Pelješac Cable-Stayed Bridge, Sunset, Pelješac, Croatia

Shortcut over the sea

Until recently, reaching the cut-off corner of Croatia we see in the distance required doubling around a long, narrow bay, plus a double border crossing at the Herzegovinian coastal strip of Neum. That potentially hours-long ordeal is cut to about a 5-minute drive by the Pelješac Bridge, which spans roughly a mile and a half across this Adriatic inlet. The project was a political hot potato for years due to its potential limiting of shipping to Neum. But the pro-bridge crowd won out in the end, and the span was completed in 2022, recording 2 million crossings in its first year.