Budget time: Two Weeks in Croatia

Travel
Written By Bárbara Gomes

I have recently spent two weeks in Croatia with my boyfriend and, when I shared about it on my Instagram, a lot of you seemed interested in our budget and costs for this trip. So, here I am writing this post to let you know all about how much we’ve spent on our two-week trip, how you can save up a bit, and our final considerations.

In this post, I’ll tell you about our costs with transportation, food, accommodation, and other experiences. Please, be aware that we were not on a tight budget, so we splurge a bit here and there but don’t worry. If you want to save a few more bucks, you can still visit Croatia without going bankrupt.

The overall cost of the trip

In total, this trip cost us 3486,96€ (1743,47€ each). This value includes everything: flights, accommodation, car, gas, tours, entrance tickets, food, tips…everything!

Bear in mind that this trip was not a tight-budget kind of trip, so you can definitely spend way less money. Overall, we don’t think Croatia is an expensive country at all.

We only stayed two nights in a hostel when we arrived and we didn’t even sleep in a dorm, we were in a private room with a private bathroom. If you choose hostels or simpler rooms, if you buy your food from supermarkets instead of eating out all the time, and if you do your research for tours, car, and tickets, I believe you could cut these costs almost in half (depending where you’re flying from of course).

Flights

We flew from Portugal and we didn’t want to risk doing independent stopovers, so we didn’t choose the cheapest flights. The cheapest was from RyanAir and you had to go to the UK and then catch another flight to Zagreb. We chose a flight from Lufthansa where we just need to do the stopover and everything was controlled by them. So, as you can see, we’ve spent a total of 802.45€ in flights but that could be reduced to about 500€ with that RyanAir flight.

Transportation

Since we were going to see a handful of cities, the easiest and most convenient way of doing it was by renting a car. The rent cost us around 208€ for almost the whole trip (we only got the car on our second full day there, when we left Zagreb). However, there we cheaper rents with OK Mobility, for example (we used Sixt). You can (and should) avoid tolls by choosing the coastal road instead of the highway and I say that you should because the view is phenomenal and totally worth it!

In total, we spent 457.73€ in total, in this category. These transportation costs include the cost of going from home to the airport, fuel, some Uber we used, tolls, car rental, and parking the car (we only paid for parking in Dubrovnik and found ways of parking for free in every other city).

Accommodation

I think that together with “food”, this is where you definitely can cut if you’re on a budget (or splurge a bit more if you have more to spend). Our total cost here was 1057.18€, but we stayed in a private room in a hostel in Zagreb and then we stayed in 4-star hotels, a nice apartment and we even stayed one night at a 5-star hotel on our way to Dubrovnik so that we could just relax.

You can definitely find cheaper options. Below, you can find a few options + the ones where we stayed:

Zagreb

Plitvice

Zadar

Split

Hvar

Omis/Makarska

Dubrovnik

Food

Once again, you can save so much on food if you do it right or, if you’re not on a budget, you can appreciate some delicious cuisine in this country. In total, we needed 655.96€ to feed ourselves during this trip. Usually, for lunch and snacks, we would go to the supermarket and buy cookies, yogurts, bread, cheese, tuna, and fruits. We went out for dinner most days and breakfast was included in all our accommodations, except the one in Omis. There were a few variations, but this was mostly it.

To give you an idea, we would spend 30€-45€ when we ate out but, in the supermarket, you could get lunch and snacks for two for 6€-10€. As you can see, if we stuck to one of those options only, the cost of food for this trip would be very different.

Tours

This is an expense that you could totally skip. We spent a total of 175.30€ on tours, most of it being a tour that shouldn’t have happened. My tip here: if you go during low or shoulder season, always check if the tour is worth it. If it says you’re visiting a cave, check with them if you can actually enter the cave with the current weather and ask all the questions before buying. Some tour companies will cancel the tour if they see the weather won’t allow them to give you a great experience. Others (like the one we got in Dubrovnik) won’t cancel and then you end up having to pay to go on a trip that is not worth the money. If you go during summer, you should be fine.

If you have the chance, go on a tour to the caves, to the islands, snorkeling, diving…whatever you prefer. You can find good trips on GetYourGuide and you won’t regret it, as long as you have the precautions above ;)

Tickets

We didn’t find attractions to be very expensive in Croatia. The only ones we found a bit “overpriced” was the entrance to the City Walls in Dubrovnik, which was 35€/person (but you can get more for this value, stay tuned for the guide with the tips), and the entrance to the Plitvice Lakes (47€/day/person) but let me tell you that the lakes are really worth that money. All the other attractions were from 3€ to 12€, so we spent in total 258€, taking into account that we went to the lakes for 2 days.

Other

In this category, I included some random stuff we bought like souvenirs, sunscreen, and stuff like that. So, it’s not very relevant and it’s a cost you can totally skip if you don’t need to buy anything.

Overall, I think it is possible to visit Croatia on a budget as the country is not super expensive. I’m not saying it is super cheap because prices are higher if you visit during the high season, but it’s somewhere in the middle. As I always say, the price of traveling will always depend on how you travel. Anyways, here I am showing you all the info from my experience so that you can have a better idea 😉

XOXO,

Barbara

Bárbara Gomes https://www.barbaras-cafe.com
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