Split: A Day on the Makarska Riviera

The week delivered one day of steady rain, followed by a mix of sun and clouds. The rain pushed us indoors - to museums, to a coffee shop shared with strangers from the Netherlands, to the practical work of mapping what comes next in our life abroad. The days between were quieter: beach picnics, walks through the palace, a coffee on Marjan Hill with the Adriatic spread below. When the weather cleared, we returned to the coast and took the bus south.

The Coast Beyond Split

The Makarska Riviera stretches roughly 37 miles (60 km) along the central Dalmatian coast, from Brela in the north to Gradac in the south. Its defining geographic feature is the relationship between the Biokovo massif, a limestone karst range that reaches 5,781 feet (1,762 m) at its summit, Sveti Jure and the narrow coastal strip below it. Elsewhere along the Adriatic, mountains tend to sit at a respectful distance from the shore. Here they press directly against it, which gives the towns along this stretch an unusual compressed quality: harbor, old town, road, mountain, in tight sequence, with almost nothing between them.

We left Split on the 8 AM coach. The drive is over an hour, up to 90 minutes in heavier traffic, along a road that curves and climbs above the Adriatic, regularly opening onto views that draw steady attention. Makarska was the first destination.

Makarska is the main town of the Riviera, with a history that reflects the succession of powers that held this coastline for centuries. The Romans settled here. The Ottomans briefly controlled the area in the 16th century before Venice took the town in 1646 and held it until Napoleon dissolved the Republic in 1797. The Baroque architecture of the old town dates from that long Venetian period. The town’s Franciscan presence also runs deep: the Franciscan monastery on the southern side of the harbor began construction in 1502, while nearby St. Mary’s Church is believed to date from around 1400. On the St. Peter Peninsula itself, the old church and archaeological remains point to an even longer sacred and civic history.

The civic center of the town is Kačić Square, anchored by the 18th-century Baroque church of St. Mark and a statue of Fra Andrija Kačić Miošić, a Franciscan friar and poet from the Makarska hinterlands, born in 1704. His Razgovor ugodni naroda slovinskoga, published in 1756 and often translated as A Pleasant Conversation of the Slavic People, became one of the most widely read Croatian-language books for more than a century: a collection of folk songs and epic verse that carried South Slavic history through poetry rather than formal chronicle.

Locals were gathered around the square when we arrived, the doors of St. Mark's opening and closing, the morning settling into its ordinary pace.

We found Drop, a small coffee shop tucked into one of the narrow lanes behind the square, and paused there before walking the town.

From the square, we followed the Makarska Riva, the palm-lined waterfront promenade, past harbor boats and into the shade of the St. Peter Peninsula. The path climbed from waterfront ease through pine trees, past the present-day St. Peter’s Church and older stone remains that point to the peninsula’s long history as a settled and sacred place, and around to the cliffs where the local cliff-jumping club meets in warmer months. No one was jumping on a breezy spring morning; the sea still carried a chill.

Farther along the path, the statue of St. Peter stands at the peninsula’s edge holding the keys to heaven, rising above the Adriatic. Behind Makarska, Biokovo climbs almost straight from the coast, giving the town its compressed feeling: a narrow settlement wedged between harbor and mountain. After lunch at GigaBite Street Food Bar, up from the harbor, we walked down to Gradska Plaža for a stretch on the beach before the next bus south to Brela.

Brela is a smaller settlement a short distance up the Riviera, known primarily for the quality of its beaches. Plaža Podrače and Punta Rata together offer what the Adriatic can look like when the conditions align: clear water, a pebble shoreline, pine trees leaning toward the sea, small coves creating calmer pockets of water, islands sitting across the channel, and the Biokovo range closing the background.

Punta Rata has been listed among the world's most beautiful beaches by more than one publication, and in May, before the summer crowds arrive and compress the space, the commendation did not feel overstated. It is a composed coastal scene rather than an untouched one, with paths, small cafés, and other visitors, but the setting is not diminished.

We did not swim. But the coast gave us enough without requiring us to enter it.

The path connecting the beaches was one of the better stretches of the day, running close to the water through pine shade and opening onto cove views and small café terraces. We stopped for a late-afternoon glass of wine at a table on a beach. That was the moment the day settled, the buses and calculations and schedules receding for a while as the Adriatic, the mountains, and the wine occupied the frame.

Then time caught up with us. We had lingered past the comfortable margin, which made the final section unavoidable: the steep mile-long climb from Brela's coast back up to the main road to catch the 6:18 PM return to Split. It was not leisurely. But it was effective.

The day covered ten miles on foot, spread across two towns, two beaches, a pine-covered peninsula, and one steep hill. We came home satisfied and slept soundly.

Slow travel has a reputation for spontaneity: no fixed itinerary, no firm commitments, the next place decided whenever the current one releases you. That is one version of it. Ours looks different. We have found that tending to what is plannable frees us to inhabit what is not. When the practical questions have answers, the present gets more of our attention. When they do not, they have a way of quietly crowding it.

This week, two future stops moved from vague intention to confirmed bookings.

Our exit from Split at the end of May required some attention. There are no viable flights from Split to Kotor, Montenegro, and the long overland route is not ideal. We settled on the more sensible coastal sequence: ferry from Split to Dubrovnik, one night in Dubrovnik, then the morning bus south across the border into Montenegro, arriving in Kotor by midday. That arrangement turns a long travel day into something more navigable and gives us a night in Dubrovnik, which is not an inconvenient layover.

We also confirmed our September Airbnb in Sarandë, Albania: a few weeks further out than we would normally book, but high seasonality limits availability, so we wanted to secure a favorable place and price. Each confirmed stop has a stabilizing effect on the months around it. When accommodation is solved, a future place stops being abstract. The route now holds through late autumn: Split, Kotor, a few stops on the Montenegrin coast, and Albania.

Structure underneath the open days is what lets the open days feel genuinely open.

The rainy Saturday brought us first to the Ethnographic Museum, then to the Emanuel Vidović Gallery, both made free by the Split Card.

The Ethnographic Museum gave us the material culture of traditional Dalmatia: clothing, weapons, domestic tools, and household objects arranged across several centuries. Split is easy to experience as monumental architecture and sea views. A museum like this interrupts that reading and pulls focus toward the human scale: toward what people actually wore, carried, ate from, and marked identity by. The grand surfaces tell one story. The objects tell another, and often a more specific one.

The Emanuel Vidović Gallery was quieter in a different register.

Vidović was born in Split in 1870, but his importance to the city is not only biographical. He helped shape Split’s modern artistic culture while returning throughout his career to the places and interiors he knew best: Split, Trogir, harbors, churches, studio rooms, and the domestic spaces of Dalmatian life. He made the familiar world around him worthy of sustained attention.

The gallery holds a substantial collection, but the space that holds you longest is the reconstruction of his studio. A painter’s studio carries a distinct quality of seriousness. It is not only where art was made; it is where looking became a discipline, practiced over decades on familiar subjects and familiar light.

Recognizing places inside the paintings gave the visit a useful doubling: Split, Trogir, and coastline we had walked ourselves. You see the place; then you see what it looks like to someone who has been seeing it for years.

His style resists easy summary. The paintings are often identifiable in subject, but they are not rendered with documentary precision. Light softens. Edges dissolve. Familiar places appear through haze and muted color, as though retrieved from memory rather than observed directly.

After several weeks in Split, the work made more sense to us. Vidović was not painting the coast as a visitor first encounters it. He was painting it as accumulated looking: years of returning to the same subjects, each canvas another record of what familiarity had taught him to see.

Drop Café, Makarska

Tucked into a narrow lane behind Kačić Square, Drop was the right pause before walking the town. A short coffee, a view of the lane traffic, and a few minutes with the map gave the morning a cleaner shape before the peninsula walk.

GigaBite Street Food Bar, Makarska

After the St. Peter Peninsula, GigaBite gave us exactly what the day needed: a quick, unfussy lunch up from the harbor before the next leg south. Not every meal has to become a culinary thesis. Sometimes the best choice is the one that keeps the day moving.

Sandwich Bar Rizzo, Split old town

On the rainy Saturday, after the museums, we stopped at Sandwich Bar Rizzo in the old town for sandwiches to go, eaten back at the apartment. It is a small place that does the thing a good sandwich shop should do: straightforward ingredients, made to order, no theater. It also fit the day: museum morning, wet streets, lunch carried home, no need to turn every meal into an occasion.

D16 Coffee, Split

When the rain started on Saturday, we needed a table inside. D16, set into the old city, was bustling. We ended up sharing a table with a group of Dutch travelers, and the pause turned into a longer conversation. Rainy café mornings have their own social logic: strangers make room, conversation becomes easy, and the time becomes well spent.

A glass of white wine at Punta Rata, Brela

After the coastal path between Plaža Podrače and Punta Rata, the beach café did what beach cafés are meant to do: slow the clock just enough. A cold local white, the late-afternoon light, and the water nearby. Nothing elaborate, but exactly placed.

The Split Card

The Split Visitor Center offers a 72-hour Split Card to travelers who can show verified proof of a stay of at least five nights in the city. It is free with that verification. The card covers free admission to select sites; the Ethnographic Museum and the Emanuel Vidović Gallery were two of ours. It also provides discounted rates at a range of other local businesses and activities.

It is not advertised prominently, so ask for it specifically at the visitor center on arrival. For anyone spending a week or more here, it is one of the more practical civic perks we have encountered on this journey.

Pre-booking the Makarska Riviera buses

The day trip south from Split works well, but the transport logistics deserve more attention than casual visitors often give them. We pre-booked all of our intercity tickets in advance: Split to Makarska, Makarska to Brela, and Brela back to Split.

That advance booking proved essential. The return bus from Brela to Split was full. Without pre-booked seats, we would have faced a long wait or an expensive alternative.

These are not city buses. The intercity coaches on the coastal route are full-sized, air-conditioned vehicles with luggage storage beneath and comfortable seats. Our full day in bus tickets came to €65 for two people: six tickets total, three legs each.

The scenery along the route is good enough that the bus ride earns its own attention. But departures are infrequent, and on a day structured around two towns, two beaches, and three separate bus legs, the return window is narrow. Pre-booking is what gives the day enough structure to enjoy the beautiful parts.

The full day cost €103 for two: €65 in transport, €6 at the morning bakery, €6 in coffees at Drop in Makarska, €20 in lunch, and €6 in wine at the beach in Brela. That is a reasonable accounting for ten miles on foot, two coastal towns, two beaches, and a full day on one of the more distinctive stretches of the Adriatic.

Week four is our final full week in Split.

We are hoping to take the ferry to Brač for a day at Zlatni Rat, the golden-horn beach at Bol that appears on more Croatian tourism materials than almost any other single image. We may also return by bus to Omiš, where the Cetina River meets the sea beneath steep limestone walls, and, if the weather and energy cooperate, make the climb to Fortica Fortress above the old town before closing the afternoon with coffee and a local beach.

The final week will also bring the month-end accounting: what Split offers the long-stay visitor, which locations and beaches reward attention, and where the costs surprised us. Beyond the numbers, there are quieter things worth recording: the Croatian understanding of what a beach is for, and how a city reads differently once the novelty has settled and daily life has taken its place. Four weeks is long enough for that shift to happen. One more week should tell us whether we used the time well.

The Makarska day put Split in context.

A place is not only itself. It is also what becomes reachable from it. Split is a ferry port, a bus hub, and a practical anchor for a coastline that runs in both directions. Makarska, Omiš, Trogir, Brač, Hvar, and more all sit within ordinary reach. From here, the Adriatic opens.

A first-time visitor might come to Split and see the Palace, the Riva, a beach, and perhaps one island. That is a fair account. But a longer stay lets the place widen. You begin to understand what connects it to everything beyond the obvious edges, and that understanding changes what the city means.

The Vidović Gallery had already given us the frame: the same coastline painted for decades, the subjects fixed, the seeing deepened. We have a month, not a career. But the principle holds.

Stay long enough, and attention begins to compound. Explore beyond the obvious edges. Return to familiar streets. Let the place revise itself. It will keep showing you things you did not notice the week before.

Until next week,
S&S

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