"YOU will cry when you see it. Bring tissues. You will need them."

We are finishing a marathon meal at Macondo, a seafood restaurant on a nameless back alley in Hvar. My dinner companion, a local painter, writer and actor named Niksa Barisic, was talking about a historic theater built in 1612 during the Dalmatian Renaissance and still in use half a millennium later. But he could just as well have been describing his feelings for Hvar itself, a mountainous, lavender-scented isle set in the blue, sun-blasted Adriatic Sea off the Dalmatian coast of Croatia...

GETTING THERE -Though there are no direct flights from the United States, connecting flights from the New York area to Dubrovnik can be booked through most major European cities. Croatia Travel, (800) 662-7628, www.croatiatravel.com, arranges connections through Croatia Airlines...see complete release