Rab, Island of Rab, Croatia

I know I alluded to our travel ‘issues’ earlier, so I might as well summarize them on the post. Our original plan was to fly into Pula on Saturday and fly out of Dubrovnik two weeks later. That being said, we arrived in Croatia with both the to/from Dublin plane tickets and a hotel for two nights in Pula. Nothing else, just this vague notion that we would be able to ferry it down the coast.

According to our guide book and map there are ferries heading south out of Pula that connect all the islands of Croatia. Well apparently these ferries only run in July and August. Maybe June as well, but not May. So we ended up spending three nights in Pula while I sorted out the travel situation. The solution we found was to take a bus to the port town or Rijeka. This was about a two hour bus ride, actually two busses because we had to change busses mid trip.

We were in Rijeka for long enough to get tickets for the Catamaran that headed to Rab island and grab a bite to eat. That’s about all. From Rab we planned on continuing south down the coast. The view as we left Rab:

The sister ship of ours:

As this post is about Rab, we will continue the travel dramas in the next post. Now about Rab:

Rab is a very beautiful island. All told there are around 12,000 inhabitants on the island, of which 6,000 or so live in the city of Rab. That is where the Catamaran dropped us off. We arrived via boat around 4:30 pm and needed to find a place to stay. We went to the tourist office and in true Croatian tourist office fashion, they picked a place for us. No we didn’t get options, they just said “go here, you will like it”.

Having little choice, we went there. Unfortunately ‘there’ involved scaling this mountain of stairs:



Paty took the pictures whilst I did my sherpa impersonation. (on a totally unrelated note, if you are ever doing a trip like this BACKPACKS are a much better option than suitcases)

The place that we were referred to was a private apartment type residence. There were three rooms for rent, all with private bathrooms, in the house and a shared kitchen and lounge area. We originally committed for one night, but couple the difficulty of getting to the luggage moved with the view from our room and we easily convinced ourselves that three nights here was fine. Our view:


And the view from the patio of our little rental apartment:

After toweling off from the climb, we settled into exploring Rab. A few things were readily apparent, that if Pula was slow in the off tourist season, Rab was a virtual ghost town. Curiously enough, over the three days and nights we rarely saw or talked with many fellow tourist but one there were an inordinately high amount of pregnant women in town. The town was populated with small children, grade school up to early high school aged kids, old people, and women in their late 20’s or early 30’s that were pregnant. I think it is the island mentality, when you are young and able to move you leave the island. But as you get older and want to start a family yourself you come home. Because we were in town during the middle of the week when the men might have been working and the women seemed like they stayed at home with the kids.

Another thing that was very obvious from the start was that Rab was an absolutely beautiful place. This is where the fact that it seemed like we were vacationing in a post card was really hammered home. The water was clear and aqua blue in color. For someone that has grown up going to the Oregon coast ‘beach’, this was such a cool thing it is hard to describe. But even little miss ‘I grew up in the Yucatan’ was taken aback by how stunning the scenery was.

Enough of my typing, how about some pictures? Here is a bar that is on the North side of Rab, right along the walkway that circles this part of the island by the water:

Sunset from the same bar:

Typical Rab street, the main part of the town is walking only:

We stumbled upon some type of festival, this must be everyone from Rab:

Being by the sea you get to pick what you want for dinner:

Why Rab you ask? I mean with all the options in Croatia, how did we end up in Rab? Basically after our rocky beach experience in Pula we were looking for a sandy beach to just chill at for a few days. With that in mind we found this website:
Croatia Sandy Beaches
Lopar Beach on Rab
Since we were in the North part of Croatia, we kind of just picked the closest sandy beach we could find. We expected a few people on the beach as it was really famous.

Instead we found:


The beach was as nice as advertised and it was about 2 miles of sand around the bay all told. And I think we were sharing this beach with a family that had their beach camp set up close to a mile away from us. A really cool beach as you could go out like 500 yards into the water and still not be over your head in the water. As it was so shallow, the water was also quite warm.


The next day instead of taking another shot at the beach, we decided to take a little water taxi tour of the island. We chartered a boat for two hours to give us the island tour. So we putter out of the bay by the main town at a measured pace, of course giving off no wake. I figured once we get into the open water we would pick up the pace a little, but nope two hours without ever worrying about getting the boat up onto a plane. Once we got used to the snails pace we were ‘cruising’ around at, the ride was quite nice.
Rab is famous for it’s vista of the four church spires in the city central:

No good boat ride would be complete without a local pivo:

The ‘beaches’ here were quite rocky as well:

The island was filled with these hidden coves, some had really large private houses on them. Most were empty. This sailboat is only unique in that when they got closer we realized it was a nudist boat, populated by four very old men, they waved at us.

Two hours of cruising around the island with these vistas is not a bad thing:

Back to the harbor after a tough day on the boat. This is the square that hosted the little party the night before. Also if you look closely you will see the stairs I had to scale on the left and if you look more closely there is a flag almost completely unfurled in the middle of your picture, behind that flag you see a house with a room with open white shutters directly in line with the end of the top right of the flag. That is our room!

Last night in Rab, back to our beachside bar. One of the nicer places we found on the island:



All three nights in Rab cost us the princely sum of 490 Croatian Kuna. That works out to $98 US dollars. Not per night, that is the total for three nights! Most of Croatia was a good deal, but this part of the trip was especially thrifty. Dinner with two main courses, salad or soup, a bottle of local wine and coffee would never cost more than $40 in Rab or Pula.

Next it was back to Rijeka, I never thought I would see that city again, to catch the long overnight ferry to Dubrovnik. Our plans to ferry our way down the coast had by this time been shattered by the realization that off season in Croatia really means OFF season.

But if you ever get a chance at some point in your life to visit the island and city of Rab, the Tobin’s recommend it heartily.