Phone cards, banks, toll roads, renting cars and more. We’ve got you covered!
Croatia is friendly, beautiful, and reasonably priced. It is a young country with an old history. They gained their independence in 1991, but before the socialist/Yugoslavia period, there was a Croatia of old. There are many things they are still working on now that the country is independent. For example, Zagreb has so many beautiful buildings from the turn of the last century. Most of them still need restoration, some have been lovingly restored. These things take time and money, and they’ve only had 30 years so far.
Visas: As an EU country, Croatia allows visa-free travel for 90 days for US citizens.
Arrival at Zagreb airport (Franjo Tuđman Airport): Uber or Bolt is about half price of taxi into the city. Pick up Uber/Bolt on the departures level near the ‘kiss and fly’ sign. Mapping of Uber cars can be weird; it may look like the car needs to loop around the airport but is actually already waiting for you. Our driver told us this happens a lot. So, just keep an eye out for the license plate and color/make of your Uber even if the app claims your car is not there yet.
Arrival at Pula Airport: it’s so cute. There is one gate. We rented a car; more about this below.
Currency: As of Jan 2023, euro is the sole currency used. Kuna (HRK) is still mentioned on menus, etc. alongside euros but mostly to get residents used to the conversion (you can’t pay in kuna).
The vast majority of businesses accept credit cards for all transactions. But it’s worth having some cash for tips (5-10% if good service at a restaurant) or buying at a farmer’s market. ATMs for Agram Bank (link is to a page listing Agram Bank ATMs in Croatia) are transaction-fee free and basically spot exchange rates (to give you an idea, the EUR/USD market rate was 1.061 euros to the dollar, and I was getting 1.06 euros to the dollar from the ATM). There is an Agram Bank ATM at Britanski Square (there’s a group of 3 ATMs on outside of the Konzum supermarket; Agram Bank is the left-hand ATM; at the top it reads “Kreditna Banka Zagreb” which is another name for the bank). We also got money from Istarska Kreditna Banka without transaction fees and good exchange rates on the Istrian Peninsula.
Public transit in Zagreb: There are trams and buses (and one short funicular). You can buy a ticket at any tobacco shop, ticket machine or sometimes on board (buses, yes; trams not sure). You can buy a ticket for 30 minutes (0.53 euro or 0.80 euros if you buy from the bus driver) or 60 minutes (0.93 euro or 1.33 euro if you buy from the bus driver). If you plan to ride public transit more than 1-2 times a day, it’s probably easiest to buy a day pass (3.98 euros). Unfortunately, there’s no wireless credit card method to pay for tickets on board. There’s also an app: Moj zet app which we didn’t use, but may allow for NFC (near-field communication) phones to wirelessly check-in on board.
Lodging: In Zagreb, we stayed at the Fingerprint Luxury Apartments, which consists of 4 studio apartments in a great location - basically between the Lower and Upper Town and steps from the Botanical Garden. Almost everything we saw in town was no more than a 20 minute walk. We don’t usually do AirBnb-type places because of the variability in quality, value, truthfulness of description, etc. but liked this lodging enough to recommend it: clean, comfortable bed and sheets. We found them on Booking.com.
In Istria, we stayed at the Hotel Lone in Rovinj and can definitely recommend it. We asked the hotel to price-match Booking.com’s price and they did so. It’s about 15 minutes walk from the hotel to the seaside wharf where most of the restaurants and pedestrian streets are. The hotel itself sits next to a park and on the ocean. All the rooms have balconies.
SIMs for cell phones: While we normally seek out a local SIM in the country we are staying, our trip to Croatia also included stays in Bulgaria and Slovenia, and I wasn’t enthusiastic about buying a new SIM every week. We ended up using an Orange Holiday World SIM that works in all EU countries plus most of the world (Bulgaria and Slovenia are EU countries but not covered by the Orange Europe SIM). We bought the SIM on Amazon before we left, and used Orange Top-Up (you can also use this link to buy an eSIM) to renew the SIM every 2 weeks - 31.50 euros for 10 Gb of data. Be sure to select Holiday World Top-Up (not Holiday) when you Top-Up to get EU countries plus Balkan countries. When you start using the Orange SIM, you’ll get text messages about registering the SIM beyond 30 days by providing a passport (required by French law). Consider doing that if you a) are traveling longer than 30 days or b) like the idea of having a French phone number - there’s no charge for extending the life of the SIM for 6 months.
One other option, which we found after we had set up our Orange SIM:
WizzAir (a discount airline based in Budapest, Hungary) also offers eSIMs for 150 different countries, including several options that work throughout Europe. Their data packages and length of service have great prices for the amounts.
Car rental: We rented a car (from the local combined Alamo/Enterprise affiliate) in Pula to drive around the Istrian Peninsula and into Slovenia.
Several thoughts:
1) Manual transmission is much cheaper, and more fun, to rent than automatic;
2) While Booking.com (Economybookings.com) is convenient and cheaper than other options, when you reserve a car on a non-European site, you are limited in the type of car insurance you can buy and it’s typically the most expensive. In our case, we had to buy $0 deductible coverage; the car rental agent told us there were several deductibles available if we had booked directly with Enterprise or Alamo Croatia;
3) Many US car insurances and credit cards do not provide insurance in central Europe, so check in advance. Even when we checked in advance, we couldn’t actually get a straight answer from our credit card company (our car insurance company did not cover);
4) Drop-off fees, if you return the car to a different location than pick-up, can be as much as the rental (the rental itself is cheap, around 15 euros a day, the drop-off fee for us was 180 euros)
5) In Croatia, paying tolls is very easy. You take a ticket when you get on the tollway, and pay with credit card when you exit. Toll machines take both wireless-enabled and regular credit cards - there is a slot for the non-wireless-enabled credit cards and a place to touch the wireless-enabled credit card. See photo below
6) If you drive in Slovenia, you need an e-vignette to pay tolls. If you rent a car in Slovenia, they should be able to help. Since we rented in Croatia, the car rental agency explained we needed to have our license plate info inputted into the Slovenian system at a gas station near the Slovenian border. The agent cautioned us that we must be registered in the system before entering Slovenia, as there are penalties of 150 euros or more, and no grace period. It turns out an easier way to get the e-vignette is to do it online - that’s the cheapest and most secure way to enter the information. Only one agency is the official agency (DARS); all the other websites (and gas stations) charge an extra few euros to set up the e-vignette for you. If you cross to Italy, the toll roads are similar to the system in Croatia. No special pass is needed.
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