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Part 1: Split to Milna (Brac Island)

By terry on May 8, 2026 • ( 0 )

Here we go again!

It is no secret that Mike and I really enjoy the bike + boat tours that we’ve been doing over the years.

We were thinking about doing another bike + boat trip this year, but wanted to visit a new country. While doing some searching, Sail Croatia popped up. I’d been hearing many good things about Croatia lately. It seems to be a destination whose time has come for being “the next thing” in tourism. I was interested to find out that Sail Croatia has 4 routes operating out of Split, Croatia, that island “hop” in the Dalmatian Islands (the Adriatic Sea).

Dalmatia is a historic name for an area of Croatia that includes the island we’ll be visiting, as well as part of the coastline -the area covers about 200-300 miles. The name comes from an early tribe of Illyrians named “Dalmatae”. The Illyrians inhabited this region from about 600 B.C. until the 1st century when the Romans arrived,

Two of Sail Croatia’s routes fit our agenda pretty well. The different between them was the itineraries and that one was slightly easier than the other. Of course, the slightly easier one was already booked solid. We looked over the information about the available one. It definitely had hills with a capital H.I.L.L.S. ! (And everyone knows by now how I feel about hills!). We decided -for the first time ever on this type of trip- that we’d rent E-bikes just to make sure we’d be OK getting up those hills. I say we -but let’s be honest here…it was ME…ha ha. Mike climbs tons better than me.

This is the map of the area our tour will travel around:

Our flights were fairly uneventful, but because we had a layover in Atlanta and Amsterdam…the trip seemed terribly long and tiring. There was a bit of a “mob” scene around the passport control area in Amsterdam -which is due to the European Union implementing new technology for this. We landed at the D Gates and needed to get to the B Gates -which was actually a long walk…with the passport control mayhem in the middle.

When our flight finally boarded and officially hit the jetway, we realized we were in a “take a bus ride to your plane” situation. So instead of walking straight onto the plane, we walked straight onto a bus. When the bus finally started driving us to our plane, it literally retraced our trip from Terminal D. In fact, I think the bus drove right past our landed Delta plane and out a bit further onto the “tarmac” where we finally got on the plane.

We arrived in Split mid-day …sort of. The airport is actually quite a distance from Split. After a non-eventful taxi ride, It was a relief to finally be in our hotel room where we could try to get some rest.

This little alley was our view from the hotel window.

Since we try to wait to sleep until the right time where we are, we made sure to get outside for a bit of sun and fresh air near the harbor. We also found a cute restaurant that made a good pizza for our dinner.

My first Croatian beer. So far so good.

The d’aventure begins!

The company said we should be checking in for the trip between 10:30 and noon. The itinerary for the day included moving to the nearby island of Brac. We assumed that after we checked in, we’d be aboard and settling down in our cabin. Nope, silly us! They took our suitcases and then said… come back at noon. It was a long morning just sitting there starring at the ship from some nearby benches. There wasn’t anything within our line of sight that was interesting -and we knew we would be spending several days in were still a bit tired anyway.

Our home for the next week:

Once we were allowed to board -around 12:15- they gave us about 2 minutes to get ready before for a briefing.

Our cabin opened to the outside deck. The deck below us mainly had the dining/salon area and the behind the scenes areas for the crew and chef. The deck above us was the sun deck, which we didn’t really utilize because the weather was on the cool side.

We started to unpack a bit before I remembered to take a picture of the cabin. Space is quite limited in these situations, so we did sort of live like our cabin was a teenager’s bedroom all week.

I’m standing at the door for this picture. The darker wood on the right edge was a “locker” with 4 shelves. Almost behind me was the bathroom, which was a bit roomier than we’ve dealt with on previous trips.

As we were gathering for the briefing, the ship put Split in it’s rearview mirror.

The briefing just covered the basics of what would be happening when we moored in Milna along with a few ship rules. Brac is only about 12 nautical miles from Split (that would be about 13-ish land miles) -so by the time the briefing ended we were entering the harbor in Milna.

The crew started unloading the bikes right away. These E-bikes are quite heavy and they were handing them down over the rail to someone standing on the dock!

We were given time to walk around and take a look at the town before our “shakedown” ride of 6 miles. We mostly kept to the harbor front. Milna is a small town, but very cute.

At the appointed time, we got ready for our first ride. It was meant for us to get acquainted with our bikes and to enjoy a quick bike ride. It turned out that all 17 people on this trip rented E-bikes, so if we hadn’t also -we would have been the stragglers all week for sure …I shouldn’t say “we”… I mean ME ! Mike does great on hills.

Our route included our first bit of climbing -this whole week includes lots of climbing!

The views were quite pretty.

This next picture is a bit blurry, but it is pretty much the only one I managed to take of the small round huts we saw around the islands. It is called a “bunje” and the purpose is to be a quick shelter from the heat or a sudden storm for a farmer.