What's fun to do in Hungary or Croatia?

this is just off the top of my head, ill update the thread if i remember more stuff

- zagreb is pretty boring, at least during the daytime, we stayed two days and two nights and would have been just fine with one day and one night.

- dubrovnik is absolutely beautiful, the most gorgeous place ive ever been. are you guys staying in b&b/pension-type places? it costs more to stay in the city walls but theres no real reason to do so, most of the bars in the walls get clogged with horrible australians. theres a famous bar thats on the rocks right outside the city walls--cant remember what its called but its in all the guides--its twice as expensive as any bar in croatia but is kind of unreal in terms of the view + you can swim right off the rocks there. ari and i spent 8 hours there one afternoon just watching the sunset and getting drunk on sweet wine.

- its totally worth taking day trips out of dubrovnik to the islands surrounding it--mljet in particular, which has an amazing national park with a beautiful lake for swimming and nice easy strolls. we also went to lopud which at the time had a pretty cool olafur eliasson installation, dunno if its still there.

- if you can swing it, hit the plitvice lakes national park for some really amazing walks and gorgeous scenery. you can "do" the whole park in a day, iirc its like 3-4 hours from zagreb, i assume there are places to stay nearby if you need to

- in budapest you have to, HAVE TO, eat at this little hungarian jewish place called fulemule, check out the menu here -- http://www.fulemule.hu/ -- nothing but duck and goose, the owner is so fat so you know its good, has a kind of checkered-tablecloth italian place vibe but seriously i had one of the best meals of my entire life here. o wait are you a vegetarian? worth breaking for this place imo.

- we had a kind of embarrassingly tourist-y visit to budapest but in all honesty the touristy stuff is worth going to. spend a whole day at the castle, check out the museums -- the "terror" museum is great but spooky -- go to a bath. we did a bunch of walking tours out of our lonely planet guide and they were actually really cool, the architecture in dat city is fantastic

matt dc just took a trip to croatia i believe and i bet hes got good recommendations for clubs and stuff

btw croatia is lousy with 20-year-old australians who are just the worst people basically on the planet

oh ALSO if you go to buda castle (which you should) and are walking around theres a GREAT little sausage-and-beer place thats perfectly situated for lunch AND is wayyy cheaper than the super tourist-trap places that are on the hill, some really nice tourist guide told us about it and it saved us from buying like 6-dollar cinnamon buns, of course i cant remember the name of it

also the labyrinth is a total rip off dont bother

just booked up for croatia in the last week of august. ~stoked~

niiiiice.

been trying to get there for years, starting to feel like i'll never make it.

rough plan is dubrovnik - mljet - korcula - (hvar? if there's time) - split - home

are you flying in to Zagreb? It's worth spending a day in.

Though, I'm American btw.

flying into dubrovnik, wasn't planning on spending any time in zagreb, heard it was a bit lackluster?

if we went north of split I think we'd maybe go to zadar instead

or go to plitvice national park:

http://i.imgur.com/AwZtX.jpg

If you've got an extra day in Dubrovnik and a car, just over the border in Montenegro is Kotor. It's pretty amazing...

http://www.theodora.com/wfb/photos/montenegro/bay_of_kotor_montenegro_photo.jpg

Pula in the north is also great. The town itself is OK, but there are Roman-era ruins everywhere.

http://www.wayfaring.info/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/118037-004-2bfcbc6e.jpg

Zagreb's horrible, I wouldn't bother, virtually everywhere else I've been in Croatia is nicer.

If you get the chance it's worth going to Zadar as well, which is a fantastic Roman city and has an awesome sea organ plus massive solar panel installation. Good nightlife and amazing sunsets as well.

I second Kotor. Bosnia is great as well if you've got time.

big up bosnia

mostar is about 2-3 hours from dubrovnik:
http://i.imgur.com/0JJVp.jpg

You can pay local youths to jump off that bridge while you watch and eat fish.

Man I loved the Balkans, have to go back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TvQ14tbcz0

ha woah this is crazy, i was just looking through my photos from when i was at Mostar, including this one:

http://i.imgur.com/tESvv.png

and then looked at my facebook wall and a friend of mine "liked" Bing and this is how that showed up on my feed:

http://i.imgur.com/9NRVv.png

Mostar looks amaaaaaaazing, wow.
I didn't find much going on in Zagreb but I was mostly there on a Sunday, so that may be why.
I really loved Plitvice national park, I very much recommend it... though in August it'll likely be rammed from around 11am onwards, so staying in one of the hotels in the park and getting in some early visiting before the tourist buses arrive is a good idea, if you go.

there's cool stuff in zagreb! like i said above you dont need more than a day. but if you spend a day wandering you can check out a small charming city incl:

- very good (and europe's first!) folk/"naive" art museum
http://i.minus.com/iU9mgIsf8bDy4.jpeg
- gorgeous 19th-century cemetery
http://i.minus.com/iwG6rDVgMcdTV.jpeg
- st mark's church (not much inside but great tiled roof)
http://i.minus.com/i54Vdaz2RdmH7.jpeg
- the farmers market
http://i.minus.com/if4RAHUgu3vWE.jpeg
- "old town gate," -- now a kind of small alley with a beautiful/cool/creepy shrine to the virgin mary

haha that doesnt seem like much written out and my polaroids dont do it justice but its a nice way to spend a gorgeous day

i stand by basically everything i wrote to grady above. korcula is beautiful, though stick to the old town side of the island, mljet is even prettier, split is charming and has great roman ruins. you cant go wrong. watch the sunset every night.

max otm re: zagreb, however i think it might easier to enjoy if you haven't grown up in (or even spent a lot of time traveling through) other european countries

sorry to spam another thread but i just self-published a booklet of photos i took in croatia, bosnia, and hungary. its mostly photos of the three dudes i went there with, but it came out pretty good. you can order it here.

or you can just look at my photos from that trip on facebook

good point

i also enjoyed visiting The Museum of Broken Relationships on the day I had to myself in Zagreb

oh this should go without saying, but stay out of Budapest's many strip clubs.

trust me.

twoooooo weeeeeeeeks

ur going to hungary?

onvm i see upthread

Anyone been to Dubrovnik lately? Still a good destination?

I've been living in Zadar county for the last few months, but haven't made it any further south than Split. Prices in summer are ridiculous compared to rest of year, and I can only imagine Dubrovnik is completely overwhelmed in summer months - never been but I was under impression its one of those places that is crumbling under the weight of visitors, esp given its small size

Yeah that was what I was worried about! My partner works at a school so we're tied to taking holidays in mid-July to mid-Aug. Wondering if there's anywhere Croatia/Slovenia/ish that's pretty and relaxing and not full of holiday drunks.

Lake Bled looks pretty. But hard to tell if it's mental or just average crowded in midsummer. I've heard good things about Lake Milstatt in Austria.

Dubrovnik is packed during the day and relatively quiet in mornings and evenings. In season, a vast proportion of the visitors are cruise passengers who clear out at about 4pm.

If you want to have an incredible diverse holiday with minimal travelling then Slovenia is one of the best places you can go. Lake Bled is busy but the place is astonishingly beautiful - I went there in the height of the summer and it was busy but by no means overwhelmed, there are plenty of quieter bits where you can lounge around and swim etc. Bled -> Ljubljana -> Piran would give you a lot of variety and Piran itself is a beautiful little coastal town with a decent beach.

In Croatia - Zadar is wonderful, Split is OK but gets very crowded, I guess Dubrovnik is even crazier. A lot of the smaller islands would be great as well.

That’s great to know, thanks! Did you need a car or is it ok for trains?

We did all of Slovenia on trains, it's a very small country and you can head up and down it with ease.

You are genuinely better off getting the bus in Croatia, or a ferry if you're heading up and down the coast. The trains take a long time and don't go any further south than Split.

The buses are reliable and frequent, and mostly have wifi. the ferries are nice but can be long and arent as frequent, depending on route, not sure on if you can boat from Pula/Rijeka/Zadar down to Split or Dubrovnik, but buses are all the time

Soča Valley in Slovenia is beautiful, quite relaxed even in summer and great for hiking into the mountains if you're into that. Probably requires travelling by bus if you're depending on public transport though.

i regretted not renting a car in rural slovenia, though trains and buses around population centers were very effective.

Enjoyed Dubrovnik last May, it's tourist-y for sure but we were there before the real busy season kicked in. Taking the ferry to Lokrum for an afternoon was the highlight, probably.

Matt DC, we've basically part-pilfered your holiday: Ljubljana > Piran > Bled, and then up to Lake Milstatt in Austria. Thanks for the tips - I was having one of those "there's too much choice" panics about what to book and that was really helpful!

I was actually in Dubrovnik yesterday (albeit briefly, my bus transfer was there), it appeared much less crowded than I thought it would be (bus station seems relatively central) - may back up what ShariVari was saying (though this was around noon, would have thought the cruise ships lads would have been in by then?)

Going to Debrecen on thursday for the Bela Bartok Choir Competition. Then a couple of days in Cluj and Sibiu in Romania. Any mustsees in those areas? I know a lot of Romanian classics are shot in those two cities, but it's probably tough to drag my fellow choir members to a concrete monstrosity that I saw in that one film that one time.

Right, then. Croatia in June for less than £500 per person (two people) from the UK. Any ideas?

No?

How long are you planning on being there for?

I'm not sure about the budgetary constraints but when I was there we stayed in cavtat the first night, seemed like a nice enough little semi-contained resort town with decent swimming and some restaurants, and a lot of fancy yachts. dubrovnik definitely worth a visit though eating within the walls can be expensive. split was great - good fun watching people play picigin on plitvice beach at sundown. we day tripped to mostar (in bosnia-h) from dubrovnik too which was worth doing.

we never made it to any of the islands or national parks... though hear they're the true stars of the show

June may still be early enough that the national parks aren't mad busy, but idk - wouldn't bet against it either

Zadar and surrounding region are very user-friendly, particularly for public transport - the buses (and app) are excellent, even extending out to buses on the islands (Ugljan and Pasman)