The Best Day Trips from Dubrovnik: 9 Places Worth Leaving the Walls For

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Dubrovnik’s old town is spectacular for about a day and a half. After that, if you are staying four or five nights like most people do, you start noticing that you have walked the same three streets eleven times and that the cruise ship schedule dictates your entire mood. That is the moment to get out.

The good news is that Dubrovnik sits at the center of an unusually rich day trip radius. Within two hours by road or boat you can be in a different country, on a car free island, in a wine region almost nobody outside Croatia has heard of, or standing under a waterfall. We have done all of these, some of them more than once, and this is our honest ranking of what is worth the day.

How to Think About Day Trips from Dubrovnik

Two practical things shape every decision here.

First, the border. Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro are both close, and both require a border crossing that can take fifteen minutes or ninety, depending on the day and the season. Bring your passport. Check whether your rental car agreement allows cross border travel and whether you need a green card insurance certificate, because many Croatian rental companies charge extra for it and some prohibit it outright.

Second, the boats. Dubrovnik’s harbor for local ferries is at Gruz, about 3 km northwest of the old town, not at the little Old Port inside the walls. Excursion boats leave from both. Read your ticket carefully.

With that out of the way, here is where to go.

1. The Elafiti Islands

If you only do one day trip, do this one.

The Elafiti are a small archipelago just northwest of the city. Three of them are inhabited: Kolocep, Lopud and Sipan. All three are effectively car free, which changes the feeling of a place more than you would expect. You step off the boat and the loudest thing is a bicycle bell.

Lopud has Sunj beach, a rare sandy beach in a country of pebbles, on the far side of the island about a 25 minute walk from the port. Sipan is the biggest and the sleepiest, with olive groves and a couple of konobas. Kolocep is closest to the city and good for a half day.

You can do this on a Jadrolinija public ferry from Gruz for a few euros each way, which is what we recommend if you want time on one island rather than a taste of three. The organized three island cruises with lunch included are fine, but they move fast.

2. Montenegro: Kotor and the Bay

The Bay of Kotor is roughly two hours south, and the drive itself is a large part of the appeal. The bay is a series of deep fjord like inlets ringed by mountains that drop straight into the water, with small stone towns strung along the shore.

Kotor’s walled old town is smaller than Dubrovnik’s and considerably less crowded, and the fortress walk above it climbs 1,350 steps to the fortress of San Giovanni for a view that is arguably better than anything in Croatia. Start early, carry water, and do not attempt it in the middle of an August afternoon.

Most organized tours also stop at Perast, a tiny baroque waterfront village, with a short boat ride out to Our Lady of the Rocks, a church on an artificial island. It is genuinely lovely.

Budget the whole day. With border waits, this is a twelve hour excursion, not a leisurely one.

3. Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Mostar is about three hours each way, which makes it the longest realistic day trip, and it is still worth doing.

The Stari Most, the sixteenth century Ottoman bridge, was destroyed in 1993 and rebuilt in 2004, and the town around it is a completely different cultural register from anything on the Dalmatian coast: minarets, copper workshops, Turkish coffee, cevapi. The old bazaar streets are touristy in the extreme, but walk five minutes uphill and it stops.

Most tours pair Mostar with Kravice Waterfalls, a wide set of falls with a swimmable pool at the base, which is the right combination. Some also add Pocitelj, a stone Ottoman village clinging to a hillside, which is beautiful and takes twenty minutes.

Go in with the right expectation: this is a long day in a van, and the reward is seeing a genuinely different country rather than another pretty Adriatic town.

4. The Peljesac Peninsula and Croatian Wine

This is our sleeper pick, and it is the one we would send a returning visitor on.

Peljesac is a long, mountainous peninsula about an hour and a half north of Dubrovnik, and it produces Croatia’s most serious red wine. The Dingac and Postup vineyard slopes are so steep that grapes were historically carried down by donkey. The grape is Plavac Mali, a relative of Zinfandel, and the good bottles are dense, warm and completely unlike anything you will find at home.

Stop in Ston on the way for two reasons: the town has the second longest defensive wall in the world after the Great Wall of China, and the bay produces oysters that are eaten straight off the boat with a squeeze of lemon.

You need a driver for this one, obviously. Small group wine tours run from Dubrovnik most days in season.

5. Lokrum Island

The easiest of all of these. Lokrum is a fifteen minute boat ride from the Old Port, and boats leave roughly every half hour in summer.

It is a small forested island with a ruined Benedictine monastery, a botanical garden, a saltwater lagoon known as the Dead Sea, and a large population of peacocks that have no fear of humans whatsoever. There is a naturist section on the far rocks, marked, in case you wander.

You cannot stay overnight on Lokrum. The last boat back is strictly enforced and people do get stranded, so check the time when you buy your ticket.

6. Cavtat

Twenty minutes south of the city by road, or a pleasant 45 minute boat ride from the Old Port, Cavtat is a small waterfront town that functions as Dubrovnik’s calmer sibling.

There is not a great deal to do, which is the appeal. Walk the promenade, swim off the rocks, eat lunch at a table by the water for meaningfully less than you would pay inside the walls, and take the boat back in the late afternoon. If you are staying in Dubrovnik with kids, this is the low effort day that everybody enjoys.

7. Korcula

Korcula is a stretch, but it is doable as a long day if you catch the fast catamaran, and it is one of the loveliest towns on the coast: a fortified peninsula town with a fishbone street plan designed to break the wind.

Realistically we would rather you stay a night. We have a full Korcula travel guide that makes the case. But if your itinerary is fixed in Dubrovnik, the catamaran gets you roughly five hours on the island, which is enough for the old town, a swim and lunch.

8. Sipan for a Slow Day

We are listing Sipan separately from the Elafiti group trips because doing Sipan on its own, on the public ferry, with nothing planned, is one of our favorite days in Croatia.

There are two villages, a road between them with almost no traffic, olive groves, a ruined summer palace or two, and a handful of restaurants. You swim, you eat, you nap, you get the boat home. That is the entire itinerary and it is perfect.

9. Konavle Valley

Inland and south, Konavle is the agricultural valley between Cavtat and the Montenegrin border, and it is where a lot of Dubrovnik’s food comes from. Tours here focus on rural konobas, olive oil and wine tasting, silk production in Cavtat, and sometimes horseback riding or cycling on the flat valley floor.

It is the antidote to the old town. Green, quiet, and about thirty minutes away.

Which Day Trip Should You Choose?

If you have one free day, take the Elafiti Islands. It is the cheapest, the easiest, and the most restorative.

If you have two, add Montenegro if you want the big scenery and a second country stamp, or Peljesac if you would rather eat and drink well.

If you have three and you have already seen the islands, Mostar earns its long drive.

We would skip a same day Korcula trip unless it is genuinely your only chance, and we would skip any excursion that promises more than three meaningful stops in a day.

One more thing worth saying plainly: resist the urge to stack two of these into a single day. The tour operators will happily sell you a Montenegro morning and a Konavle afternoon, and you will spend nine of the eleven hours in a vehicle. Croatia’s coastal roads are beautiful and slow, the borders are unpredictable, and the whole point of leaving Dubrovnik is to have somewhere to sit still. Pick one place, get there early, and let the day be shorter than the brochure.

Practical Notes

• Book cross border tours rather than driving yourself unless you are confident about the paperwork. The savings are small and the border logistics are not.
• Cash for Bosnia. Many small vendors in Mostar take euros at a poor rate. Card acceptance is patchy in the bazaar.
• Start early. Every one of these is better before 10am and worse after the cruise passengers disperse.
• Sea sickness. The catamarans in an afternoon wind can be rough. If you are prone to it, take the morning boat.
• Dubrovnik’s own card. If you have not yet walked the city walls, do that on a day you are not also doing a day trip. It takes longer than people expect.

Where to Book

For accommodation in and around Dubrovnik, we use Booking.com. One tip that saves real money: staying in Lapad or Gruz rather than inside the old town cuts prices roughly in half and puts you closer to the ferry port that most of these day trips leave from.

For the excursions themselves, especially the Montenegro, Mostar and Elafiti trips, we book through Viator. Read the reviews for group size specifically. A 50 seat coach to Kotor and an 8 person van to Kotor are completely different days.

Our Honest Take

Dubrovnik is worth seeing and it is not worth five straight days. The city works best as a base, and the moment you start treating it as one, the whole trip improves. The Elafiti ferry costs less than a cocktail on Stradun and gives you an entire day of quiet.

If you are building a longer Croatian route, these day trips also make natural stepping stones. Peljesac points you toward Korcula and Hvar, Cavtat points you toward Montenegro, and the Elafiti are the gentlest possible introduction to island life.

More Croatia planning: our Dubrovnik travel guide covers the city itself, our Croatia island hopping itinerary turns these day trips into a two week route, and how much a trip to Croatia costs breaks down the budget.