James Went To Zadar

My sister recently announced that she had 3 holiday days left to take at work and wanted to go somewhere – I said I’m up for a holiday and we ended up booking a trip to Zadar.

We had quite tight time schedules so wherever we were going to go was going to be a flying visit – after some research I had a shortlist of Naples, Bilbao and Zadar – all places we could fly to on the Tuesday after work and return on the Friday.

But Zadar was the clear winner – who can resist £68 return flights, even if it is on Ryanair? Although they upgraded us on the way there to Lauda airline – no, never heard of them either. However the stewardess was keen on the plane singing happy birthday to Tom, which was slightly bizarre. Hot stewardesses too.

Plus Airbnb’s were cheaper in Zadar at £60 a night, and we expected to spend less there than in Spain and Italy. And the cherry on the cake? No masks required. We didn’t see one solitary mask anywhere. The joy. The beauty. Yes I came home ill. Not covid though.

What To Do?

Well, we were there for 2 full days only. The first night we wandered around the old town aimlessly with the aim of getting a late night beer. Apart from some place in the park blaring out gashtastic EDM (also hosting nights called Sexyology where apparently from their Instagram page only attractive women visit…though Croatian women do all seem to actually be very attractive), there was nowhere that was open – well, a few places were “open” but not serving. Or at least not serving us. We did eventually persuade a café to allow us some takeaway beers.

The first day we started with the must-do of all European holidays, which is sitting outside, in a public square, drinking exceptionally over-priced beer. Except this being Croatia, the beer in a public square is actually priced competitively – I think we were paying around £2.00 a pint on average. And they had a Tuna, Sushi & Wine festival, with a band on, followed by a house music DJ. And we could just sit there in bliss and watch the locals carry on with their day. Yes someone was playing a banjo. And someone was playing a washing board. You could almost hear the Shoreditch.

One of the things I love to say before I go on holiday is that “I’m not going to put on weight”. However, with my love of beer and disdain for all exercise other than walking, this means that we have to do plenty of walking. Though with a sister that is training for a walking marathon (yes you can sponsor her if you fancy), walking on holiday is an excellent option. Especially when the weather is 25’C with glorious sunshine – and not stupidly hot like Spain was that week.

So in the afternoon we walked along the coast to the north, to Famous Beach Bar & Grill, which actually had a cool beach bar vibe about it – even if it was pretty quiet, with a great selection of beers – not something so easy to find in Zadar. And then walked back – we managed a good 30,000 steps that day.

The other bar we found that we really liked was The Garden Lounge, nestled back in the old town – really spacious and clearly built for busier times than mid-May, with nicer mattresses than my crappy London rented house thing, a good selection of cocktails if you like that kind of thing – and a few decent beers for me from Garden Brewery.

And the final activity for the day, apart from dinner (I will talk about food later), was watching the sunset.

If it’s good enough for Alfred Hitchcock, it’s good enough for me.

Get a boat

The next day we booked an Airbnb experience, which was a trip in this old family boat to two different islands – at £45 each probably about as much as we spent on food all holiday, and nearly as much as the flight, but I would argue is still good value – especially as there was just us two on the boat.

It was definitely quite choppy on the boat and a stray wave soaked my arse on the way back – not entirely sure why I didn’t bring swimming shorts to Croatia, but I didn’t even think “sea”. Then again, I am far too self-conscious about my belly – I don’t even flash my nipples when drunk any more.

The first island, Osljak, that our captain took us to was almost deserted, bar a few houses – I think he said 50 people lived there. We walked around the island in just 30 minutes.

The second island, Ugljan, was more populated and had a string of bars, as well as a shallow cove where I did get into the sea – or as far as I could without getting my short shorts wet.

What did we eat?

Whenever I go somewhere, I always try to eat some of the traditional food – whether that be the Bryndzove Halusky in Bratislava, snails in Paris, Mexican food in California or pizza in Italy. Yet if Croatia had traditional food, it very much hides it from tourists.

We did however find something called Pašticada in a TripAdvisor’s number 1 rated restaurant in Zadar – Butler Gourmet&Cocktails Garden. Normally I wouldn’t go to TripAdvisor’s number 1 restaurant as it is generally out of my price range – though London’s current number 1 is an Indian restaurant called Bonoo which very much is affordable.

For starters, we ordered a charcuterie board – the soft Croatian cheese there was totally delicious, some of the best cheese I’d ever had, and the Croatian prosciutto was melt in your mouth too. I liked the fritters – though they weren’t quite what I’d expected, being basically deep-fried balls of soft bread though almost quite close to a doughnut in texture. Everything else on the board was fairly ordinary.

The Pašticada was also quite ordinary – maybe this is why you don’t see too much of Croatian cuisine around? Gnocchi I get bored of after a while, though it was nicely done. The beef was basically a large slab – in some places it broke apart beautifully but in some places it was still a little tough. It didn’t seem the best cut ever. I enjoyed the sauce, but not enough to improve it from a respectably good, 7/10 kind of meal.

We also had some Croatian wine, and sadly we didn’t like either glass that we tried. Both tasted rather Tesco-ish. Sorry to any Croatians reading.

Then the next night we went to the restaurant that our taxi driver recommended, Konoba Rafaelo, which was a good 40 minute walk from where we were staying. Alas, we were made to feel unwelcome straight away – locals got served quickly with friendly service, foreigners not so. It was a good 10 minutes waiting at the door, despite lots of empty tables inside, whilst they decided whether they could be arsed with us.

We should have taken note and gone elsewhere but I’m stubborn.

These Konoba places seem to be fairly rudimentary places with outdoor grills – specialising in meat. So much so that when two American vegetarians sat down (without waiting to see if they had a table), the waiter persuaded them to leave and try somewhere else. But suggested they come back when they started eating meat. Hmmm.

We actually had better wine here – and the steak itself was good. However, the dark peppercorn sauce tasted a bit like burnt tomato soup, heavy on the pepper – fine at first, disgusting after a while. And the chips looked like what they’d cooked the day before and had kept for tourists.

Give me some fish

Thankfully, Zadar excelled at fish – and though both dinners disappointed to different extents, both lunches were excellent.

The first day we went to a place called Pet Bunara – just around the corner from the Tuna, Sushi & Wine festival (what more does a festival need?). Sadly the restaurant was next to a building site – the regular sound of drilling was more to the annoyance of the waiter than us, but sure it would have put off some potential customers too.

Seabass made up for it – wrapping a bundle of spinach and scampi, with some polenta and broccoli puree to finish it off.

The next day’s lunch I had a superb tuna steak, with grilled vegetables, at Restoran Bruschetta – another recommendation from our taxi driver though it came up on other research too.

What we could have done if we stayed longer?

I feel like two days was actually enough to fully explore the old town of Zadar – though two days isn’t enough time to be in Croatia.

Had we stayed longer, I might have persuaded my sister to do the Communist walking tour of Zadar that I found on Airbnb experiences – probably we would have spent longer at the Tuna, Sushi & Wine festival – and actually participated rather than watched from the square.

Krka National Park was our unofficial back-up plan had the weather not been good enough for boat life – which just looks stunning.

And, of course, we could have just got a boat to a different island.

Tada Zadar. Time to book some flights elsewhere.