3 Days in Dubrovnik, Croatia
Three Days in Dubrovnik, Croatia
DO: Take some time to explore inside the walls, but also walk on top!
DON’T: Be afraid to leave the walled fort area for a picturesque dinner!
In 2016, we took our first trip to Europe, and wow, did we set the bar high! When people ask about our favorite destinations, this is always on the list. Our trip started in Spain & ended in Croatia. The last leg of our trip was the walled city of Dubrovnik and it was a city like we’ve never seen. Dubrovnik has so much to offer: beaches, history, and picturesque cliff sides. If you’re planning a trip to Croatia, make sure you include a few days here! We definitely learned a lot about traveling on this trip of a lifetime-we’ve included many Duhls and Don’ts Below!
Day 1: Settle In & Explore
Pro Travel Tip #1
Always take the local’s advice on where to eat (and always ask!)
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Getting There & Where to Stay
We took a ferry from Hvar to Dubrovnik in the morning using the Kapetan Luca ferry company. It was around 3 hours and they served food & beverages on board for a small fee. When arriving to Dubrovnik by ferry, it’s good to know the bus you need to take to get to the walled city if that’s where you’re staying! We spent our first day in Dubrovnik just getting our bearings of the city, checking into our accommodations, grabbing snacks & drinks at the market for our stay and of course eating & drinking our way through the city. Our Airbnb (Interlude Mauve) Host, Nike, was extremely accommodating and gave us some great recommendations for restaurants and places to go. Our place was in a great location, albeit up many many stairs, and was very clean & cute! That evening we had an amazing seafood risotto looking over the walled city at Dubrovka.
Next up, we had after-dinner cocktails. Cafe Buza Bar is a must do when in Dubrovnik. It is difficult to find through all the windy walled tunnels, but once you do, you’ll feel like you’re in a different world. They serve fun drinks— literally on the edge of the wall! People are diving & swimming into the water & you can gawk at the islands while watching the sunset!
Pro Travel Tip #2
Always have the following downloaded to your phone:
Itinerary-with accommodation & travel information (we use Google Docs offline feature)
Google Map-It is easy to pin all of the important places for your trip & download them for offline use. You can even use the step-by-step directions feature if you don’t have service!
City Guides -Audiobooks, Information, and Fun Facts about where you’re visiting! I like to download these to a Kindle App!
Do you think this sounds like a lot of prep work? We can do it for you!
Check out our Curated Itineraries page!
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Day 2: Walk the Walls
We started our second day early for one of the most popular activities in Dubrovnik-walking the walls of the city. It was amazing. It is easy to get tickets at the entrance (around $15 USD-but have Kuna Cash!) by one of the main gates to the city, and then you can explore at your own pace with this guide. This is a chance to use some of your downloaded materials on your phone if you’re into history. This walk took us in between 1-2 hours and it got really hot even though we started early! (We were there in August) It also started to get really crowded around 9:30, so we definitely recommend getting there as soon as you can in the morning!
After our walk, we were ready for the beach! We headed to Banje Beach. It is right outside of the walls, so pretty touristy, but we didn’t care! It was fun to watch the locals play fetch with their dogs in the ocean (we had been away from our pup for almost two weeks-the longest we’d ever gone!) and just relax on the rocks and reminisce on our first trip to Europe. As we were lounging, we ran into a couple, Marissa & Ryan, whom we had met in Hvar on our Caves tour & hung out all afternoon. They invited us to dinner and we were so happy we went…
Make it stand out
Our dinner at Gverovic Orsan was one of the most memorable we’ve had to this day! It was right on the water (you could put your feet in!) and we picked our fish right off of a tray of the fresh catches of the day. The wine & travel stories were flowing and we had an incredible time! This restaurant is outside of the walled city so we took a taxi and it was so very worth it!
Pro Travel Tip #3
Always leave some time open on your itinerary for spur-of-the-moment adventures! We never expected to run into Marissa & Ryan, and we had so much fun. We love staying in touch with people we meet on our travels, whether it be in person or through social media!
Day 3: Take in the Views
We had a pretty lazy last day. It was the very end of our two-week trip to Europe and we were pretty exhausted. We had big plans of taking a Kayak Tour around the Walls or taking the Ferry out to the Elaphites Islands. Instead, we headed back to the beach to relax. In the evening, we took the Cable Car to overlook Dubrovnik (booked through Chase Ultimate Rewards). We hit golden hour & the sunset perfectly somehow and it was the most amazing end to our time in Croatia!
Some tours we looked (on Viator) at for this day, but just didn’t get to unfortunately were:
Small Group Ston & Korcula Island
Day Trip & Wine Tasting, Tours of Towns & Wineries on each island
Dubrovnik Island Hopping to Elaphites +Lunch
8 hours, Unlimited drinks, See Kolocep, Lopud & Sipan Ultimate Rewards
Sea Kayak & Snorkeling Small Group
Kayak Dubrovnik to Lokrum, 2 hrs-morning, afternoon, or evening options
Tour is 7km long=4 miles Visit Blue & Betina Caves where can snorkel, Fruits & refreshments
Restaurant Recommendations
**Gverovic Orsan-outside of the city, but views and seafood that can’t be beat!
**Dubrovka-great seafood overlooking the walls
Azur-Fusian of Croatian & Asian
Oyster & Sushi Bar Bota-Fresh Seafood
Proto-classical Mediterranean, upscale, terrace
Lokanda Peskerija-casual seafood-terrace, on ocean
Ladi Pi-Pi-recommended by our host. It looked great but was too busy to get into!
**Our Favorites
Croatia is an amazing country & we will be adding more posts about it soon (Hvar & Split were awesome too!) We feel very lucky to have visited so many places overseas before the Pandemic hit & hope to do more traveling abroad soon!
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