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English is widely spoken in Croatia, particularly in Zagreb and major tourist centres on the coast (although less so in smaller towns and villages off the main tourist trail). However, as anywhere making the effort to learn at least a few words of the local language will be appreciated by locals and make travel more rewarding.

Road sign at Križići, on the island of Cres (Walk 8)

Croatian is a phonetic language – that is, every letter in a word is pronounced, and the pronunciation of a given letter is always the same (which makes it far more consistent than English). A number of letters occurring in English are pronounced completely differently in Croatian, most notably ‘c’ (pronounced ‘ts’) and ‘j’ (pronounced ‘y’), so learning the correct pronunciation of these will greatly improve your chances of being understood properly.

See Appendix E for a list of useful Croatian words and phrases.

Getting there

By plane

Visitors can fly to Croatia and take a ferry to the islands from the Adriatic coast. There are several major airports on the coast – (north to south) Pula, Rijeka (the airport for which is actually on the island of Krk), Zadar, Split and Dubrovnik. For the walks in this book, Split, Zadar and Rijeka (see Appendix B for information on these gateway cities) are the most convenient, as they are the main departure points for the islands by ferry (see ‘ssss1’ for more information on ferries and Appendix C for ferry routes). Visitors who plan to see a bit more of the country than just the coast and islands should consider flying to Croatia’s lovely capital, Zagreb, and making their way to the coast from there by bus or train (see ‘Getting around’ for more details on local transport).