Krk in September

The season eases and the island gets its roads back: a car meet in Punat and a professional cycling race passing through.

September is the shoulder, and it has its own habits. Punat's tourist board hosts Meet & Chill on the waterfront square -- an evening of carefully kept, personalised cars, their owners, music and a chill zone, free to walk into -- and, a week or two later, its Sea Art sculpture colony, where students from the applied-arts academies of Rijeka, Osijek and Belgrade spend a week in Park Kostarika leaving the town a permanent piece. Later in the month Croatia's professional road race, the CRO Race, brings a stage onto the island, and the last of Njivice's Wine & Gourmet Nights closes the season at the 7 Seas.

Beware a namesake: Stance Adria, the large tuning meet the same fortnight, is held at Jadranovo on the mainland, not on Krk -- though its attendees tend to find the island's roundabouts anyway.