Best Day Trips from Split: Islands, Waterfalls and Fortresses

First, How Many Day Trips Should You Take?

Fewer than you're planning. A day trip in Dalmatia is a full day - an island crossing plus the day itself plus the boat home is nine or ten hours, and you'll come back sunburnt, salty and ready for dinner and bed, not for a night walk through the palace. Two big trips in a four-day holiday is plenty, and one is often better.

The rule of thumb we give people: keep one day for Split itself, one for the trip you most want, and only then add a second. Our how many days in Split guide breaks that down by trip length, and the 3 day Split itinerary shows how one island day fits around the city without wrecking the rest of the week.

• An island day is realistically nine to ten hours door to door
• Two full-day trips in four days is the sensible maximum
• Half-day options exist and are badly underrated
• Never plan a big trip for your last day before a flight

How the Boats Actually Work

Two kinds of vessel leave from Split. Car ferries are large, slower, cheap and comfortable, with open decks and a café, and you can walk on as a foot passenger without booking. Catamarans are fast passenger-only boats, roughly half the journey time, and they sell out in season - those you book ahead, online, the moment your dates are fixed.

The port is on the eastern side of the Old Town, five minutes walk from the palace, with the local bus and train stations right beside it. Sailings are far more frequent from June to September than in winter, and the last boat back is the thing to check before anything else: on some routes it leaves the island in the late afternoon, which quietly turns a day trip into an overnight stay. There's more detail on tickets and timetables in how to get around Split.

• Car ferry: cheap, slow, walk on without booking
• Catamaran: about half the time, book ahead in summer
• Check the last boat back before you plan the day
• Foot passengers only? You'll save a lot of money and queuing

Brač: The Easiest Island Day

Brač is the island you can see from the Riva, and Supetar, its main town, is about fifty minutes away on a car ferry that runs frequently all day. That frequency is the whole point: you can decide over breakfast, walk down to the port and go, and there'll be a boat back whenever you're ready.

Supetar itself is a pretty, low-key harbour town with good swimming a short walk from the quay, and for a lot of people that's the perfect day - a boat, a beach, a long lunch and home. The famous part of the island, Zlatni Rat at Bol, is on the far southern side and needs roughly another hour by bus each way, which turns a relaxed day into a tight one. Go to Bol if the beach is the reason you're going; stay in Supetar if the boat and the swim are.

• Around fifty minutes to Supetar, frequent car ferries
• The most flexible island day: no booking needed
• Zlatni Rat at Bol is another hour by bus across the island
• Best choice with children, or if you want a lazy day

Hvar: The Famous One

Hvar Town is the glamour destination of the Adriatic and it earns most of the reputation: a marble square below a Venetian fortress, a harbour full of serious boats, lavender, and the Pakleni Islands scattered just offshore, ten minutes away by taxi boat and genuinely beautiful.

The catch is logistics. The fast catamaran gets you to Hvar Town in around an hour, but seats sell out days ahead in July and August and the schedule is tighter than Brač's, so the day has to be planned rather than improvised. The car ferry is the cheaper alternative but it lands at Stari Grad, a fair bus ride from Hvar Town. Our advice: book the catamaran early, spend the middle of the day on a Pakleni beach rather than in the town, and climb to the Fortica fortress for the view before you leave.

• About an hour by fast catamaran to Hvar Town
• Book seats several days ahead in high season
• The car ferry lands at Stari Grad, not Hvar Town
• The Pakleni Islands are the best part, ten minutes by taxi boat

Šolta: The One Nobody Tells You About

Šolta is the closest island to Split, about an hour by car ferry to Rogač, and it's the one locals use when they want the sea without the crowd. There's no famous beach and no nightlife. There are olive groves, honey, a handful of villages, and Maslinica on the west coast, a small harbour with a row of stone houses and clear water that's one of the loveliest places within an hour of the city.

Take it if you've already done a headline island, if you're travelling with somebody who hates crowds, or if you simply want a quiet swim and a fish lunch. Sailings are less frequent than to Brač, so check the return times carefully before you commit to the day.

The Blue Cave and Vis: The Big One

This is the trip people talk about afterwards, and it's also the longest and the most weather-dependent. A speedboat runs south to the island of Biševo, where a small opening leads into a cave lit an electric blue by sunlight coming through underwater, then usually continues to Vis, sometimes to Stiniva cove and the Pakleni Islands on the way home. Ten to eleven hours, most of it on the water.

Three things to know before booking. The cave is only blue in the middle of the day and only in calm conditions, so trips get cancelled by wind, especially outside high summer. Entry is controlled and there's often a queue of boats waiting, which is normal and part of the day. And it's a fast boat over open sea for hours, thrilling for teenagers, hard going for small children and anyone prone to seasickness, as we mention in things to do in Split with kids. Book it for early in your stay so there's a spare day to move it to if the weather turns.

• Ten to eleven hours, most of it in a fast open boat
• Cancelled by wind more often than people expect
• Book early in your trip so you have a fallback day
• Not the trip for toddlers or bad sailors

Trogir: The Best Half Day in Dalmatia

Thirty kilometres west, on its own small island between the mainland and Čiovo, Trogir is a walled Venetian and Romanesque town whose entire old core is UNESCO-listed. It's smaller than Split and denser, with a cathedral portal that art historians travel to see, a waterfront of stone palaces and a fortress at the end of the promenade.

You can see it properly in three or four hours, which makes it the ideal half day: local bus from the suburban station, around an hour, or a slower and much nicer boat from the Riva in season. Because it's on the airport road, it also works brilliantly on an arrival or departure day when you have hours to kill and luggage to store. If you liked Diocletian's Palace, Trogir is the same story told at a quarter of the scale.

Klis Fortress: The View, and the Dragons

Klis sits in the mountain pass directly above Split, a fortress strung along a rock ridge that controlled the route between the coast and the interior for two thousand years — Illyrian, Roman, Croatian kings, then a long defence against the Ottomans. It's about half an hour by local bus from the theatre in Split, and it's the single best value trip on this list.

The view from the walls runs straight down over the whole city, the bay and the islands, and the site is far bigger and rougher than photographs suggest, so wear real shoes. It also stood in as the city of Meereen in Game of Thrones, which is why half the visitors are there. Two practical additions: the village below is famous for lamb roasted on a spit at the roadside restaurants, and you can pair Klis with Salona in one easy half day.

• About thirty minutes by local bus, or a short drive
• Best panorama over Split from anywhere outside the city
• Meereen in Game of Thrones, filmed on the walls
• Uneven stone everywhere: proper shoes, not sandals

Salona: Where the Whole Story Started

Twenty minutes on a city bus, in what is now the town of Solin, lie the ruins of Salona: the Roman capital of the province of Dalmatia, a city of tens of thousands, and the place Diocletian was born and retired next to. There's an amphitheatre, basilicas, an aqueduct and a necropolis, spread over fields with almost nobody in them.

It isn't restored or dramatic in the way the palace is, it's a proper ruin, in grass, with lizards, and that's exactly the appeal. An hour or two here makes sense of everything you saw inside the walls in town, it costs very little, and it's the closest thing to a day trip you can do on a city bus ticket. Combine it with Klis on the same afternoon and you've got the best cheap day out from Split.

Krka Waterfalls: The Realistic Version

Krka National Park is about an hour and a half each way, and the part everybody photographs is Skradinski Buk, a wide staircase of travertine falls with a wooden boardwalk looping around it through the trees. It's spectacular, and in summer it's busy, most of the coast's coach tours arrive between eleven and two.

One important update, because a lot of older articles and hotel leaflets still get it wrong: swimming at Skradinski Buk has not been allowed for several years. Go for the walk, the mills and the water, not for a bathe. It's straightforward with a hire car, and easy as an organised trip; either way, leave early, do the loop before the coaches, and consider entering via Skradin and taking the park boat in.

• Roughly an hour and a half each way
• No swimming at the falls, despite what older guides say
• Arrive before eleven to beat the coach parties
• Tickets are cheaper and the park quieter outside July and August

Omiš and the Cetina Gorge: Adrenaline, Thirty Minutes Away

Half an hour south down the coast road, the Cetina river cuts out of a limestone canyon into the sea, and the pirate town of Omiš sits at the mouth of it under a fortress on a crag. This is where you go for rafting, canyoning, ziplines across the gorge and a hard, short climb up to Mirabela fortress for a view that's worth every step.

It's the best active half day from Split, it's cheap to reach by bus along one of the prettiest coastal roads in Croatia, and it works well as a family day with older children. Book the rafting or the zipline in advance in season; the town itself you can just turn up to.

The Ones We'd Skip as Day Trips

Plitvice Lakes is the most-asked and the one we most often talk people out of: three hours or more each way from Split, which means a five-in-the-morning start and around six hours in a vehicle for three hours in the park. It's magnificent and it deserves a night nearby, or a stop on the drive to Zagreb, not a day trip from the coast.

Dubrovnik is the same problem in a different direction, some four hours each way, and a border crossing that can be slow in summer. Mostar and the Kravice falls are a very long day with a passport and a queue, but at least genuinely different, so that one's a matter of taste. If you have only three or four days in Split, all three of these cost you more than they give back.

• Plitvice: worth a night nearby, not a day trip from Split
• Dubrovnik: about four hours each way, plus the border
• Mostar: long, but genuinely different if you have the day
• Anything over two hours each way eats the whole day

If You Only Have One Free Day

Pick by what you actually want from it rather than by fame. If you want a boat and a swim with no planning, take the Brač ferry. If you want the postcard, book the Hvar catamaran early. If you want the once-in-a-lifetime photograph and you can accept the risk of wind, take the Blue Cave. If you'd rather see something extraordinary and be home for lunch, do Klis and Salona together, or Trogir. And if the weather turns, that's the day for Trogir or Klis, both of which are fine in cloud.

• Easy and flexible: Brač
• Famous and worth planning: Hvar
• Half a day, big return: Klis and Salona, or Trogir
• Once in a lifetime, weather permitting: the Blue Cave

Whatever You Do, Keep a Day for Split

The one regret we hear over and over from guests is not that they missed an island, but that they spent four days using Split as a bus stop and never actually saw it. The city has 1,700 years of Roman history, the best urban swimming on the Adriatic, a forest park on its doorstep and a set of viewpoints that are genuinely worth the trip on their own.

The problem is that those things are spread out and uphill, which is why a day in the city so easily turns into three hours in the same few lanes, the case we make in why Split is best explored by tuk tuk. An hour or two on a retro tuk tuk tour covers the lookouts, the coast and the corners that day trippers never reach, and it's the ideal thing to do on the day you arrive or the day between two big excursions. If you're here on a ship with a tight window, our guide to Split shore excursions for cruise passengers covers what fits into the hours you've got.