CROATIA: Know BEFORE you go- Everything you need to know before visiting Croatia

We have just spent the last three months exploring the amazing Dalmatian coast region of Croatia. We've had an amazing time, we've saw tons of things and we absolutely love this part of the world. And in this video we're going to tell you everything you need to know about visiting Croatia and be sure to stay tuned throughout the whole video because there's some very important changes coming up if you're going to be visiting Croatia in the next few months. Hi we're Jeff and Angela and we're Pure Detour. This summer we are island hopping the Dalmatian coast of Croatia. And before we jump into this video if you're new to the channel be sure to hit that subscribe button down below so you can keep getting the tips and tricks that we're offering here and it really helps us out a lot. And we are gonna jump right in with the best time to visit Croatia. Now you'll find that for the most part everybody is visiting Croatia in July and August which makes it like super high tourist season. It's very hot here in July and August. If you've watched our previous videos you've seen us struggling with the heat. As always we're sweaty and out of breath. Oh god I'm fat and out of shape. It's way too hot. Way too hot. We are gonna have a cold shower get all this sweat off us and also like the major attractions get incredibly incredibly crowded. Previously we have also visited in Croatia in both May and September and found that we enjoyed the vibe here a lot more. So the weather is a lot more moderate while still warm so you can enjoy the sea. The tourist attractions are still open. There are businesses you can visit. I think that late spring early fall are amazing times to visit. If you do visit in the off season which is typically winter you may find especially in the smaller islands and the smaller villages that many of the businesses are closed or have limited operating hours. The ferry schedules are a little bit more sparse. I think that the ideal time to visit is probably spring or fall. The official language here in Croatia is of course Croatian. However everywhere we've been within especially within the tourist industry everybody that you're going to encounter speaks excellent English. The majority of the population has at least some basic English behind them. It's been very easy for us to communicate here. Extremely easy but like everywhere we travel we like to try to pick up a little bit of the local language learn some basic phrases. So a good place to start would be with the phrase Dobar dan which translates to good day and when you sit at a restaurant the waiter will say it to you. When you pass someone on the street they will greet you with a Dobar dan. So it's nice to be able to learn to say it so you can greet them back. Another important phrase always is thank you. In Croatian you say thank you by saying Vala. Wondering what to pack with you on your trip to Croatia? If you are coming in the summertime of course bring very light breathable clothes. It is hot here in Croatia. The rest of the year they enjoy like a moderate Mediterranean climate but the number one tip I have for you for packing for Croatia is to pack light. A lot of the major cities have a ton of stairs. It's likely that your hotel is going to be upstairs or uphill. There are a lot of cobblestones on the streets which make it kind of challenging to negotiate with a rolly suitcase and a lot of the of the city centers are car free which means that you can't rely on your taxi to bring you right to the door of your hotel which means you're going to be lugging that suitcase up and down the stairs and over the cobblestones. And one of my favorite packing tips is to definitely look into merino wool. These things have been a lifesaver for me. They're antimicrobial. They don't smell. They don't need to be washed very often. Literally you can wear this thing a hundred times without washing it and it will not smell. They're super fast drying. They're very much anti-wrinkle. Yeah. Is that the word that I'm looking for? They don't wrinkle when you pack them. Yeah they're fantastic. One of my favorite brands that I've had is this one right here which is Unbound Merino. If you're interested in checking them out we'll leave a link for them down below. Now let's talk about the beaches here especially in Dalmatia. The waters here are unbelievably beautiful. If you watch our channel you know I've talked over and over about how I lived in the Bahamas for so long and how it's the best water in the world and it still is. This is the second best thing I've seen anywhere in the world. These beaches here are outstanding. Spectacular and it's the reason why you know a lot of people come here for a gorgeous beach holiday. It's an amazing place to come. One thing about it though is that if you're looking for sandy beaches you're probably not going to find them. Most of the beaches are quite rocky but it's kind of nice to sun yourself on a rock like a lizard. I enjoy it. Another thing is often you will see these big black spiky sea urchins under the water. And they're everywhere. Yeah now for a lot of the very popular beaches it looks like they are cleared away but you are going to spot one every now and then. You certainly don't want to step on one so keep your eyes open and if that worries you as well as the rockiness maybe think about packing a pair of water shoes. Let's move on to one of my favorite things. Of course the food here in Croatia is unbelievable. Unbelievable. We've made a couple food tours. If you want to check them out we'll put a little link up here. You can watch us eat our way through this amazing amazing region. Seafood of course absolutely a must. The quality is fantastic but make sure that you speak to the waiters and you speak to the locals because each island in each region is definitely going to have its local specialties and you don't want to miss any of them. They're lovely. Also there's a lot of wine growing around in this region. There are some varietals here that you don't find anywhere else in the world. We've enjoyed a lot. Visit the wineries. Check them out. You'll really really like the wine here. Another thing we found about dining here is that especially in these kind of touristy areas for the most part the restaurants are like the sit-down table service type restaurants. We're not finding a lot of options for just fast casual takeaway type food. Mostly just expect to find a nice sit-down restaurant where a waiter is going to serve you. And on average as far as costs go we're finding that for us on a dinner with a couple of drinks we're spending anywhere from five to seven hundred Croatian kunas. Lunches are working out somewhere three to four hundred kunas for the both of us. Accommodations here in Croatia. Throughout Dalmatia you're not going to find a whole lot of large hotel chains or resorts and what we I think have found for us the best value we found is in through homestays or small apartments that are attached to somebody's house or something like that. Yeah there's a lot of kind of small family-owned places where they'll have a few apartments that they're renting out to tourists. They typically will have their own little kitchen in their private bathroom. Sometimes they offer breakfast and what we have found is that the people have been spectacular. Amazing. They'll really go out of their way to make sure that your trip there and that your visit to their island and to their home is enjoyable. Yeah for us we found more or less that a small private apartment with a kitchen and a private bathroom has cost about 500 kuna a night. Next up is transportation. Uber is available I believe in some areas of Croatia and only in kind of select major cities. So what that means is for ground transportation you're probably going to be relying on taxis and on buses which we have used while we were here. Not all that much because the cities are super walkable but when we did use a bus or a taxi we found them to be easy, reliable, reasonably priced and easy to negotiate. But if you are spending any time in the Dalmatia region and you're island hopping, if you don't have a private boat, which we don't, you're probably going to be relying on the ferries. Yeah the ferry system most likely you're going to be using Jadrolinja ferry system. Their website is super easy to navigate, very easy to book, they take credit cards right over the website there. They are for the most part always on time. We did have one incident, they canceled on us but they did, they gave us more than enough notice to plan something else for ourselves. There are a couple other ferry companies aside from Jadrolinja. We booked one with a company called Krylo, we booked one with a for whatever reason Jadrolinja is not doing your route at the time you're choosing to do it. And the currency here in Croatia is the Croatian kuna. At the moment the US dollar and the euro are about on par with each other so for each of those you're going to get about seven kunas for your dollar or euro. Most establishments throughout Croatia take credit cards. You will find exceptions with bars and restaurants, small markets, stuff like that. They're going to be cash only so make sure you have cash on you. ATMs are everywhere here throughout Croatia so getting cash is going to be a very easy proposition for you. Just make sure you do your research on the ATMs before going so you don't get buried with crazy fees from the ATM machines. One other tip that I can give you here and this is for traveling anywhere in the world, not just in Croatia. Many ATMs that you go to will give you an option of converting in local currency or your home currency. Always choose local currency. What this is called is dynamic currency conversion. What they do is if they charge you in your home currency they'll hit you with fees of six to eight percent of whatever your withdrawal is at that time on top of ATM fees. So always choose local currency whenever you're getting money out of an ATM. Another note on the currency here in Croatia is that while we are here it is the kuna but in January of 2023 Croatia is converting to the euro system. They will be using euro as their currency so keep that in mind if you're traveling in 2023. Another thing about traveling after 2023 is that it is starting to look like Croatia will be joining the Schengen zone at that time. So if you are planning like an extended European trip make sure that you pay attention to the Schengen visa rules, the Schengen 90-day rule because that is going to apply here in Croatia coming up soon. The electrical system here in Croatia they use the standard 220 volt European system so make sure that you if you're coming from North America and you have appliances or electronics that you want to plug in make sure you bring an adapter like this. We're going to link a great one down below. And another thing that we've purchased that's really helped us out tremendously is this right here. This is not only an adapter it is also a voltage converter because we have a lot of camera equipment. For instance your computer whether it be a PC or a Mac is going to have its own built-in voltage conversion system. It can run on 110 or 220 volts to charge it. If you have any other little finicky things you may need a voltage converter which this does that. This also comes with adapters to be used globally around the world wherever you are. So when this gets plugged into the wall you end up with four USB slots, three standard 110 volt electrical outlets on it and this thing is a lifesaver with the amount of charging that we have to do everywhere. Yeah this is insane like we were worried about how big and bulky this was when we started carrying it but we literally can't live without it. Yeah when we ordered it we thought it might be too big but it actually packs really light. It's not that heavy and it's probably the most useful thing we have in our suitcase. Yeah and we will leave a link down below for this in case you're looking for one of these as well. As far as internet is concerned here the wi-fi any accommodations or anything like that is going to be extremely fast and extremely reliable for the most part. We haven't had any real issues with that. If you're not wanting to pay crazy roaming packages with your home cell phone plan you can buy sim cards here in Croatia. For 75 Croatian kuna you can get a 20 gigabyte sim card that is valid for 30 days. Unfortunately for us what we found the issue with we were buying sim cards and then using our computers just pulling the internet from our phones we burn through the data so fast like 20 gigabytes of data were lasting us like two or three days. So for us what we've done is we've switched over to a wi-fi hotspot. What it is is it's valid for five weeks and I want to say it's like 350 kuna for five weeks and it's unlimited data for the entire five weeks. We found that to be much better value. Probably the most important tip I have for you to get the most out of your time in Croatia and really the most out of your time when you travel anywhere is absolutely try to get involved with the locals. Chat with them, get to know a little bit about them. Here in Croatia we have found that the people are exceptionally friendly, super happy to talk to you. They're very proud of their country here. They're very proud of this gorgeous land they have and they're really happy to share that with you as a tourist. Some of our favorite examples have been who works at the Arsenal in Hvar. We sat there and talked to her for maybe two hours because she had this like encyclopedic knowledge of the history of the area and was just so happy to share it with us. Jeff and I being history buffs we're just sitting there rapt listening to her. She was fantastic. Another amazing example if you haven't seen our Dubrovnik food tour check it out here Ana at Kopun, our favorite restaurant in Dubrovnik. Once again extremely proud of like the food heritage, the wine culture here in Croatia and just so excited to share it with people who aren't from here. The people here are so generous. They're willing to offer you their time, to offer you their things. We had one guy his name was Blagoje. He worked at Cezar burger. Cezar street food. Cezar street food in Dubrovnik which has amazing burgers. We just started chatting with him casually out of nowhere and he offered us for a full day his gorgeous Ducati scooters for free. He's like take them go have a look around the city. It's crazy. We don't even know you but he absolutely just offered us his really nice scooters. So definitely make sure that you take the time to interact with culture, interact with the people here in Croatia. You won't be sorry. We are aware that during this trip we have only visited a small portion of Croatia. We've spent all of our time here in the gorgeous southern Dalmatian region. We are aware that Croatia has other regions and a very diverse culture, food and character. Absolutely. We are really hoping at this point that we can come back someday and explore the rest of this amazing country. Yeah so if there is something that we missed please leave a comment down below to let us know and also to let fellow travelers know that they need to know this before visiting Croatia. And guys please like and subscribe so you guys can follow along to see where we end up next. Bye.