of enchanted coves and wondrous legends. It is supposedly Odysseus’s vacation destination of choice on his travels back to Greece and it is also mentioned by Benedictine monks and St. Paul—the travel agents of antiquity—as a spot to see when traveling through the Mediterranean.

Salt lakes

Mljet Park has naturally occuring salt lakes in the center of the island that have been a tourist draw for centuries. It is likely that receding ocean levels deposited the salt water in the depressions of both the bigger “Great Lake” (Valiko Jezero) and littler “Small Lake” (Malo Jezero) and with a lack of incoming fresh water, they have never desalinated.

St Mary Island is located on the far side of the Great Lake and holds a Benedictine Monastary from the 12th century. Transport to the island is included with your admission to the park, or you can rent a boat and row under your own power to the island.

Caves

Mljet also has what is known as karstic geology, meaning there arre many caves, tunnels, and depressions around the landscape of the park. Although it is not common to see serious cave divers exploring the caves, they are a fun introduction to the sport for kids and adults with active imaginations.

Coves

Historical sources make note of the abundance of coves and the twisting coast line that obscures visitors from view as they walk along the beach. The white sand and shallow, solar heated tide-less waters also deserve mention.

Mljet park bills itself as the first natural ecosystem in Croatia that was billed for protection. Mljet became a National Park in 1960 and the coast and abundant forests have been untouched and undeveloped ever since. A small community of people live on the island in the same villages that were settled by Illyrian tribes and the Roman Empire and try to live without impacting the ecological balance of the island.

Getting there

The best way to get to Mljet is to fly into Dubrovnik, then take a cab or bus to the ferry terminal in Gruz, a section of Dubrovnik’s city area. The Gruz ferry lands in Sobra on Mljet. Ferries take about 2.5 hours from Dubrovnik and the faster catamarans take about 90 minutes.

Accommodation

There is only one hotel in Mljet Park. Hotel Odisej has mixed reviews and several complaints about the price, but most patrons seem generally satisfied. The hotel occupies the middle ground between luxury and budget hotels and is moving toward a higher income clientele. For cheaper accommodations, a number of rooms in local houses are available for rent for independent travelers.

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Croatia

Croatia’s Dingac Wine

grape_leaf_purple_281086_m.jpgThe Dingac wine region near Dubrovnik is one of the smallest and most unique producers of red wines in the Mediterranean latitudes. It also produces some of the best wine in Europe.

The key to the Dingac wine, like all wine, is the crop of grapes. The key grapes in this case are known as the Plavac Mali grapes, which grow on the south side of a restricted peninsula in southern Dalmatia known as the Peljesac peninsula. The tiny 2 km patch that house the grapes is called the Dingac region.

The grapes grow in such a specific location, that families tending the grapes could not transplant them to the other side of a short hill and instead spent their time walking up and down the mountains each day to tend the grapes or riding donkeys with their tools.

Because of this, in the 1970’s the wine growing families pooled their money and constructed a tunnel through the mountain running about a half a kilometer in length so that they could go to work on their crop of grapes without having to go up and over the entire hill. Only workers with the Dingac grapes tend their plants after traversing through a tunnel each day to get to the plants and Dingac has enjoyed some extra notoriety because of this.

Dingac wines are a part of Croatian culture. Most oenophiles and food critics recognize Dingac and could tell you where it came from. Perhaps because of that, Dingac is protected under the international Geneva Convention, perhaps the only wine protected under a treaty in Europe. The wine itself is noted for its dark red color and distinguished aroma. The wine is credited with a full and harmonious taste, that errs toward being slightly sweet as it goes down.

Dingac wine is exclusively red wine and the Plavac Mali grapes are so sensitive that tiny changes like the angle of the sun and the position of the hill change the way that the grapes taste. These positions and angles have been refined in the Dingac region for the last 470 years at least, but the tradition of winemaking in the area goes back even farther than that, to the very first people to inhabit the peninsula.

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Croatia

Croatia’s Hot Springs

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When the Romans traveled around their Empire, infantry and officers alike would get road weary and battle worn. As a way of combating fatigue and the dreary months enforcing the borders of their territory, Roman soldiers would stop for baths at the natural hot springs that dot the countryside of Croatia.

Today, these hot springs have become health spas and resorts catering to a slightly different clientele than armored Roman soldiers coming off of the front lines. Now, travelers drop into the warm water pools as a respite from the stresses of traveling and as a way to improve their health.

Istarske Toplice

The most famous and popular Croatian hot-springs resort, Istarske Toplice provides travelers a place to stay while spending their days in Sveti Stjepan, the mineral spring that most travelers bathe in. The spring is touted for its therapeutic properties and half of the resort is given over to water and mud therapy, the other half devoted to beauty treatments. Istarske Toplice is one of the purest springs in Croatia as well, an examination of the water recently revealed that the water has the same level of purity as an examination completed in 1858.

Krapina

The hotel at Krapina-hotel Aquae Vivae, combines premium hospitality with available rejuvenatin hot springs baths. The entire hotel is not given over to a resort with spa treatments and instead you are left alone to appreciate the rest of the natural valley surrounding you.

Daruvar

The town of Daruvar was known as Aquae Balissae when the Romans were setting up their tents in the surrounding fields and while the name has changed, the reason for the town’s being has not. Daruvar still has some of the most inviting hot springs in the area and in addition to the hot springs, offers sites other than the spas to see. Several ancient monuments still stand and their is a rich and historic tradition of grape growing and wine cultivation stretching back over 2,000 years.

Daruvar is also something of a unique city in that it is near the Czech border and the cultures have combined over the centuries in a way that is not found in much of the rest of Croatia. Daruvar is a destination worthy of even the most discerning independent traveler.

Categories
Croatia

Krka National Park

Krka National Park is a natural botanical wonderland in Croatia with a multitude of different species of plants and animals. The park covers over 109 square kilometers mostly around the Krka River. Krka park is known for the cascading waterfalls along the plunging river and the sights bring many to the park from around the country.

Although not as dramatic as Plitvice lakes, the waterfalls are dynamic and the scenery is largely untouched except for hiking trails and the occasional access point to the river. Unlike Plitvice, visitors are allowed to swim in the pools at Krka national park in addition to hiking up and down the length of the river.

Krka river comes out of the ground at what is called a karst spring which emanates from the ground after flowing through an underground system of caves or collected from the rainwater or snow melt in other basins. Although the water of Krka is untouched, karst springs, because they fluctuate so much with the seasons, have notoriously low water quality and you should probably not drink out of the river.

Getting there

Krka park is more convenient to Split and other big cities than Plitvice and if you are in the area and have limited time you can get the idea of what Plitvice is like without devoting a few days to traveling up there. If you have the option of seeing Plitvice though, it far surpasses what Krka park has to offer.

From Split, drive northwest along the coast on the E65 highway then head north on 33 and west on 56 after passing the A1 highway (which can also be taken from Split). Follow signs from there to Krka and be prepared to pay about 10 euros as an entry fee.
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