The peoples' democratic blog of Matt Hayward

If you’re like me you don’t like snow domes and kitschy spoons as souveneirs. You’d rather bring back something genuinely local from that place, like a CD, even if it’s never listened to. So what a surprise when it turns out to be pretty listenable.
Hladno Pivo is Croatian for ‘cold beer‘. Like a lot of [...]

Was going through the photos of the Croatia trip and realised that we left out Pula. Pula is in Istria, north western Croatia, bordering on Slovenia. It’s a cute harbor city that has the sixth largest Roman Colosseum in the world – and a sight to behold at that. Especially the bay views through the [...]

Why would I go there?
Something for everyone and by European standards, it’s still quite cheap. But really it’s because of the untouched beauty. It may seem like they haven’t built anything in 50 years, but the place is just manifest with great beaches, diving, pristine water, you name it. Hvar and Zadar are the places [...]

As my travelling companion just crudely retorted, no im not the slightest bit interested in footy at home – PERIOD. When im overseas however, it pulls on my little ocker heart strings.
Yesterday wamdering around the Croatian capital of Zagreb we found an expat pub called the Old Pharmacy Pub. We popped into check it out and [...]

As the trip nears to an end, we find ourselves in the Croatian capital of Zagreb. It’s the kind of city that you get when you have a communist hangover but you’re rapidly getting drunk from a big cask of cheap capitalist wine at the same time. In other words, it’s quickly gentrifying. It feels [...]

For the past 1500 kilometres, ive been schlepping a Seat Ibiza from Central Croatia (Split) to the Istrian coast in the north. It’s been a heady mix of hair pins and B roads to autobahn style freeways with very liberal speed limits. Cut a long story short, it really is a bit meat and three [...]

Well here we are again. Another travel blog update. Rovinj is the city of artists on the Istrian coast. Istria is in the far north east of Croatia and was once a part of Italy, and until last century a big part of Austria’s economy.
Istria and Rovinj is absolutely gorgeous, except for the fact that [...]

Good news. We’ve just got ourselves a Seat Ibiza rental car to drive around in. But the real revelation is that driving in Croatia is like having Keith Moon as a personal chauffeur: spontaneous and fun, but genuinely terrifying.
Its good news because until this point, its been a relentless melee of crack of dawn ferries, [...]

Well so far the holiday has been friggin’ awesome. But Korcula seems a bit like a Portsea or a Sorrento back home. A very affluent small beach town, and they don’t give a rats’ arse (I cant find the apostrophe on this Croatian keyboard!). Fortunately after the first day, our stay improved tremendously and I [...]

Lo and behold, Hvar must the be the only true pirate down of the Dalmatian coast. Because before they came, it probably had some beige name like Port Berkshire or something. But pirates mandate rolling Rs, so Hvarrrrrr it is!
All your Lovely Planet guide books describe Hvar as party heaven. In summer it may well [...]