Croatia is always a good idea… with nice landscapes, nice food and a rich history, what else do you need to have a great weekend away? We have been in many parts of Croatia but one of the last places that we were yet to visit was Zadar and the surrounding area so here is the perfect itinerary for a weekend escape.
Best time to go: June and September. You should aim to go during the months with nice weather so you can enjoy the boat trip but avoiding July and August because it can get very hot.
General advice: you only need to rent a car if you are planning to go to Krka National park, otherwise you are not going to need one. We landed quite late at 1 am as our flight was delayed… one very strange thing that happened was that Ubers refused to pick us up and we had taxi drivers asking us where we were going and offering us different prices. The first one told us 65 EUR (outrageous given that the drive is 15 mins), second one 35 EUR and finally someone else came over and asked for 25 EUR which we accepted. Given this situation, I would advise to pre-book transportation form the airport to the city centre, I recommend using the booking.com website for this. Note that on the way back (from city centre to airport) we didn’t have any issues with the Uber and it cost us 20 EUR.
Where to stay: the best area to stay if you want to be really central is in the peninsula of the old town that goes from Perivoj Vladimira Nazora Park to the sea organ, however if you have rented a car I would advise to stay a bit further out and closer to the port area, for example at “Sky & Sun Luxury Rooms with private parking in the garage”. Another option is to stay outside the city centre (like 20/ 25 min walk) but closer to the beach, in that case I would recommend to stay at “La Vista Suites”.
Day 1: Boat trip
The best thing to do in Zadar is to go on a half day boat trip around the archipelago. I recommend to go for a private tour and you can book this using viator. We paid around 200 EUR for four hours. The price is for the group (not per person) and fits a maximum of 6 people but I think 4 adults should be the maximum or it is going to be a tight fit. You can either start the tour around 9.30 am or 2 pm. Food and drinks are not offered so you should take that with you to the boat.
We decided to do the boat tour in the afternoon so before that we went for an early lunch to “Harbor Cookhouse & Club”, this place is not only beautiful but the food was also amazing! Great finding.
For not only the boat tour but also generally for the beaches in Croatia I highly recommend that you take water shoes with you as there are a lot of rocks and pebbles everywhere. It is also useful to take a water bag that you can put your phone inside and swim with it to certain places.
The islands you will visit are Beach Jaz in Preko, from where you can swim to the little island of Galevac and Ošljak, which I really liked. The last one is a very chilled island and you can walk around it in around 40 minutes while stopping at different small beaches for a swim.
Once you finish your boat tour you can rest at your accommodation before dinner. For dinner the recommendation is to go to “Restaurant Malo Misto” where you can try Croatian dishes as well as very nice fish.
After dinner you can go for an ice cream at “Bob Rock’s Ice Cream shop” and for a drink at Muro Bar.
Day 2: Sakarun Beach or Karma beach For the second day you have 2 options. The first one is to take another boat to another island so you can visit the very famous Sakarun beach or the second one is to stay more local and walk to one of the beaches near the city.
If you want to go to Sakarun beach I would recommend to book a small boat with a maximum 12 passengers. I think this is key and the smaller the boat the better as it will be more relaxing and feel more exclusive. In this activity they usually take you to 2 main places: first stop is to snorkel with wild fish around the Sunken ship and second stop to swim and relax by the turquoise waters of Sakarun Beach. You can book it in viator and the price for a small boat for half a day tour will be 70 EUR per person.We booked this activity but unfortunately not enough people signed up and it got cancelled so we ended up doing the second option.
In the end, we ended up walking towards Kolovare Beach which is around a 20 min walk from the city centre. However, when we got there and saw how popular and busy this is spot was, we decided to keep walking and ended up at Karma beach. It is a smaller pebble beach but there was definitely more space. The good thing is that there is a bar there called “Caffe bar Porthos” that rents sunbeds for 7 EUR each, so we decided to take 2 sunbeds and relax there for the day and it was great.
We popped for lunch to “Karma Restaurant & Bar” and the food and service were excellent. Again we had great grilled fish and nice wine. The cod carpaccio was fantastic.
After lunch we came back to the beach for few more hours before going back to the hotel.
Before dinner, it would be good to go for a quick walk around the city centre so you can see the Church of St. Donatus and watch the sunset from the sea organ. The sea organ is carved into the steps of the seafront promenade with 35 organ pipes catching the sounds of waves entering and escaping the hollowed out holes, producing a unique soundtrack. If you have time, get a table at “Orgulje Café” and enjoy the sunset and organ sound while having a drink.
For dinner you can go to “4kantuna”, another excellent place in Zadar where we had great mussels and fish.
Do you have more days? If you have more days or you don’t go in the peak of summer when it is very hot, you have to visit Krka national park which is just a one hour drive from Zadar.
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