After a week of far-flung tropical destinations, it’s reassuring to begin the weekend somewhere a little closer to home.

My first visit to Croatia was back in 2008. I was backpacking around Europe after graduating with two friends from university. We arrived on a stunning daytime train from Budapest. Much of the trundling journey followed Hungary’s sun-drenched Riviera, the iconic Lake Balaton. 

Arriving in Zagreb came as a bit of an anticlimax. There’s nothing wrong with Zagreb. It’s a perfectly lovely city. It’s just not where we wanted to be on our celebratory tour of Europe. We’d desperately hoped to continue onwards to Split, but our early-twenties planning skills hadn’t quite factored in the number of days we’d actually need on our Interrail passes to do this.

Either way, Zagreb is a pleasant, if not spellbinding capital city.

I did eventually make it to Split a few years ago. It’s also a pleasant enough Adriatic port city with some incredible Roman ruins. It’s also the perfect starting point to explore Croatia’s beautiful islands.

After an unexpectedly heavy first night, we took the 8am ferry to Vela Luka followed by the connecting ferry to the remote island of Lastovo. Lastovo is an absolute gem of an island. 

There’s nothing to do other than relax on the rocky Mediterranean beaches, and enjoy the local seafood and wine. In fact it’s so sleepy, that if you’d like to eat you need to call your preferred restaurant the day before so they know to open up. Lastovo the perfect place to be if you want to do almost nothing.

After Lastovo we visited the island of Korchula and then worked our way down the coast to Montenegro. 

Other recommendations for Croatia:

• The walls of Ston. They’re the longest preserved fortification system in Europe and look just like a mini Great Wall of China.

• The abandoned hotels of Kupari are a fascinating if dangerous place to spend a day. They were formally the summer retreat of Yugoslavia’s military elite, but now sit abandoned, crumbling into the Adriatic.