Omis is a small town right on the sea with cliffs towering over it and a river leading to it.
The old town section is inland about a block and is quite small, but very attractive. It’s basically one street with some tiny alleyways leading to it. The houses are made of squared off stones and there are attractive tourist oriented shops, cafes and several churches.
There weren’t too many people there and many seemed to be Croatian, so it was a pleasant atmosphere. I didn’t take the river cruise (1.5 hrs) but would have if I’d had more time. On the other side of the main road is an area that juts out into the sea and there is a nice gravel beach. It is not a very natural setting (quite built up) but it has a couple nice cafes to sit at and watch people playing in the water.
Between Omis and Split, the road has the sea on one side so it should be beautiful like the area between Dubrovnik and Mlini, but unfortunately, there are small towns all along the road and this makes it less attractive. Split is a city but the old town section is down near the port (where ferries leave to Hvar and Solta as well as to Italy and other cruise destinations).
The walled city includes the Diocletian palace and a cathedral and is quite beautiful and fairly large, but definitely overrun with tourists, even in May. Apparently scenes from Game of Thrones were filmed here as well as Dubrovnik, so that makes it a destination for some people. I enjoyed a good meal and a stroll through the open fruit and vegetable market outside the city walls, but was then ready to say goodbye to Split!
I took a car ferry from right beside the walled city to Sõlta (pronounced Sholta). It was kind of exciting driving onto the boat and the ride only took an hour and a half. I had booked a room right on the port in Stomorska, one of the larger villages and had a balcony overlooking the port activity. I was entertained to watch tourists in big sailboats they didn’t know how to handle try to enter and exit their moorings!
It was quite idyllic though there were a couple roosters I would gladly have turned into Coq au Vin and enthusiastic church bells (it was Sunday) I could have skipped, but overall a very pleasant stay.
The island is 17 kms by 5.5 kms and the road goes through the center of it passing olive trees and lots of groups of bicycle tours. To get to the beautiful mostly deserted coves, you need to drive down one lane (but for two way traffic) between haphazardly piled stone walls. Without much traffic, it was fine, but I imagine it would get pretty harrowing to have several people, in rental cars they don’t know well, trying to back up for kilometers!
One of the villages that I visited, Maslinica, was quite high end, with lots of large yachts and a fancy hotel.
However, right outside of town I took a turn toward an “Uvala” (cove in Croatian) and ended up in a beautiful spot which had a really nice restaurant called Setalište.
I had chosen to go to Solta because I watched a romantic comedy on Netflix called Faraway (I guess I shouldn’t turn up my nose at the Game of Thrones inspired tourists) which had beautiful scenery and I was very happy to find this was not overly romanticized.
In summary, I can recommend Õmis and Šolta but the experience might be very different in high season.
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