Hello All,
We would like to visit Croatia in 2022, tentatively looking at May 5 to May 15.
I understand this time frame is considered "shoulder season" - less crowds etc, which we prefer. Are hotels, restaurants, museums etc. reliably open at this time, and what is the weather like. In one of Rick's blogs he mentions the weather can be "dreary" at times.
Any input would be appreciated.
Thanks,
BT
That would be a fine to me to visit as long as you don't want to be swimming. (Late May is when the sea starts to warm.) You could get rain. You can check typical weather stats on a website like Wunderground.
Just back from Croatia. You can check future events on any city's tourist office site. Rovinj has a good one. May ls start up time, and people are rested and not overwhelmed after a summer of overtourism - like this one, strangely. Restaurants take 6 month licences from May to September usually. Local restaurants stay open all year , worth finding, not all on the Web.
Museums in Zagreb may still be closed for repair and renovations, as building season is Sep 15th to June 15th and work is going on to repair the earthquake damage, so check each museum you want to visit. Great views from the top of the Tower above the Funicular mini train up to upper town, both worth buying a ticket for if not afraid of heights or spiral stairs. Cafes all open as usual.
As my route via Venice was off - no ferries ran this year - I flew Lufthansa/Croatia Airlines via Frankfurt to Zagreb, simple.
The coast and the south have better weather than continental Zagreb if you want to guarantee warm rain or sun.
10 days is not really enough to get over jet lag, consider a few extra days if you can. As the first guests of the season you may be seen as good omens and treated even better by courteous Croatians. Check all Covid protocols and follow them. The Enter Croatia online application is one of the simplest in Europe if vaccinated. and can be done weeks in advance. A Zagreb airport officer just swiped my passport, let me in. There is a friendly Welcome to Zagreb counter if you need any help - my Croatian SIM had expired.
On the islands, many places won’t be open in early May or could just open at the weekend - this will also apply to the smaller coastal resorts on the mainland.
As you only have 10 days, Zagreb, Split and Dubrovnik is about as much as you can cover and museums, restaurants etc here will be open.
The latter part of May will still be quiet but the weather will be better if you could shift your dates.
We visit the Istrian peninsula in Croatia every Easter. On those trips, we have visited some of the nearby islands like Cres. Everything is open and we get into restaurants that you couldn't dream of getting into during the summer months. We usually rent a house with a heated pool.
Early June and late September, early October, but also your timing : no crowds, no raining storms not hot, not cold
all advice much appreciated !!
Thank you
For shoulder-season travel I recommend checking the actual, historical, day-by-day weather statistics available on the website timeanddate.com. I've given you a link for Split in May 2021, but you should definitely check multiple years since weather varies. For precipitation data I often just use the averages I find in the climate chart in the city's Wikipedia entry. Unfortunately, those averages are often based on a time period that ends in the year 2000, so I don't know how accurately they reflect current weather.
we visited that same time period a couple years ago .... it was dreary and chilly. If we go back it will be June
