Croatia Online’s Roving Reporters Invite You To Come Fly With Me!

We passed on the exciting new news of seaplane connections in Croatia in an earlier posting -  Croatia Online - Seaplane Transfers To Croatian Islands. Now our intrepid roving reporters, Diane and Roger, have tried it out and share their first hand experience with us.

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Late this summer European Coastal Airlines (ECA) started their sea plane flights from their terminal at Resnik, close to Split Airport and serviced by a shuttle bus between them. 

From our terrace we had watched as the Twin Otter Aircraft passed in front of us on its way to Jelsa, Hvar Island, and at the beginning of October we booked our tickets for the 9 am flight of Saturday 18th October.  On arrival at the terminal we collected our boarding passes from a friendly, smart and efficient team of staff.

The flight on the sea plane was quite exciting as you can observe the pilots and cockpit controls.  It's a great feeling as the aircraft gathers speed and you see the  spray from the floats before lifting off. The flight itself  is very scenic as the aircraft flies at  low altitude.

After a fifteen minute flight we touched down at Jelsa and were met by a car and driver who took us the 28km to Hvar Town. (This was arranged at the time of booking).  There was plenty of time to explore the town including climbing up to the Fortress to take in the spectacular views over the Pakleni islands and Hvar town.  After the climb, the descent led us to our first well earned beers of the day!

Eating in Hvar town can be expensive, compared to the rest of Croatia,  but we spotted a sign up a side street leading to to a Bistro called 'FOR'.  They advertised weekend specials of domestic Dalmatian cooking and we thought we would try one of the dishes. We were not disappointed.  First came home made beef soup and a basket of bread, then a salad which was followed by roast lamb, roast potatoes and vegetables.  This with half a litre of red wine came to 130kn for two. Not only amazing value but we were impressed with the friendly welcome and the tables laid with clean fresh linen.

Our driver collected us at the pre-arranged time of 3 pm for the return trip to Jelsa, allowing us enough time to explore Jelsa and down another beer before boarding our return flight at 5.35pm.

The cost for us both, including our taxi to Hvar Town, was 1168.13 kunas - about £120 - and the whole trip was a seamless, enjoyable experience which we would thoroughly recommend.

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Thanks to Diane and Roger for taking the time to share what may well be one of the best innovations in Croatian tourism in recent years, and for their photos. And congratulations to ECA for breaking through the red tape and getting started a lot quicker than many expected. And news hot off the press is that there should be a terminal in Šibenik, based at Mandalina Marina, in time for summer 2015.

 

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