A Harley journey through Croatia and beyond...

01 Jun 2026

/Uwe Hausleitner

/Jan Van der Jagt

If you like riding a Harley Davidson, love sunshine, culture, friendly people, good wine, excellent food and want to swim in the Adriatic sea, what do you do? You ask Edelweiss to combine this all into a beautiful motorcycle tour. On this tour we will be going to the island of Hvar, visit the iconic city of Dubrovnik, enjoy the beauty of Kotor, marvel the famous bridge of Mostar, take a million pictures of the Adriatic sea and many, many more highlights. And don't forget the food! When you see the sea order fish, when you'r in the mountains order Cevapi or another local meat dish. Follow our daily blog, share it with your friends and family and enjoy the ride!

The alarm rang at half six, but the harbour was already stirring. Fishing boats puttered out past the fortress hill, and the first light caught the lavender-coloured stone of the old town in a way that made leaving feel like a small act of betrayal. The Harley — a Road King dressed in black and chrome — had spent the night parked together with other bikes. Electra Glides and a Road Glide. All nice and shiny Harleys. The route east along Hvar's spine is one the tourist maps largely ignore, which is precisely its appeal. The main road climbs away from the harbour and runs the length of the island through a series of small inland villages — Brusje, Vrisnik, Svirče — where the lavender fields and vineyards press close on both sides and the asphalt narrows to the width of polite suggestion. The Harleys torques pulled through the curves with easy authority, the engine note bouncing back off dry-stone walls, the sea appearing in blue flashes through gaps in the maquis. It takes a little over an hour to reach Sucuraj at the island's eastern tip, and every kilometre earns its place. The Sucuraj ferry terminal is a simple affair — a ramp, a car park, a small waiting room that smells of coffee and diesel. The crossing to Drvenik on the mainland is only 35 minutes, one of the shortest and least-celebrated ferry routes on the Dalmatian coast, which means it is almost always possible to board without drama. Motorcycles go first, lashed loosely to the deck rails while foot passengers file upstairs to find the sun. Thirty-five minutes is not long enough for the sea to get boring, and it is exactly long enough for one coffee and a long look at the mountains rising from the mainland shore. The Biokovo massif fills the northern horizon as the ferry crosses — a grey-brown wall of karst limestone that climbs to nearly 1800 metres — and what you are looking at, though you may not yet realise it, is the terrain you are about to ride through. The ferry docks at Drvenik. The ramp drops, the engine starts, and the mainland begins. The road south along Pelješac winds past Ston, where the medieval salt pans and the longest defensive walls in Europe deserve at least a slow pass if not a stop. In our case even a lunch stop. The temptation to park the bike and walk the walls is real and should probably be surrendered to. The oysters, farmed here since Roman times, are reason enough alone. South of Ston the peninsula gives way to the mainland, and the road climbs once more into the Konavle hills — a final reminder, if one were needed, that this coast is not flat. The landscape here is drier and more severe, the sea appearing through gaps in the rock with the abruptness of a reveal. Then, without ceremony, the Dubrovnik agglomeration announces itself: a roundabout, a sign, traffic. The approach from the north gives one last gift — a glimpse of the city walls and red-roofed old town from above — before the road descends to the coast and delivers you to the gates of the old city. The Harleys were parked in the shade near the Harbor e in the early afternoon. The engine ticked as it cooled. The mountains were already invisible behind the hills.

The group assembled at dawn on the Lapad seafront, the ancient walls of Dubrovnik glowing amber in the early light. Five Harleys ticked and rumbled in the morning quiet as riders geared up, exchanged last-minute route notes, and settled into their saddles. The smell of leather, engine oil, and salt air was the only preamble needed. Departing via the E65 southward, the convoy climbed immediately into the karst limestone hills that frame Dubrovnik. Within minutes the Adriatic appeared below — a vast, still sheet of deep blue — glimpsed between pine stands and roadside walls. Traffic was light, the asphalt smooth, and the group fell into easy formation. Crossing into Bosnia and Herzegovina at the Brgat Gornji border post, the landscape shifted almost immediately. The road threaded through the hills and the group paused here for the first scheduled stop: Bosnian coffee. The group occupied a terrace overlooking the hills, jackets unzipped. Conversation drifted easily between the machines parked below, the route ahead, and nothing in particular. It was exactly the kind of pause that makes a long ride worthwhile. We continued to the next border crossing already. The road runs through fields and sleepy villages, and the Harleys moved through this landscape at an unhurried pace — wide bars, low revs, eyes wide. Entering Montenegro, the group turned to search for lunch right away. The approach to the Bay of Kotor is one of the more memorable moments in Balkan motorcycling. The road descends from the coastal cliffs and the bay reveals itself in stages: first a glimpse of still water between steep hills, then the full panorama — the bay folding inland in two great arms, medieval Kotor at the deepest point, the mountains rising sheer and dramatic on all sides. The road here hugs the coastline with shameless intimacy — stone walls to the left, the sea immediate to the right, fishing villages appearing around each bend. The Harleys stretched into a longer column, each rider finding their own line through the smooth, sun-warmed curves. Lunch was taken at a konoba (traditional restaurant) just south of Herceg Novi, on a stone terrace cantilevered over the water. The terrace afforded a wide view southward — the bay narrowing in the distance, the mountains of the Orjen massif rising steeply behind. Some boats entered the marina and docked smoothly. The afternoon light was generous and warm. Nobody was in any hurry. The group rode the full perimeter of the inner bay, passing the village of Perast with its two small islands set perfectly in the middle of the water, before arriving at Kotor itself. The bikes were parked at our hotel right at the seafront. Everybody enjoyed the bootbeer Jan prepared very much. In the evening we went to Kotor, exiting the Taxi outside the old city walls, and the group walked in on foot through the Sea Gate, past the cathedral and the clock tower, and out along the ramparts above. The late afternoon light on the water was extraordinary — copper and rose, the mountains throwing long shadows across the bay. It is a view that makes the miles feel worthwhile, that retrospectively justifies every early alarm, every border crossing, every slow stretch of coast road. The group enjoyed their dinner until the late evening and finished the day with a nice gelato right in the middle of the old town of Kotor.

Some routes stay with you long after the engine has cooled. The run from the Bay of Kotor up through the Montenegrin mountains and across the Bosnian border into Mostar is one of them — a day that delivers everything: breathtaking coastal drama at the start, a border crossing that cooperated for once, a lakeside lunch that felt like a secret, gorges and river valleys that make you wish the road would never end, and a finish line in one of Europe’s most storied old towns. The Bay of Kotor has a way of making a rider feel small in the best possible sense. Enclosed by fortress walls of limestone that plunge straight into steel-blue water, the bay is technically a fjord, and it earns the comparison. The first kilometres are almost ceremonial — a slow procession along the waterfront before the road begins to climb. The ascent out of the Bay of Kotor is one of those pieces of motorcycling infrastructure that feels designed specifically for the machine beneath you: great swings and perfect roads, each curve revealing a wider slice of the bay below, the fortified town shrinking to a toy village, the water turning from dark teal to brilliant turquoise as the sun lifts. It sets an unfair standard for everything that follows. Fortunately, everything that followed was more than equal to it. Balkan border crossings can be an exercise in patience — long queues baking in summer heat, paperwork checked and re-checked, the particular bureaucratic inertia that settles over a booth around midday. Not today. Arriving at the Montenegro–Bosnia & Herzegovina border post, the queue ahead of us was almost comically short: just three cars. The Harleys rumbled through with minimal formality, the three cars were waved along in short order, and our group crossed the line without so much as switching off our engines. Documents glanced at, a stamp, a nod. The kind of border crossing you only appreciate fully once you’ve experienced the other kind. The first stretch of road on the Bosnian side reminded us why this part of the world is quietly regarded as one of Europe’s great motorcycling destinations. The tarmac followed the lay of the land rather than fighting it, bending around hillsides and threading between low stone walls, with the landscape opening up gradually to wider pastoral valleys. The lunch stop was a lakeside restaurant that had the quality of a local recommendation rather than a tourist circuit fixture — shaded terraces sitting above the water’s edge, the lake a deep, improbably clear green, its surface unmarked except for the occasional ripple of a trout. The kind of place that operates without fanfare and doesn’t need it. We ate well: fresh bread, nice salads and grilled meat and sausages. Conversation moved at the pace of the scenery, which is to say it took its time. It is worth noting that you cannot plan a stop like this. You find it, and you remember it. The afternoon’s riding was the kind that converts people. Bosnian roads through the interior have a particular character: they follow rivers because rivers found the only sensible path through terrain that is otherwise uncompromisingly vertical. The result is a continuous series of gorges where canyon walls rise on either side, the river runs alongside, and the road clings to the ledge between the two. Shades of ochre and rust in the rock, occasional tunnels blasted through spurs that couldn’t be negotiated any other way, sudden wide valleys where villages sit in the flat land between ridges, minarets and church towers coexisting with the same unhurried familiarity they have had for centuries. The road surface was good, the traffic light. Several stretches invited a pace that made the kilometres irrelevant — you were not covering ground, you were in the ground, part of it. These are the roads that stay in the memory not as highlights but as a sustained mood: one long, unbroken argument for why you ride. Mostar announces itself gradually. The minarets appear first above the roofline, then the smell of grilling meat and coffee drifting up from the Čaršija, then the sound of the Neretva — fast and impossibly blue-green — and finally the sight that stops everyone the first time they round the corner: Stari Most, the Old Bridge, its single elegant arch crossing the river as it has since 1566, rebuilt and restored after the war but unmistakably itself. Parking up near the old town and walking in on foot is the only sensible approach. The cobbled lanes of the bazaar quarter are too tight for anything with wheels, and the transition from riding to walking is the right kind of decompression after a day this full. The light in Mostar in the late afternoon is particular — warm, slightly amber, the kind of light that makes limestone glow and every photograph seem effortless. We arrived on our hotel in the heart of the old town and were greeted with a welcome drink. Welcome to Bosnia.