UNESCO World Heritage Site: treasures of Croatia - tourist attractions, personal narratives - Brief Article

There are currently six UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Croatia. On our trip in June 2001 we visited five: Plitvice Lakes National Park, the historic center of Dubrovnik, the historic center of Split within the Palace of Diocletian, the Episcopal Complex of the Euphrasian Basilica in the historic center of Porec, and the historic city of Trogir.

We picked up our rental car at the Zagreb airport, spent two days exploring the many sites and museums in Zagreb, then drove to Zadar, stopping for a 4-hour hike through Plitvice Lakes National Park.

From Zadar we drove to Dubrovnik, passing through a tiny portion of Bosnia along the coast, and wandered the walls and lanes of the historic center of Dubrovnik for two days. We then headed north, staying on the beautiful, coastal highway which surpasses California's Highway 1 for the views (and with a lot less traffic), and stayed in Split.

We continued along the coast, stopping in Trogir and at nearly all the many other walled towns, continuing around the Istrian Peninsula to Pula, Rovinj and Porec, where we visited our fifth UNESCO site, the Euphrasian Basilica.

Croatia is a wonderful destination -- safe, inexpensive, tourist friendly, easy to drive in, scenic and historic with wonderful food, plenty of ATMs and Internet cafes, very few tourists or McDonald's and no hassles. We look forward to a return trip and a visit to the sixth UNESCO site, named in the year 2000, the St. Jacob Cathedral in Sibenik.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Martin Publications, Inc.
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