By Jason Cochran
ARTHUR FROMMER'S BUDGET TRAVEL

St. James was begun in 1431 (its roof was smashed by shelling a decade ago, but it has been so elegantly restored that you wouldn’t know if I hadn’t told you—and that’s the case for most of Croatia’s sights). From afar, one might declare it the ideal Mediterranean church. Its cladding is nicely sunbleached and its dome (incredibly, built without mortar) is pleasingly bulbous. But up close, St. Jame’s true appeal reveals itself. A total of 71 faces, representative of 71 average Joes from the 15th century, stud the exterior in rows. Some are grinning, some frowning, some gloating, some laughing, but all are rich with a wry humor rarely seen in art of that age. It’s as if the whole building was carved as a medieval version of the opening of “The Muppet Show.” (That’s probably not what the UNESCO people had in mind when they named it to their World Heritage List, but I’m a child of the ’70s, so my reaction is either terribly sad or terribly modern. It reminds me of the time in Botswana when, after our tiny motorboat was attacked by a hippo, a fellow tourist, oblivious to how close he just came to expiring in the messiest conceivable manner, exclaimed, “That was just like the Jungle Cruise at Disney World!” But that’s another topic, and one probably left alone. Onward.)
       It’s a shame that my frenized travel-writer’s schedule won’t permit me more time in Sibenik, or time in the university town of Zadar, or a hike in the limestone gorges of Paklenica National Park. Periodically, I pass a young woman or child standing at the roadside extending a fat bunch of asparagus toward my car. I wish I could buy some, but my plans are set. Finally, and regrettably after such a dazzling drive, I crest a mountain and, like something with wings, descend into the ancient city of Split.
       
SPLIT AND TROGIR
       Split, which is about two-thirds down the coast of Croatia (roughly across the Adriatic from Ancona, Italy), is another big surprise. Get this: Much of the old city is in fact a Roman palace, built around the year 300. It is the Temple of Diocletian, my next UNESCO site, and it’s still used for homes and businesses today. While our kids pass Ross Dress For Less and Wendy’s on the way to school, Split’s kids walk past Roman temples to Jupiter and sphinx statues from ancient Egypt.
       I find Split’s age impossible to grasp, even as I find myself walking through the Silver Gate into the Peristyle, surrounded by Roman columns and an ancient mausoleum, with polished ancient stone underfoot. In many parts of the world, they would put a velvet rope around the whole place. Here, there are café tables spread about, and some bored-looking teenagers abjectly exhale cigarette smoke in the vague direction of priceless antiquities.

As I drink a leisurely al fresco beer in the theatrically lit Temple of Diocletian, I again have that now-familiar reaction: Why aren’t there any American tourists here? The lack of Americans isn’t explained by the current mania (a deliberate word choice) for staying home. Americans have never been much for Croatia, which fell off our travel radar even before the war there.
       Now, things are slowly changing. The coast is being bought up by foreigners seeking cheap summer houses, and many of the investors are American. To the consternation of locals, strong foreign currencies are sweeping in and turning once-vital communities into comatose holiday towns that stand empty for most of the year.

Ringed by water and sun-soaked cafes, Trogir (like much of the coast) is a place where it’s easy to spend a few hours dining outside, beneath the steeples of ancient cathedrals. Me, I have black risotto, the local specialty of Pag cheese (dry like block parmesan, but sharp), and a succession of ice cream cones loaded with gelato. Total cost: less than $10. This Mediterranean lifestyle is contagious.
       But there’s no time to dally, because my itinerary takes me next to one of Croatia’s many islands. Hvar is 90 minutes by modern ferry from Split’s central port. The Temple of Diocletian recedes behind the stern and the turquoise sea carries us evenly, as the Adriatic is impossibly flat; even in open waters, the sea is placid and it irons our wake as soon as we make it. Soon, I’m making the scenic half-hour drive from Hvar’s port of Stari Grad to Hvar Town itself, on the island’s southwest coast. My car windows are rolled all the way down and the warm breezes lift off the sea to carry the constant scent of lavender, which grows on the cliffs. 

Most bewildering is Croatia’s tendency to shut down to tourists during the winter. It’s not that it gets too cold; the Mediterranean is never frigid. It’s that the Germans and the Italians dry up. July and August are their peak holiday periods, so that’s when Croatia takes its hotels out of mothballs. But between mid-October and mid-April, hotel options dwindle to a slender few (although, happily, prices also drop). It doesn’t seem right. I’d gladly visit Croatia in the winter. So would most Americans I know. Then again, if more of us do, perhaps more hotels will become available then.
       Croatia’s economy is tepid, however, and many older people (such as women who have lost their husbands) cruise the ferry ports and bus stations in search of tourists willing to rent accommodation in their spare spaces. If hotels are full or closed, just listen for anyone saying “Soba, soba” to you—-they’re not offering noodles but “sobe,” or a room. Expect to pay about US$20 a night if you use this entirely appropriate, common, and safe method, but make sure you know how far from town you’ll be staying before you seal the deal.
       
DAZZLING DUBROVNIK
       And finally, the climax of my trip. After more than two weeks of never lingering longer than one or to nights, I’m relieved to come to a place where I will stay for three. My hotel in Dubrovnik is the Argentina, a plush palace that reopened only two weeks ago after over a decade of decay. You see, it was the place where journalists stayed as they covered the shelling of Dubrovnik in the winter of 1991-1992; the view of a smoldering city that you saw on your TV screens is the same view you now behold from the swimming pool, way below the hotel at the Mediterranean’s edge, over the icy surface of your hand-delivered cocktails. Only now, the smell is not of smoke but of suntan oil as Western European tourists check into one of the only fully modern super-luxury hotels in the country—-paying a bit over $100 a night for what would easily cost them $500 back home.

In case you weren’t aware (since Croatia is empty of Americans, I must assume our ignorance is more widespread than I’d feared), 12 years ago, Serb extremists seized a fort atop a hill above the city and lobbed some 2,000 shells into this fantastic city. Residents huddled inside the medieval forts which, incredibly, protected them from modern rockets.
       Even now, historians argue whether the Serbs meant only to terrify the Croats, not destroy the city (and there’s much agreement that some on the Croatian side inflicted their own incalculable damage elsewhere), but one thing is obvious: Dubrovnik, though rebuilt, is different now. It’s a gem, of course—-just with many a new roof and the whiff of fresh paint. Its weathered, lichen-covered tiles, so famous, are now upstaged by many more luminous red tiles, glaringly fresh. Ah, well. Dubrovnik has survived cataclysms worse than this. I just wish I could have seen it before.
       One of my tour guides lived through the siege. Inside the Dominican Monastery, she points to a Renaissance-era well and explains that’s where, at the time, she sent her kids to collect more water than the rations allowed. Then she points to the old man taking tickets at the monastery’s museum of priceless objects. “That man is still angry with me for it.” He waves from across the room at her.
       When I tell her I live in New York City, I get her full attention. Most of the time, when I tell foreigners that I was in Manhattan on September 11, they instantly tell me where they were when they saw events unfold on television. But my guide, as a survivor of the Dubrovnik shelling, asks the single most sympathetic question that a stranger has ever asked me about it. “Did it make a terrible sound?” she asks, and that’s all she asks. (It did.)
       I have walked atop the walls of Dubrovnik twice now, once clockwise and once counter-clockwise, to catch the way the sunlight plays at both angles. The entire old city is an UNESCO site, the fifth and last of my trip. I have explored every street inside the walls, plumbed both the monasteries, the old granary with its centuries-old silos, the hidden alleys full of kids playing soccer on ancient stone paths. I can’t tell you how many times I have strolled the shiny avenue of Placa. I have allowed myself to be intoxicated not just by the city itself but also by a fairly immoderate round of beers in a thatched-roof outdoor pub I found through a hidden door at the base of the fortifications. There, a few feet above the glittering Adriatic and a hundred feet below the sheer drop of the medieval walls, the pub owner (a lanky kid with a wry grin) and I sat listening to Dean Martin classics and watching the Mediterranean rub fondly against the city’s stony feet. “Standing on the Corner,” indeed!

On my last day here, a Costa Cruises ship pulls into the waters in front of the Argentina. It’s as massive as the old city itself, and it disgorges fleets of tenders loaded with European tourists, who obediently shuffle behind sign-toting tour guides. The day seems ruined for us independent travelers, but incredibly, the crowds suddenly dissolve after lunchtime and the ship quickly pulls anchor and departs just six hours after the day began. Those poor people, I think, as the ship glides northward. How could you see Dubrovnik, the city tour of a lifetime, in just six stumbling hours? Why would you want to?
       We have already received a few e-mail letters from readers who point out, quite rightly, that there’s more to see in Croatia than the places I have just visited. But I must say that my itinerary (Zagreb, Plitvice, Opatija, Rovinj, Pula, Sibenik, Split, Trogir, Hvar Town, and Dubrobnik), crowded as it is, makes an excellent introduction to Croatia. Between those highlights, it’s easy to find your own discoveries in Hrvatska.