basics on croatia - please help

Dear experts on croatia! need your help:)

we are a family of three and we are coming to zagreb on the 21st of october. the plan is to spend 1 night in zagreb and then hire a car and make a tour of one region. at the moment we are thinking of going to Zadar (through Plitvce) and then further south.

some basics i need to check:

1/what is the usual budget for food per person per day?

2/should we book a car in advance? my dad does not drive manual so it has to be automatic...

3/what is the recommended itinerary (given we are coming for late fall: 21Oct-2Nov)?

any other advice will be greatly appreciated:)))))

thanks!

sasha

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I have just visited Croatia for the first time so I am certainly no %26quot;expert.%26quot; I can tell you to expect to pay significantly more for an automatic car if your dad cannot drive a manual. You can check the rates yourself through sites like Kayak, Sixt, etc. and see that an automatic car goes at a premium.

Plitvice is amazing, but I am not sure what it will be like when you arrive - probably just colder than what I experienced. You can book a hotel right at the park but that tends to cost more. One benefit of staying at a park hotel is that you can visit the park multiple consecutive days in a row but pay for only one day - the hotel will stamp your park ticket. You can stay at a soba (apartment) near the park - there are a lot of them - but you don%26#39;t have this same benefit. (I visited the park the next morning too - maybe you won%26#39;t.)

I didn%26#39;t visit Zadar - only Zagreb, Split, Korcula, and Dubrovnik (and a night in Baska Voda). I liked Split in some ways the best but Dubrovnik was of course the most photogenic - maybe it won%26#39;t be by November, when it may also be pretty dull.

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thanks Andrew, i am prepared to face the cold weather (we are from ukraine:)

thanks for sharing your ideas. we are still deciding whether to go south or north so will take into acct what you said

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I also just visited Croatia for the 1st time. I would go to Plitvic and then Istria. In Istria we stayed in Rovinj which is a great town. This would be less of a drive than going to Split and Dubrovnik and we really liked Rovinj. Alot of things to do in town and day trips that you can take in the area. When you pull into town go to a travel agent and they can book you an apartment. The one that we had was beautiful.

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I also returned from our first vist to Croatia last month. I think Dubrovnik is a must. Istria is nice, but I think Dubrovnik is a unique experience. You can consider flying from Zagreb to Dubrovnik. Then take a bus to Zadar and rent a car at Zadar, returning it to Zagreb after visitng all the places you like in between.