Fortress-Hopping

It’s hard to believe that it’s been a year and a half since Colleen and I previously visited Croatia’s gorgeous Dalmatian coast. This time we rented a car, and so we have much more flexibility and opportunities. We’re staying in Tisno again (about halfway between Zadar and Split, if you know Croatia), but during this visit we’re renting a four-bedroom house in town close to the seaside.

We’ve had a wonderful time so far, reminiscing about the several weeks we spent here in 2021 and 2022, and re-exploring some of our favorite areas. And this time we’re here in the on-season, when almost everything is still open, so there are more dining and activity options.

And beyond those legacy favorites, we’ve leveraged the car to get to new places for exploration, such as the lovely old city of Šibenik and a viewing platform on top of a nearby mountain overlooking Tisno. The car is also a must-have for picking up and dropping off various visiting family members at the Zadar and Split airports.

In previous visits to the region, we mostly leveraged buses to get between cities, though our Tisno friends (who moved from Asheville in 2017) would also kindly include us in day trips to other regional sights. While we’d briefly been in Šibenik four times at the bus station on the way to or from Split, we had never had the chance to actually explore the city. It’s less than 40 minutes to drive there by car, and it’s the closest true city near Tisno. I had read a lot of good things about Šibenik before this visit, and so Colleen and I took a day trip there for an early anniversary celebration (since she’s returning to Asheville before I will, which is prior to our anniversary date). During our visit we had the unique experience of fortress-hopping, as there are four large fortresses in the city, with three perched up high on hilltops above, and a fourth (and UNESCO site) strategically placed in the water to defend the entrance to the harbor. Besides the original St Michael’s Fortress, the other three were built to defend against Ottoman attacks in the 1600s when Venetians controlled much of the Dalmatian coastal areas.

A few days after our arrival, Sofia and a friend from Prague flew down to Zadar, and so it’s been fun having them here with us!

2023 marks the first year that Croatia uses the euro currency (replacing the kuna), and prices have noticably increased. This inflation is perhaps due to post-Covid inflationary pressures common in many countries due to supply chain issues and maybe also greed, but it was also expected to happen once the common currency was adopted. Another factor is that 2023 is also the first year that Croatia is in the Schengen area, which is a shared visa zone for most of the European Union, plus some other regional countries. This means that Germans and Austrians can now drive into Croatia without any border control or passport check, and boy, do they seem to be doing just that! Bringing in their euros to spread around… Prices are still also indicated in kuna, I presume to help Croatians better understand how much they are paying, and probably also to supposedly lessen opportunistic and greedy vendors. Still, prices are mostly reasonable compared to those in Asheville.

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Bonus technology notes:

Now that we’re driving around, we have quickly learned that there are license plate readers all over, for both parking lots and speed control points. The license plate identification is printed on the ticket for the parking lot. And for the many radar-checked points along the roads in Croatia, we’ve been using an app that warns us when one is coming up, along with the max speed. If the arrows are green, all is well, but red lines appear with the indicated speed limit, and warning notification sounds are emitted, when approaching a speed trap. No police are needed when your speeding ticket is created automatically and arrives in the mail! Apparently the fines are quite high, and we don’t want to have to deal with the rental car company to pay for a speeding infraction.