Cruising is famous for these picture-book moments, but until recently Croatia was not part of the show. All that changed, however, with the end of the most recent Balkan war and the Croatian government's feverish embrace of tourism. A few days before we arrived in Dubrovnik, eleven cruise ships had descended on the city, filling the streets with such a mob of gawking tourists that the police had to be called in to manage the crowds. More than a thousand islands are strung out like pearls along the Dalmatian Coast, and SeaDream now offers a weeklong tour of them, including a truffle hunt on the island of Rovinj led by local farmers and their truffle-hunting dogs. "We have a nice tasting afterward," the ship's activities director, Linda Mueller, told me. "I thought the truffles might have been planted by the farmers because it was summertime, but it didn't matter. They were delicious."

There was no truffle hunt that afternoon on Hvar, a long, hilly island famous for its isolated, rock-strewn beaches, its vineyards of debatable quality, and its endless high fields of lavender. The ancient harbor town of Hvar has its own castle on a hill, and is known locally as the St-Tropez of Croatia. Unlike in the real St-Tropez, however, its outskirts aren't surrounded by tacky package motels but by rolling, empty hillsides of rosemary and pine. After we dropped anchor at midday, I kayaked out of the harbor with a group of SeaDreamers to visit a distant beach, where a few startled couples were lying semi-naked in the sun. Our guide was Nicki, a physical education instructor from the Croatian city of Split. Once we'd grappled the kayaks up onto shore, Nicki dove into the clear water and brought up live sea urchins for everyone to see. After that, he took us down a path through the woods to drink beer at a ramshackle seaside restaurant, where members of a local wedding party were eating cake and candied figs in the shade of an old olive tree.

That evening, I walked around the Old Town, with its beautiful esplanade lined with palm trees and ancient buildings made of honey-colored stone. I met the Duffys, a jovial English couple from Cannes who were spending the summer sailing the islands of the Dalmatian Coast in their blue-hulled sloop. We had dinner together at a small outdoor restaurant, where the proprietors served fresh-baked bread, cracked lobster, and lamb chops cooked over open coals. "This is the best cruising in Europe," said David, who is a member of the Royal London Yacht Club. "The Italian coast is too sandy on one side, and hideously filled with tourists on the other. The Côte d'Azur is lovely, but it doesn't have all these interesting islands." He asked where the SeaDream I was headed, and when I told him he let out a big guffaw. "Stay a while," he said. "You're moving too fast."

But then expediency is one of the signature pleasures of the SeaDream experience. Hvar is an hour's ferry ride from the mainland, and to get to our next destination, Dubrovnik, required another half-day's drive along perilously twisty coastal roads. I took the launch back to the ship, ate the chocolate mint that had been laid delicately on my pillow, and awoke the next morning to rain-spattered Dubrovnik.