Undulating lavender hills on Hvar; the Unesco world heritage site of Dubrovnik and the unrivalled beauty of the Dalmatian coast are some of the main reasons tourists book flights to Croatia every summer. With thousands of kilometres of coastline on the Adriatic and more than a thousand islands, the country is a popular European destination for sunlovers. The surroundings to the predominantly rocky beaches are also stunning. Unending pine forests and mountains make the view inland just as attractive as that out to the turquoise sea.
Though the country’s tourism has completely recovered from the Yugoslav war of the early 1990s, evidence of the destruction is still apparent. A walk along the old city walls of Dubrovnik show a patchwork of roofs, some hundreds of years old, some replaced just a decade ago after the bombings. The coastal towns of Dubrovnik, Split and Rijeka are most visited by beachgoers, but inland Zagreb has plenty to offer sightseers. This is also the arrival point of most flights to Croatia, though transport from here to the coast is easy to find.