Zadar Beach Bars

The beach bar is a day-long institution on this coast rather than a night one. It opens with coffee for the first swimmers, sells cold drinks and simple food through the afternoon, and turns into a bar with music as the sun goes down and the loungers empty. Nobody minds sand and a wet towel; the dress code is whatever you swam in.

Geography sets the character. Kolovare, the city's own beach a few minutes below the walls, serves people who walked out of the Old Town for a swim. Borik and Puntamika sit with the hotels and campsites, so the crowd is larger and stays later, and the ones facing west run the sunset as their main event. Almost all of them are seasonal, opening around May and closing in September or October, which makes them the clearest sign of when the Zadar summer starts and stops.