Dubrovnik Croatia holiday vacation with kids - best beaches

This is the second post about our holiday in dubrovnik, Croatia. The first one about the Old Town, is here.

The number one activity that we while in Dubrovnik did is go to all the beaches. There are lots of beaches within walking distance of the old town/our apartment. Mostly pretty small, all pebbley, with rocks on the side. Crystal clear water and the turquoise colour Ellis referred to as ‘tropical’. Wearing shoes is definitely recommended. I wore either my Teva or Saltwater sandals into the water, Dave had water shoes though, so no pebbles can get in and better for swimming. I would maybe get some as well next time.

All beaches have free toilets you can get changed in, most also have showers. Our airbnb guy explained that all beaches are owned by the city, and contracts are given to adjacent businesses to clean them and provide the toilets/showers. These were the beaches we went to:

Sulic Beach. This is the most central one, just ten minutes walk from the Pile gate on the west of the old town. Its also the smallest one, but with a jumping in wall, and a side bay with rocks you can swim into. This is the only one we went to twice

Duclic beach viewed from above, with the Old Town in the background

Svetki Jakob (Saint Jacob) beach. This was our fave. Its a 2km or so walk from the Ploce Gate at the east side of the Old Town, through an area of very fancy villas and hotels. You are rewarded with a straight on view of the Old Town. There’s a sea food restaurant and you can borrow loungers and umbrellas (although these are consistently expensive. When you look at the google maps reviews of beaches, 99% of the negative comments are just people going ‘30 euros for a lounger, are you mad?’), but there’s enough beach space without them. There’s also a bit where you can walk along to the next bay, which has a boat landing place. The pebbly beach bit on this one is quite narrow, and it gets deep pretty quickly, so you don’t need to wade in.
The main photo of this post is also from that beach.

Bellevue beach. This one is a bit further along the coast to the West, near a couple of big 5 star hotels. Some steep stairs down to a long, protected bay. There’s a super cool cave you can swim into, and some high cliffs that lots of crazy, crazy people climb up and jump into the water from. This had the nicest toilets of all the beaches we went to.

Bellevue Beach from above. The big cave you can swim into is at the back, and the cliffs with people jumpin in just in front of it

Uvala Lapad beach. This ones a bit further away, on the Lapad peninsula, which has lots of mid market hotels and a holiday resort vibe, with a central strip with lots of restaurants and bars. The beach is also the most like one of those Spanish beaches, much bigger than all the other ones we went to, with some inflatable climbing things in the middle. The walk into the water is quite shallow and the water near the edge was very warm. The hotel that looks after this one had gone bankrupt, so the toilets/showers were closed and there were lots of closed concessions. So this was my least favourite.
There is a very nice walkway though going up along the coast, with trees providing shade and periodic swimming places. We didn’t walk too far down it, because it was taking us too far away from home to be able to comfortably walk back (though there is a bus going every ten minutes), but i think it might go all the way round the peninsula to another beach on the North side, Copacabana.

Lapa bay beach seen from the coastal walkway. you can see one of the small swimming places at the front.

As well as the beaches, there are lots of swimming places, which are rocks infilled with concrete platforms and stairs you can get into the sea from. These don’t have facilities, but some are pretty big. These are the ones we went to:

Dance bay. This was recommended by our host as his favourite, I think it might have a cave to swim into. But we went these on our first day, and the water was a bit choppy and no one wanted to go in from there. I tried to get us to go back, but was not successful

There’s one on the East side of the Old Town, by the harbour, that I can’t find a name for. It basically just goes along the rocks outside the city walls, so its long and narrow. You can’t swim out that far because of all the boats that pass. Also a nice place to sit on the walls and dangle your feet in and watch the boats go our of the harbour if you dont want to get wet.

**The swimming place outside the walls on the east end of the Old Town. More bits where you can go in round the corner.**

Buza Bar. The Buzas are some very small gates that were added into the city walls fairly recently, there’s not much space on the outside, but there’s lots of platforms, housing a bar playing cheesy Europop. Further down there’s the swimming platforms, we didn’t go in the water here.
I think there may also be another beach outside the walls further along, but it took us such an incredibly long time to find this bar – google maps is not accurate when there are so many tiny streets – we didn’t bother looking.