My wife and I just had our honeymoon in Croatia last month in July. We stayed in Dubrovnik, Hvar, and Split. We had a wonderful time! Croatia is a beautiful country with so much to see! I highly recommend it!
Croatia literally looks like it's out of a fairy tale-- especially in person. I highly recommend that everyone who likes to travel make a trip there in their lifetime.
Must visited country. I guess Croatia is not only beach, but other amazing places. Thanks dear Matt and Julia showing us other sides of Croatia. Have a wonderful adventures.
Croatia is much more. Another region you must visited is Hrvatsko Zagorje (Croatian Zagorje). Has no sea but it has green hills, the best villages in the world and over 50 castles. I never see any video on youtube from foreign people about Croatian Zagorje or Slavonia. Only regions who has sea. It's a such a shame.
Croatia is super high on our bucket list!! We have heard so many good things. Loved getting to see a different perspective of the country.. Quiet countryside towns are our jam! But totally understand the frustration with not being able to speak the language.. You just can't connect with people beyond a certain level without a shared language. Y'all were just recommended to us on our home page today and glad we clicked!! We can't wait to continue following your journey. We're starting our own full-time travel journey in January, so we're trying to learn all we can from other creators who are already doing it!!
Hello Matt and Julia. I had a notification from another RU-vid Channel I watch and after I watched the video it automatically advanced to your videos. I must tell you I really enjoyed your video. Thank you for Showing us the beauty of the world. I think the villages are suspended in time and they make my Soul happy to watch the way they live so contently amoung one another, and they seem to be very Polite... even the children. Keep up the good work, have fun and stay safe. May God bless you and Keep you protected. ( The shots of the views look professional.) 💕🚶♀️🚶♂️😎
Ok I thought it was you🥰🥰🥰 I loved all your bakes. You are awesome and now love your travel videos. It is so good to see how people live all over the world. That is how we can better understand others and have love for others instead of hate.🥰🥰🥰🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🥰🥰🥰
You should try north Croatia for picture pretty and pristine villages. The region of Podravina for instance, the home of Croatia’s naive art ((Hlebine village). Reminds on Bruegel’s art and world , especially during harvests, feasts, weddings. It’s an under-explored area, and yet lovely.
I'm from Dalmatia, but I agree with you that Podravina and the northern parts of Croatia are incredibly beautiful. BUT - do not wait for foreigners to promote your areas. Get started and do it yourself! Zagorje, Podravina, Slavonija etc. have so much to offer.
@@asterixx6878 Da mi oprostiš na generaliziranju, ali ti si doslovno prvi dalmatinac koji zna di je podravina ili ju barem spominje ( a studirao sam u Šibeniku 3 godine )
Love watching! I look forward to your new posts every week. Would love it if you showed a map once in awhile tracking where you are headed. Thanks for your sharing your experiences!
We love your spirit! We are fulltime travelers and are using your travels as a reference. We have spent a month in Croatia this past May. But will be back in October! So you two are helping out! QUESTION. About your rental car. Where did you rent it? One way? Return? Time? Approximate cost? TIA!! Keep up the great vlogging!!!
I dont know how this got recommended to me but Im so glad you liked it here. I live in Split, made and based here, and just yesterday I came back from weekend camping at Pelješac...one of my favorite places in croatia (besides Istra and Gorski kotar). I just wanted to tell you, the dish you ate, pašticada, it is sweet because there is fruit in the sauce. My mom prepares it with apples and prunes and lots of veggiees, some put only prunes and carrots...it depends. and the meat is so tender because is stayes marinated for 1-2 days befiore cooking it for 3-4 hours first in the sauce and then we cut it and cook for another hour maybe. its a dish we all cook at home in our own way, but we all love it :))) and Im so glad you liked it :D
My Friends……I just finished watching the season of The Great British Bake Off with Julia’s participation. And to stumble across this wonderful series letting us know how y’all are doing and what the two of you are up to………FANTASTIC! I am a subscriber and am looking forward to seeing and experiencing y’all’s adventures. From Greenville, Darke County, Ohio USA 🇺🇸………Be Safe and Have A Happy Day! Den- 🤙
I am so glad that you tried pašticada. It is probably the best dish you could try in whole Croatia. It is actually not that easy to make. It takes almost two full days to prepare
If you planning to visit Zagreb and the interior of Croatia, you have to visit Nature Park Lonjsko Polje and the villages Krapje and Čigoć. Lonjsko Polje is roughly 100 kilometers East of Zagreb.
pašticada sauce is all the flavor of the meat cooking in it for 3 hours with added prosecco (or red vine with added sugar if you don't have prosecco) that's why you get caramelized flavor and acidity of marinade meat was marinating in for 2-3 days
@@MattandJulia here is a recipe for Pašticada. Enjoy! Ingredients(for 10 people) 1,60 kg beef round roast meat (or beef shoulder pot roast meat) 15 dag smoked bacon 10-15 dag grease or oik 40 dag vegetables for soup (carrot, cellery, parsley roots & leaves) 2 big onions + 4-5 cloves of garlic coriander seeds , small amount of chilli pepper 2 dcl prosecco or red wine with added sugar 2 spoons of tomato puree nutmeg, 5-6 cloves , cinnamon 5-6 dried plums without pits salt, pepper Marinade for spiking: cloves , bacon and carrot (both cut to 1-2cm long sticks) wine vinegar diluted with water small quantity of red wine with water small red onion + 4 cloves of garlic carrot, leek, celery all finely chopped peppercorns, laurel, rosemary preparation: wash meat, remove excess membranes from the meat and then spike the meat with bacon, cloves of garlic, cloves and carrots. put the meat in wine vinegar diluted with water and red wine, put finely chopped onion,carrot, cellery, parsley roots & leaves. turn meat around couple times so it gets marinade equally all over it, then put it in the fridge for at least 48 hours. at the day of the meal, remove meat from marinade, drain it from marinade and wipe with paper towels. heat up grease in a pan fry meat on all sides until it gets nice colour and is seared to keep moisture inside. then move the meat to another pan and fry vegetables and onion until it softens, return meat into heated pan, put salt & pepper, sautee it covered. after a while add prosecco or red wine with sugar ( you can caramelize sugar first then pour red wine over it and then add it to the meat) in which you mixed in tomato puree ,grated nutmeg , 2-3 spoons of liquid from marinade and some cinnamon. when it all boils add beef stock or water so the meat is fully covered. Now leave it cooking for at least 3 hours, either on the stove or in the oven (at 150 C), until meat is tender and the sauce is thick, preferably sauce is darker colour. if sauce is too thick, add beef stock and prosecco or red wine with sugar to dilute it to desired thickness. when the meat is tender(after about 2,5 hours), remove it from heat, cut it to finger thick cuts which you then put into another dish. everything else left in the pan mash up and strain the sauce, then cover the meat with it, add chopped dried plums and cook for 30 minutes more. the serve it wit gnocchi or dumplings
Really enjoyed watching. And you made us smile. We have a close friend who owns a piece of land in that village and he would have been overjoyed if you had 'wild camped' out on it. If you get a chance, then a visit to the island of Vis is highly recommended. Suspect you would adore it. Oh and try the figs. Should be just about ready to eat now.
I do understand that village life is good for your souls; even good for for my soul just to watch how you portray it! 🤩🥰 PS: You also made me hungry again... 😬🤣
It was fascinating following your route, and clever how you managed to avoid that double border crossing at Neum. In April 2019 I travelled from Sarajevo to Mostar and then on to Split by bus via the coast road. You must have taken the faster E65. Split was busy even then.
Wow.. great video guys. I’m stuck in Sydney Australia in lockdown. I see that travellers and the locals aren’t wearing masks. Have you noticed that the majority of the places you have been too aren’t relying on masks much?
Well here in Croatia we are obliged to wear face masks in grocery stores, but I go everyday in our local store normaly like there isn t any "plandemia"
Masks are a fairytale. They are not effective. It has been proven too. That's why the smarter countries stopped using them, or never used them at all....
@@MattandJulia no, the 'winging it'. You have an idea of what you want to see and then you just take it as it comes. No rigid plans. You eat when you want, etc...you also walk wherever you want to go. You walk all over and see local sites and people. Best way!!! You guys are amazing.
Ahhh, totally agree that it is the best wat! The other way, takes too much excitement out of life 😀 Thank you so much Gretchen, really appreciate it! Love to you both! ❤️
This seems to be a very charming place, I hope I can visit sometime in the future when all this is over. Seeing and sharing places like this is why I love traveling and make videos so much! And please keep up the great job! Subscribed!!
When I clicked on the video I tought you went to Vis or Lastovo. I’m really glad it ended up being Split are since iSplit is the best town in the world. Get a guide to run you trough the old town, the palace is 1700 years old. It has many stories to tell. And the palace is not the only thing we’re proud of. Split is great. Greetings from Split. Btw the best kind of Pašticada is when it’s made with boar not beef. And I’d add black risotto as 2 best Dalmatian dishes. After that would be komarča or zubatac na gradele (grill)
It is so incredible! Don't tell any but we think it was out favourite old town in Croatia 🤫 And regarding the Pasticada, any excuse to try another is fine by us 😀
Wow, it’s so beautiful there! I’m in the U.S. and all of the places I’ve seen you all visit are so much prettier and have so much more history than my country. Wish I could visit.
I'm on here thanks to Croatia beating Brazil yesterday, I wanted to see how this country looks like, I definitely have plans to visit or may be even retire there if the paper work or requirements are not that hard, I have become a 100% fan of this country and I hope they win the world cup
If you like villages, you should definitely visit continental Croatia, especially Slavonia and Baranja, where village tourism is booming with great food, wine and so much history.
That is not the oldest cathedral in the world. It is the oldest cathedral that still seats a bishop and still has its original core structure. Meaning there are older cathedrals that are no longer in use, dont hold mass, and older ones that have been renovated.
@@MattandJulia Yes no problem. Start wild camping…….Once you get over the fear, you’ll become free. It’s what we are all after right..? Take care guys…😍
The sound of the crickets. That gets me every time. This is what Seneca describes in his writings. For anyone who might be interested. At 3:39 you will see a mountain. These are the Dinaric Alps, we get the Roman money the denarius for example from the same name, it is called the Velebit mountain in Croatia, but because of the communism and disconnect most people in the west are not aware of the significance of these mountains or this region. This is the first populated part of Europe in all of human history because where the mountain there ended was the ancient glacier that covered all of Europe in the last ice age. Because of the gulf current that flows in the Adriatic which is warm on the Croatian side and then cools as it flips over to the Italian side this region was warmed by the sea so that the glacier ended on top of that mountain. Between the mountain and the sea is a small strip of land which is today largely covered by resorts and small quaint towns but was in fact the only place in Europe where people lived in the earliest periods of the Ice Age. This region is very unexplored archaeologically and anthropologically and my guess is that there is all sorts things that can be discovered here with a survey that will be buried under significant layers of population, you'll human settlements here probably stretching the entire length of history down to the prehistoric Age and then in the lowest strata I wouldn't be surprised if we found some proto-human artifacts for anyone who has the access and the interest and the ability obviously. At 4:58 we are in Spalato, Spalatum, the ancient city of Diocletian, the man who United the Empire and was followed by Constantine who finally unified the empire for good. The interesting thing is that both Diocletian and Constantine were probably Thracians - which most of the local population here still is, mixed with Slavs of course, but Diocletian comes from Dalmatia and Constantine was born in Nissum, today Niš, Serbia. In fact, this is one of the hidden mysteries of Christianity that are not well understood. Constantine as a Thracian, their local religion the thracian religion, worshipped a god called Sabaezius, Sabbaoth+Zeus. Recent studies and surveys, such as the one by Nissim Avzalag of Hebrew University, have shown that Jews and Thracians worshiped in the same temples in diaspora so we're speculating that this was the same God as Yahweh or Yao the living God of Israel, which would make sense because Sabbaoth is Tzva'ot, or one of yahweh's names. So now the reason why Constantine merged a Roman religion with the Jewish one becomes clear because the Jewish one or at least one form of it was in fact his religion. So these people here are actually an incredible fountain of connection between the world's and missing link between much of our knowledge if only people would bother to study them. In any case, Diocletian, built a giant palace to relax and rest on the coast and Constantine couple of decades later finally gave up on Rome all together and moved the capital to today's Istanbul ence called Constantinople. Both men then very much enjoyed this beautiful region and one can tell why if nothing from this video. The palace complex has now essentially been built into the city which is a living palace then because people live in it and buildings have been erected in the Renaissance period and before that which are still standing so this region and this palace is absolutely fascinating and beautiful not only for its ancient Roman architecture and curiosities but for its more recent ones as well. Especially interesting is the temple to jovis or Jupiter, at one point made into a Catholic Church which can be an interesting example of syncreticism that was very common in re-adapting ancient Roman temples into Roman Catholic churches. There are other curiosities including a temple to Minerva and what I liked about it is how much more accessible it was to the common tourist then many other Roman buildings elsewhere you can walk into the temple to Jupiter and look around it's quite small but very interesting. The author of the video incorrectly states that Diocletian is the last legal emperor of the Roman Empire. He is the last of the emperors of the tetrarchy, because in the third century the Empire went through a number of divisions first between the eastern and the Western Roman Empire and then within each those they were different ways of trying to divide the regions and to pacify the Empire to stop war. However when Constantine is finally successful in 312 he becomes yet again the emperor of the entire Empire as it is known and what follows is a 4th century golden age if you will, and Diocletian then is the last emperor of the Roman Empire in the West with its throne in Rome but he spent such little time in Rome that this is a bit of a forced statistic.
yea Pašticada & Njoki are one of our's best dishes i love it since i was a small kid.. enjoy it in Croatia, Greetings from Split... Imagine millions of foreigners have wild camping vile almost 90% of Croatia's land is still in private ownership., I myself have private land outside of Split and I wouldn't be glad to see hoards of tourists trying to sleep on my property...
Thank you so much! Nono of course, we are not saying its a bad thing. We didn't know that majority of land is privately owned thanks for letting us know. But we are aware of how many people there are out there that throw rubbish everywhere and behave disrespectful.
@@MattandJulia if you ever return, make sure to taste it, the taste is obviously different but many of the same principles apply and you would love the sauce. Bon apetit on your future adventures :)
Roads are first class, probably one of best in EU (at least in coastal Croatia) but trains, avoid them if you can, slow as hell. By the way, Split is my birthplace, despite i no longer live in Split, miss it every day.
I'm from Croati and I'm glad you like it. But one interesting thing is that Goriš in croatian means you are burning. Hope you would come again in our cuntry and visit other cities.❤
On the central northern gulf coast usa is the town of Biloxi which celebrate Croatia Serbia Romania and surrounding areas immigrants to this fishing town whose children have grown to become leaders of the community. Names still can be heard , rich in cultural history . There were once Social Clubs in Biloxi celebrating the heritage.. RU-vid the history of Biloxi..
i love your channel and as a croatian i love and i love dalmatia and istria but what is interesting to me is how you foreigners always visit regions that has a sea. Don't get me wrong, it's great but Croatia is much more. Another region you must visited is Hrvatsko Zagorje (Croatian Zagorje). Has no sea but it has green hills, the best villages in the world and over 50 castles. I never see any video on youtube from foreign people about Croatian Zagorje or Slavonia. Only regions who has sea. It's a such a shame.
