Croatia Road Trips

The beauty of Croatia’s remote, yet well-maintained, roads make road-tripping an obvious choice for touring the full expanse of this compact country. There are multiple routes you can take on Croatia road trips, whether criss-crossing the interior or hugging the coast, so your main dilemma will be deciding where to begin and end. If you opt to trace the Istrian Triangle, start in the lavish resort of Opatija and end in Pula, home to a remarkably well-preserved Roman amphitheatre. The peninsula of Istria is often likened to a Croatian Tuscany and the cuisine here offers plenty of excuses to take a break along the way, including stopping off in Porec for fresh oysters, seafood, wine and cheese.

Alternatively, take the national parks route, beginning in the famed Plitvice National Park, with its shimmering lakes and tumbling waterfalls, before reaching Velebit National Park, home to the Western Balkans’ most well-known mountain range: the Dinaric Alps (stretching all the way from Italy to Albania). Croatia road trips can also include its most enthralling cities via the Adriatic Highway, which can take you all the way from Split to Dubrovnik, along cliff-clinging roads that include some seat-gripping turns. For more of a taste of island life, swap your car for a boat and head for Kornati National Park – encompassing 89 of the Kornati Archipelago’s 140 islets – each composed of rugged karstic terrain emerging from the emerald Adriatic.