Travel

October 22, 2021 - A new addition to the Zagreb dining scene had its official opening last week. Meet Restoran Matrix, a quality addition to the futuristic Matrix Office Park. Ever since the first building opened in 2019, I have been mildly obsessed with Matrix Office Park, which I used to pass on my weekly drives into the centre of Zagreb from Varazdin. In a city not renowned for the finest office block architecture, this place looked beyond cool.  And as I drove over time, I watched Matrix grow, and then a second building opened. But I never seemed to…

ZAGREB, 22 Oct 2021 - The Krapina Neanderthal Museum and Hušnjakovo site have been awarded the prestigious European Cultural Tourism Network (ECTN) Award 2021 in the category for Archaeological Sites and Museums as Cultural Tourism Attractions, the Ministry of Culture and Media reported on Friday. The museum won the award thanks to the excellent modern presentation of its pre-historic, archaeological and anthropological topics, and in particular, because it has the status of an unavoidable cultural-tourism destination in Europe with more than 100,000 visitors a year from around the globe, the ministry said in a press release. The reasoning for the award…

October 22, 2021 - In the heart of the Papuk Nature Park, 475 meters above sea level, is located the jewel of the Slavonia mountains: Jankovac, where its visitors can now enjoy two new educational trails. By the end of September this year, the Jankovac Forest Park was visited by almost 50,000 visitors, and will soon be richer for two more educational trails, reports HrTurizam. These are two projects co-financed entirely by the European Union from the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development, approved by the Agency for Payments in Agriculture, Fisheries and Rural Development, and refers to the type of…

October the 22nd, 2021 - Fancy some European train trips? Now you can hop aboard and do just that, and for free, thanks to a very popular EU-funded experience which is now back. If there's one thing that the European Union (EU) does that just about everyone loves, it's the allowance of freedom of movement. Travel and tourism was sadly halted during the coronavirus pandemic, and now with the advent of the vaccine, things are beginning to resemble some form of normality as we once knew it, slowly. The much loved DiscoverEU experience is now making a very welcome return,…

ZAGREB, 21 Oct 2021 - Zagreb is still dark red and parts of central and eastern Croatia have been marked dark red on the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control's latest COVID map, released every Thursday. Red means the number of active cases in the past two weeks has been between 75 and 200 per 100,000 population and that 4% or more of the COVID tests have been positive. Dark red is those countries where the total number of cases in 14 days has been over 500. Today Croatia reported 3,053 coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours as well as 17 related…

October 31, 2021 - We are 3 weeks into Croatian Tourism Month, a shiny promotion to extend the season in the Kingdom of Accidental Tourism. Anyone hungry? We have 35% off popcorn at the cinema in Central Dalmatia, Slavonia, Zadar County. And nothing else. There was a typically upbeat press release from the Croatian National Tourist Board on September 30, announcing something called Croatian Tourism Month. This is how it began: The “Croatian Tourism Month” campaign starts tomorrow, a project of the Ministry of Tourism and Sports and the Croatian National Tourist Board, within which numerous tourist services and experiences will be available at 35 percent…

October 20, 2021 - With the success of Delta and United Airlines in Dubrovnik, are flights between North America and Split Airport next? In the first ten days of October, 80,000 passengers traveled through Split Airport, almost as before the pandemic. This year it holds the title of the busiest airport in Croatia, but with the winter flight schedule, only eight direct flights will survive. So for now, there are no announcements or direct flights from North America, although this is an excellent wish of tourist workers, but also Croats after the recent announcement of visa-free travel.  After a successful…

October 19, 2021 - The ancient way in which the inhabitants of the village of Punat used to take care of their olive trees, harvest the olives and process them to produce the famous Krk extra virgin oil is now available to everyone through a new Stari toš interpretation center. HrTurizam.hr reports that, in the town of Punat, on the island of Krk, an interesting interpretation center Stari toš was opened as part of the Olive Week. The Interpretation Center is actually a concept of a permanent exhibition in a unique space that reveals heritage stories from the culture of growing…

October the 19th, 2021 - When most of us who live in Croatia think of Imotski, we tend not to think of tourism and foreign tourists arriving en masse. The image of this inland Dalmatian destination, however, is gradually altering as foreign visitors discover the hinterland and all of its wonder a stone's throw away from the coast. Imotski apartments have done exceptionally well, prices have increased and reservations for summer 2022 are already coming in. As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, yet another tourist season marked by the coronavirus pandemic has passed us by, and for the Imotski region it was…

October 17, 2021 - November sees the vineyards of Croatia paying tribute to their protector, St. Martin. Visit the largest St. Vincent statue in the world as part of Wine & Walk Ludbreg. The one town in Croaita which has surprised me more than any other during my 18 years here has been Ludbreg, an hour north of Zagreb in Varazdin County.  I have made several visits since my first back in 2016, when I penned Ludbreg, the Most Fascinating, Unusual Little Town in Croatia?  And that was before I made many more discoveries about this town which appears to be…