My experience of Dalmatia was in the summer of '97. Low cost, and once you got south of Rab, few tourists. Split and Dubrovnik had some, but the rest was empty. The locals had this sort of 'tourists! yay! we love you! tell your friends!' attitude. A couple of the cities were so empty it was eerie - just us and the bullet holes and the 'kill Serbs' graffiti. Plus it was dirt cheap. And of course absolutely stunning. Rab was somewhat marred by the presence of large numbers of Austrians who gave the distinct impression of not caring for non-whites, but otherwise awesome trip.

Best part, staying at the home of a retired Yugo airforce general and his family. He was a Bosnian Croat, his wife, a Serb. There were also a couple Italian guys who made some awesome Bolognese for us all. Then a young 'Muslim' couple from Tuzla joined the house to the immense joy of our hosts (first Bosnian Muslims they'd seen in a while). They celebrated by giving us a free meal of grilled fish (great), homemade wine (meh) and homemade grappa (amazing). After some of that the general broke out into some old partisan songs from his youth, joined by the Bosnians who remembered them from school.