Croatia Online - Tourism News

After a week or so of storms and heavy rain, the heat wave has returned and the summer tourists are still here in numbers. This however is the last “big” weekend of the season and the skies have been full of hopefully happy visitors returning home. The newspapers are full of tourism news with a whole host of records being broken. Let’s hope those involved in the tourist industry have enough energy and motivation left to keep on working through September, and even October, so they can find out that there are plenty of tourists still keen to enjoy Croatia and hoping to find some restaurants and bars open.

Thanks to a number of readers for their comments and feedback which are always very gratefully received. And a reminder that if you’d like a direct response, please give your email address and ask for it not to be published. All comments are subject to moderation before publication and we won’t publish if you ask us not to. One reader has asked if we could do a posting on what to bring with you, and what to leave behind, when moving to Croatia, and we’ve scheduled this for September. In the meantime you’ll find plenty of related advice in the following postings:

Croatia Online - Expat Life

Croatia Online - Eating Out In Croatia

Croatia Online - Shopping In Croatia

Croatia Online - The Living Is Easy?

Just a snippet of not so positive news on the tourism front. We’ve mentioned Croatian roads a number of times. Things are improving fast with the new motorway and better signage but they’re still enough to cause a shudder to more cautious drivers. The Association for Safe International Road Travel includes Croatian coastal roads amongst the top 23 most dangerous roads in the world for being “narrow, curvy and congested” with many “lacking shoulders or guardrails”. However before you cancel your car hire booking, note that the A44 in England is also listed – “more than 25% of crashes on the stretch linking Leominster and Worcester are head-on” – alongside roads in more obvious destinations such as Bolivia, China, Nepal and Ecuador.

See our posting Croatia Online - Driving in Croatia for a more personal view.

And finally, for those of you that think Croatia’s new motorway is Europe’s new answer to the once unrestricted speeds of Germany’s Autobahns, think again. You may see many cars whizzing past you at unimaginable speed (why are they almost all invariably black BMW’s or Mercedes?) but we have seen a few being chased down by unmarked police cars. Officially the speed limit is 130 kilometres per hour and it seems that, soon, drivers may have to pay more attention to it.

Today’s photo is courtesy of Hrvatska Autoceste d.o.o, the company responsible for the amazing engineering and logistical achievements of Croatia’s first motorway.