Clare always keeps her eye on cheap flights from Ireland to other countries, so when she said you should visit Croatia because it’s cheap we jumped on the opportunity. For €80 Euro return we booked a flight to Pula which is a small town / city at the top of Croatia.

The flight is early morning and even though I’m excited to travel it’s hard waking up. We do get out of bed and walk down toward the air coach bus stop. We are a little late so we have to get the next bus but we are still early for our flight. Turns out a cab driver sees us and tells us he will take us to the airport for the same cost as the bus. Sounds good to me, so we jump in the car and it turns out he’s the same cabbie who picked us up when we arrived in Dublin, although he doesn’t remember us. Fair enough he probably has hundreds of customers a week.

We board our flight to Croatia and try to get some extra sleep, although to be honest it’s a bit hard. We did score the exit seats which give the extra leg room so we were happy about that. We fly over the swiss alps and get a fantastic view of the snowy mountains, we have to go there at some stage I think.

Arriving in Pula the weather is nice and sunny and a warm 20 degrees. My 150 Euro converts to 1260 Kuna. Seems like a good conversion but Croatian prices vary and some things can actually be quite expensive especially in tourist areas. Arriving in the city we see an old Roman Amphitheatre. We check it out later.

First we organise accommodation. All the hostels were booked online so we opted for a private apartment for all 3 of us. Maria and I both packed our hand luggage full which we soon learn to be a mistake. Dean was smart and only took a few items of clothing and our bags are heavy. We have quite a long walk, maybe 30 mins to our accommodation and the bags kill my shoulders and I help Maria with hers. Next time we’ll be a bit smarter we both agree while Dean has a laugh.

When we finally find the place (our map was vaguely detailed) we are greeted by a lady who lives underneath the apartment on the 1st level of the building. The apartment is on the 2nd level and has a great view of the boats and marine nearby. We dump our bags and look for something to eat.

Pula is very nice and some parts are quite old but it’s contrasted by the housing commission style flats just outside the city. Still the people are very nice to tourists for the most part (some will try rip you off on pricing if your not careful). We grab something to eat and head back to the apartment for some shut eye. I’m tired and so are the others but we only sleep a couple of hours before waking up for dinner.

We go to a local restaurant near the apartment and the food is quite nice. We sink a few beers and enjoy the balcony view of the area. Maria tells me it’s very similar to Greece, Dean sees a Casino in the distance and there’s plenty around Croatia. We joke about going, well I do, Dean seems a bit serious about the idea.

The next day we do a bit of town sightseeing, we look around the city centre and try to find out if we can get on a sailing boat down the coast. Our tour agent says that it’s off season so you will need to travel 2 hours to the next town and try there. We decide to do that the next day and finish off the afternoon drinking beer in the sun. Beer is cheap here so it’s really easy to sink alot of pots and not spend alot. Food is expensive on the other hand and that’s where most of our money ends up going.

The next day we head to the bus stop in the city, buy tickets and I loose my ATM card I think the machine eats it when I don’t take it out. Anyway not much harm done I call the bank cancel the card which is pretty useless without the pin but it’s a good lesson. It’s that easy to loose my credit card I think and decide to keep myself more alert. Getting on the bus is fun since we didn’t understand the Croatian language on the ticket. We do get on the right bus though and head out of Pula.

It doesn’t take long to get out of town. Maybe 10 mins and we are into the country side. The country side is very pretty and I really enjoy some of the views along the way. I tried to take some shots from the bus as we drive along the cliff sides from Pula to Rijeka but the reflections from the glass and the moving bus make it challenging to really capture how beautiful it is.

It’s a few hours of windy roads around Croatian coast line. We get to a town on the way called Opatija (O Par Chee Ah). It’s really pretty and has some really nice buildings and shops and we think to ourselves maybe we should stay here but we haven’t seen Rijeka yet and that’s where we are heading. We arrive late afternoon in Rijeka it’s a busy town but seems a bit more happening than Pula. Pula has lots of old people and not much of a night life. Rijeka has lots of young people and is a busy city. It’s a bit industrial and not nearly as pretty as Opatija. We head into a tourism info office and ask about a hostel for the night. The lady there tells us that there are no beds left only hotels. We ask about Opatija which is 20 mins back from where we came.

She tells us it’s probably a better idea and it’s got alot more tourists there and more hotels. We decide to take a bus back to Opatija and book a nice 3 star hotel for the 3 of us. The view of the beach is awesome and it has a nicer vibe to it than the main city. Again not much of a night life and it is off season so we are limited with what we can do.

We try to find out about our sailing adventure down the coast as we want to get to Split which is halfway down the Croatian coast but again it’s off season and no sailing boats just ferry’s. Given the time we have left we decide we can’t make it to split and stay in Opatija. A sailing cruise would have been awesome but it just wasn’t going to happen it seemed.

We book in a Game Fishing cruise for the next morning and wake up early and get onto a small boat with our skipper. We try trawling first with a long line out but don’t have much luck. So we try sitting in an area that seems to be where the fish are according the the skipper’s radar thingy (fish finder). We get a few bites but nothing serious. It’s typical fishing never catch anything lol but at least the view from the boat it good and its still sunny :). 3 hours later we come back empty handed but we still had a nice time on the water.

Our last day is made up of trying to get back to Pula for our return flight. Again nice views but we are now tired of Croatia and decide we are happy to be heading back. We stay the night and Pula and get up early for our return flight. Overall it was really nice, but next time I think we’ll go peak season.

Filed under: Travel by Gavin Doolan