Instagrammable holiday in Split

How to have an Instagrammable holiday at minimal cost

This cost guide is based on two days in Split (inbetween Hvar). The cost is based on sharing accommodation and transport (between four). If you want more information scroll down. To find out, where to stay, what it was like, instagrammable spots and some advice. 🙂

Accommodation:

I’d consider booking on booking.com or Airbnb for Split if you are only staying for a few days and want to be central. The centre of Split is quite small and we managed to get accommodation for under $30 (£25) each shared between four.

Transport:

Contact the hotel before to see if you can arrange an airport shuttle or ask if they can recommend a taxi service. We stayed slightly further out of the centre on the first night and managed to get picked up from the airport for 36 euros. Ubers are also really cheap here for some reason! So it was quite easy to just get an uber to a beach club further out of Split.

Food & Drink:

Food and drink I would say is similar to London prices, this is perhaps because we chose slightly nicer places to eat out at. But I would really recommend the food here.

Activities:

I’d suggest staying in the centre if you wanted to do some sightseeing as Riva and Diocletian’s Palace are all central. We made use of visiting the beach clubs here eg. Gooshter Beach Club and Mistral Beach Club were recommended (Gooshter being the better option).

WHERE TO STAY

Bel Residence:

We stayed here on our first and last night in Croatia. We chose to stay slightly further out on the first night and explore Bacvice Beach and make use of the pool and private hot tub in our accommodation. The room we got was amazing but I would only suggest staying here if you can reserve the room with the private balcony and hot tub. As the other rooms didn’t seem to have any benefits and the pool, while it looked incredible in photos was quite small. We had lunch together on our private balcony with views of the sea and chilled in the hot tub. This was such a dreamy first day! This came to £182 pounds (£45.50 each a night between four) so just under $60. I wouldn’t recommend a trip to Bacvice Beach. This beach seems to be a hot spot for older locals.

Cindro Apartment:

We got a ferry back from Hvar and stayed here on our last night. We were really pleased we picked this place as it wasn’t far from where the ferry was and from the centre it was a 8 minute walk to the apartment. Really good location a couple minutes walk to the Diocletian Palace and to the centre! We also had a room with a terrace so we bought breakfast and had this on the terrace. (If you stay here pick the slightly longer option on your google maps else you’ll have to walk up the steps to the Diocletian Palace in front of a large audience and there are a lot of stairs!). This was cheap accommodation at £98 (£24.50 each between four) just over $30.

What to do

In Split we managed to find a couple of restaurants that were highly recommended. We also made use of exploring the centre and the beach clubs.

Restaurants

Zoi- A beautiful restaurant on the Riva (centre). Ordered the Steak Mac & Cheese which was 110 Kuna (£13) suppose to just be an appetiser but was big enough for a main!
Roof 68- Across the road from Zoi is a bar which pre Covid would be buzzing (club/bar atmosphere) cheapest cocktails here are 96 kuna (£11).
Bokeria Kitchen & Bar- A cute place to eat in the centre. Portion sizes are huge I got the truffle and pancetta pasta at 130 Kuna. This was my nicest meal all holiday!
Teraca Vidilica- This is a 6 minute drive or 15 minute walk (quite a steep hill) but we climbed it and it was okay! This has beautiful views of Split so worth coming here before sunset. Only 95 Kuna (£11) for my truffle pasta (again same meal) was delish!

Sightseeing:

We had a look at some of the spots in Split but one to recommend would be the Peristyle and Diocletian’s Palace. You can sit in the square here and listen/watch the entertainment and be served by a nearby restaurant. Fig restaraunt is also a few minute walk from here which is an ‘instagrammable restaurant’ I was recommended.

Beach clubs:

Gooshter and Mistral Beach Club– The food is slightly more expensive at Mistral. Gooshter price wise seems a better option. If you are not staying at the hotel it costs 150 kuna for a day bed card and 300 kuna spend for food so between 4 this was easily doable! You also get to use the hotel pool. Thursdays there are 50% off cocktails here.

What it was like

I absolutely loved it here. We came in August and the weather was amazing. It feels incredibly safe as well, with our booking.com host telling us to just leave keys in our room and no need to lock anything. The ubers are really cheap with rides around the city costing a few pounds. Our next stop was Hvar which I loved even more but I do think Split is worth a visit. I’d say you only need a day or so here as there isn’t overly too much in the town to explore.

Any advice

Cash: I thought I’d be able to use euros here and found it quite difficult. Even during Covid a lot of places wanted you to pay by cash. In restaurants it was possible to occasionally split the bill but you needed to warn them in advance and specify what you were paying for as apparently after they printed the bill they couldn’t change your payment method- this happened to us a few times!

Booking ferry: We thought we may need to book ferry from Split to Hvar online before as we worried there would be no seats. We actually didn’t need to worry and buying them at the ferry stop is actually cheaper than online.

Ubers: I would recommend getting Ubers around here as it is so cheap if you want to get to the beach clubs but they have uber spots here so you do actually have some walking to do.

Have a look at more instagrammable holidays and cost breakdowns here like this Split cost guide.