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A short stay in Croatia:
This year, instead of staying in a busy resort, we rented a small villa in Croatia for four nights, and now I’m wondering why we didn’t do it earlier. Croatia has this weird way of being familiar and completely foreign at the same time. You can fly to Pula, get a hire car and you are on your way within 40 minutes, passing through Istrian hills that look like Tuscany had a slight discount. Or you go south to Dalmatia, where the islands lie in the Adriatic like someone's poured a handful of white stones into blue glass. Both work well for a short break, although I would say Istria is for the villa crowd in particular. Towns like Rovinj, Motovun and the little villages around Grožnjan are packed with stone houses turned into holiday lets, often with a pool that you'll certainly use if you just want to read books. Accommodation goes all the way up. You can see restored manor houses or modern villas that are up above the sea and have outdoor kitchens and infinity pools and a concierge who is there to help you pick up a bit of local cheese. We looked at some of them, sighed at the price tag and settled on something in the middle: a renovated stone cottage with a terrace that is large enough for morning coffee and evening wine. But the budget options are actually quite nice too. In the hinterland or near the national parks like Plitvice or Paklenica, you can find wooden cabins and simple bungalows for much less than a London dinner that are in the middle of pine forests or vineyard rows. They’re basic, sure, but when you’re cooking fish out there in the open, and the only light comes from the stars, you don’t miss the marble bathroom. The food is where it really goes down. Istria is as much about Italian history as it is about food, so you’ll find sensational truffles, hand-made pasta and pršut that melts on your tongue. Get on the coast and it goes to grilled squid, octopus salad and the kind of fresh bread that makes you cringe about buying it at home. Inland, near Zagreb or up in the mountains, the food gets meatier: stews, dumplings and strong spirits that the local people pour over with a generosity that borders on concern. We ate at a konoba where the owner brought out dishes we hadn’t ordered because “you look hungry” and refused to let us leave until we’ve tried his grandfather’s rakija recipe. It was 11 a.m. What stays with you, however, isn’t just the meals or the swimming. It is the rhythm of the day. Mornings in a remote villa are almost embarrassingly peaceful. You wake up to cicadas instead of alarms, make coffee that takes longer than usual rushed routines and you’re staring at a view for twenty minutes and you don’t even check your phone. There’s a soft reflection that creeps in whether you invite it or not. You begin to remember how rarely you do anything and how your shoulders have probably been kept somewhere around your ears for the past six months. But then just when that peace starts to feel a bit too quiet, you drive into a busy town like Split or Zadar and the contrast is electric. The promenades are bustling, the cafés are full of folks who clearly take their coffee culture seriously, and there’s a happy chaos to the markets that makes you feel you left the cabin. We spent one afternoon in Split’s old town, walking around Diocletian’s Palace where roasted chestnuts drifted along the stone corridors and it was like being on a different holiday. That’s the joy of it: you can be in silence and solitude and go into noise and life in a short drive. People you meet have a lot to do with the landscape. In the villages, they’re reserved but warm, the sort of people who won’t chat easily but will fix your car problem without asking and wave off payment. In the towns they’re cosmopolitan, running restaurants and galleries in a relaxed confidence. Then there’s that odd character who sticks in your memory. We met an old man in a village near Labin who was apparently the local self-appointed parking attendant even though there was no parking to be had. He wore a faded captain's hat and directed our car into a space that was already clearly empty with elaborate hand signals which he had certainly invented himself. When we got out, he told us, in less than three words of English and a lot of pointing, that we had great wheels. We gave him a beer from our supplies. He saluted. We saw him two days later doing the same thing for a German couple with the same serious expression. He was pointless and absolutely marvellous. A few days in Croatia (in a luxury villa with a view of the Adriatic or a budget cabin in olive groves) give you something that longer holidays in busier places don’t do. It’s a reset that feels manageable, not overwhelming. You eat well, you swim if you’re near the coast, you walk through towns that have seen centuries pass without rushing to tell you about it, and you meet people who have yet to master the art of being performatively friendly. And you’re back a little browner, definitely fuller and with your shoulders back at roughly where they should be. I am already looking up cabins for next year. I may get the one with the slightly bigger terrace. You need somewhere to put the wine.
Have a great vacation in Croatia from the EUCottages travel team
