Ilok (Croatia)

Ilok is the easternmost town in Croatia and it is impossible not to notice that the whole life of the town seems to revolve around wine here! A few miles from the town, where the featureless plains of the Danube gradually begin to give way to more hilly terrain, the road starts to wind its way through an ever increasing number of vineyards.

The centre of Ilok, which with a population of just 5,000 is only a small town, is really quite charming, and contains numerous old houses built in an Austro-Hungarian style quite commonly seen in Central Europe. Furthermore, every one of these houses seems to have its very own wine cellar in which to store bottles of the locally produced wines.

I strongly recommend visiting one of the many restaurants in the town centre, which serve a range of grilled fish dishes (using produce caught in the Danube) accompanied by delicious local white wines in a very traditional setting. Ilok is a particularly pleasant place to stop off at when travelling through Croatia en route to Serbia.