Rent a car in Trogir

Here is the thing nobody mentions when they book for Dalmatia: Split Airport is not really Split's airport, it is Trogir's. The runway sits six kilometres up the road, which puts cars at Split Airport, ten minutes away from the old town bridge, while Split itself is a 35-minute drive the other way. Land, collect the keys at arrivals, and you can be unpacking on Ciovo before the Split-bound queue has cleared the taxi rank.

Trogir's medieval core is a tiny island, barely 500 metres across, and it is car-free; every rental lives on the mainland side or over on Ciovo. In practice that is no hardship. Suppliers hand over by the bridge or bring the car to your door, and because the fleet is shared with the main Split hub, a small base does not mean a small choice of cars.

One honest warning for Ciovo stays: even with the 2018 bypass bridge carrying the through traffic, the old town bridge still backs up when the beaches fill and empty in July and August. Cross early or cross late and it is a non-event. Beyond that, day trips fan out nicely; Primosten and Krka are both under an hour, and the coast road runs north along the coast to Sibenik if you fancy a second walled town without changing hotels.

Trogir is a strong argument for a small car and a slightly unusual reason. Almost everything you drive to from here is close: Split is thirty-five minutes, the airport is barely ten, Sibenik is under an hour and the Kastela strip is on the doorstep. Those are short hops rather than road trips, so boot space matters less than how easily the car parks at the far end, and the far end is usually a coastal town with the same tight, paid, seasonal parking Trogir has. A compact hatchback is the sensible default. The exception is a group heading inland to Krka or south along the D8 for a full day, where an extra class of comfort is worth the difference.

Parking is the practical thing to settle before you arrive, because the island core has none. Cars stop on the mainland side by the bridge and the bus station, or on Ciovo, and you walk the last few minutes through the gate. In July and August those lots fill through the morning and the queue to cross the bridge is its own small event, which is the real argument for collecting the car on the day you leave town rather than the day you arrive. If your accommodation is on Ciovo, ask whether it comes with a space; most apartments do, and that single answer changes how easy the week is.

Whichever car you take, the three lines worth comparing are the same ones: what the cover includes, what the excess is if the car comes back damaged, and what deposit is held against it. All of them print on the listing before you pay and all of them are set per supplier, so a low daily rate and a large hold can easily total more than a fair rate with none. How the cover tiers work takes them one at a time, and no-deposit cars are worth a look if you would rather nothing sat on your card while you are away.

Trogir also makes an unusually good base for a one-way. The airport on the doorstep means you can fly in, spend the week working outward along the coast, and hand the car back somewhere else entirely rather than driving the same road twice. The fee is fixed per route and prints on the listing before you pay, so it is a straightforward sum against a wasted day of motorway, tolls and fuel.