Before you arrive

Before you go

A little prep goes a long way here. Below is the family packing list, the laundry and insurance basics, and the honest truth about phones and Wi-Fi, which is the thing most people wish they’d sorted before they landed. (What goes in your kid’s daily camp bag lives on the First Days page.)

What to Pack

For the family

  • Long-sleeve UV swim shirts (rash guards), genuinely hard to find on the island, so bring them from home.
  • Enough swimwear. It isn’t sold in Jelsa, though you can top up at the Stari Grad port if you run short.
  • Reef-safe sunscreen if possible, stocked up before you come. Island prices run about double, and it protects the Adriatic.
  • Rugged water sandals (Tevas, Keens, Crocs), Carolyn’s recommendation. Water shoes work too and are cheap to buy here, so don’t stress packing them.
  • A plug-in nightlight. The Fontana units have no low lights to leave on at night.
  • An old unlocked phone with a physical SIM, for a local hotspot (much more on this below).
  • Packable quick-dry beach towels.
  • Reusable waterproof dry bags, the zip wet/dry bags, the kind you might have from potty-training or diaper-bag days. Perfect for wet swimsuits and sandy gear, and easy to grab on Amazon if you don’t already have one.
  • A lunchbox or bento box, plus a few small containers and ziplocs, for packing your kid’s camp snacks.
  • Your own spices, if you plan to cook much. The local shops are thin on them.

Pack lighter than you think. Laundry here is cheap and easy. Bubbles does wash, dry and fold for €5/kg, drop at reception and collect Thursday. There’s more on the Fontana page, but it means you don’t need two weeks of outfits per kid.

Sort travel insurance before you go. Parents have used SafetyWing’s nomad insurance, or Squaremouth to compare options across providers.

Phones, SIM & Wi-Fi

This is the one thing to mentally prepare for. Wi-Fi at Fontana is unreliable, and the ocean-side units get the worst of it, so don’t count on smooth video calls from your room.

  • The rec that’s worked best so far: bring an old unlocked phone you can put a physical SIM into, and use it as a hotspot. It worked all over the island, and a physical SIM is cheaper than an eSIM.
  • For the SIM itself, a Hrvatski Telekom (HT) or Telemach SIM had the strongest signal at Fontana; A1 was weaker. If your 5G struggles, go into settings and manually force your phone onto a different network operator. (Where to buy one is on the Consolidated Map, under “Buy a SIM.”)
  • The coworking space runs about twice as fast as the units, so save the calls that matter for there.
  • Session 2 families are also experimenting with a Starlink Mini and a Solis mobile hotspot as backups for all-day connectivity.

From the school’s field guide: What to Pack for Hvar ↗