My wife and I are planning a trip to Venice / Croatia next summer. We have been reading the Rough Guide and these forums and have more or less settled on a very tentative itinerary. We would greatly appreciate any comments / suggestions / advice anyone here has with respect to that itinerary.
After a few days in Venice, we plan to fly to Dubrovnik and spend about five days there. In addition to enjoying Dubrovnik, we would also like to make daytrips to Montenegro (Kotor?) and Mostar.
After Dubrovnik, we plan to drive / ferry to Korcula, and stay for two days, and then drive / ferry to Split, and stay for about five days.
We would like to stay somewhere else for a few days (see questions, below) and then end the trip in Rovinj, where will drop off the car and then take the ferry back to Venice for the flight home.
Any thoughts or suggestions? Does that seem reasonable?
Some questions:
We have not been able to decide where to stay between Splint and Rovinj. We would like a spend two or three days, maybe on one of the islands. Any suggestions as to where we should be looking?
Also, I plan to rent a car in Dubrovnik and use it for the trip north to Rovinj. Is that practical?
All help would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.
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First of all I think I would spend the five days in Trogir, not Split. From Trogir you can easily visit Split and it also puts you very close to Krka National Park. I do like the idea of renting a car for the trip from Dubrovnik. Having a car allows so much flexibility! A day trip to Mostar is an excellent idea and with the car you can stop along the way at a place such as Pocitelj.
For your extra days before getting to Rovinj I would look into an island. If you want something north of Split look into Rab. I would suggest Lopar on the island of Rab. You could also look into a place like Vis, which would be accessed by ferry from Split. Yet another option would be the island of Krk, at a place such as Baska or Punat.
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I%26#39;m not sure I recommend taking a car north from Dubrovnik to Split via Korcula. That limits you to (slow) car ferries that may not run every day. If you dump the car, you can take passenger ferries or catamarans instead and have more options. You really don%26#39;t need a car in Dubrovnik or Korcula (unless you want to get away from the town). If you need a car for day trips from Dubrovnik, why not simply rent it there for a few days or even a day at a time as needed? In Dubrovnik, I stayed basically across the street from a car rental place (not on purpose) and it was quite convenient returning a car there.
What are the flight options like between Venice and Dubrovnik - have you looked at that? Perhaps easyJet has good flights in the summer out of Milan or something - in the fall they didn%26#39;t. I did an overland route from Venice into Croatia via Slovenia and down through Zagreb and Plitvice Lakes Park to the Dalmatian coast.
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How about you start from Venice, see Istria and then continue south to end in Dubrovnik? Then you take the flight back although you have to take in consideration that there are no direct flights and usually it is connected via Munich.
That way the route could be: Istria - Split ( I would suggest it over Trogir that gets easily crowded) - Hvar - Korcula and then Dubrovnik. For car rental, I would use it only from Rovinj to Split and drop it off before going to Hvar.
There are ferry connections between Split and Hvar as well as catamaran between Hvar and Korcula so traveling would be easy. Same between Korcula and Dubrovnik. Of course, you can rent a car in Dubrovnik for touring Montenegro and Mostar on your own.
If you still want to stick to the original plan, I would skip the islands between Split and Rovinj and stay in Zadar. Many people are surprised with it%26#39;s beauty! After all, it was the capital of Dalmatia for almost a 1000 years...
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First, thanks a lot for the comments / recommendations.
%26quot;I%26#39;m not sure I recommend taking a car north from Dubrovnik to Split via Korcula. That limits you to (slow) car ferries that may not run every day. If you dump the car, you can take passenger ferries or catamarans instead and have more options.%26quot;
It%26#39;s not difficult to get from Dubrovnik to Korchula to Split? I can see us just renting a car for a couple of days in Dubrovnik and then again for a couple of days in Split. Not sure how we%26#39;d get to Rovinj after that, but I%26#39;m sure it%26#39;d doable.
%26quot;What are the flight options like between Venice and Dubrovnik - have you looked at that?%26quot;
We have and it%26#39;s a bit funky. Best we could do was a trip with a short stop in Vienna. If we didn%26#39;t want to see Venice so badly on the trip, we%26#39;d be looking at other options.
We considered other methods of transportation, but our time is fairly limited and, even with the odd connection, flying seemed to work best.
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Thanks for the reply.
%26quot;How about you start from Venice, see Istria and then continue south to end in Dubrovnik?%26quot;
That%26#39;s certainly an option. Our goal in structuring the trip like this is to avoid backtracking. We can either fly in to Drubrovnik, travel north and take the ferry back from Rovinj, or we can take the ferry to Rovinj, travel south and then fly back from Dubrovnik. Any reason why starting in the north and traveling south would make more sense?
%26quot;That way the route could be: Istria - Split ( I would suggest it over Trogir that gets easily crowded) - Hvar - Korcula and then Dubrovnik. For car rental, I would use it only from Rovinj to Split and drop it off before going to Hvar%26quot;
So, use the car for the trip to Split and day trips from Split, and then drop it off there? How difficult is it to get around on Hvar? Is it practical to rent something like a scooter?
%26quot;There are ferry connections between Split and Hvar as well as catamaran between Hvar and Korcula so traveling would be easy. Same between Korcula and Dubrovnik. Of course, you can rent a car in Dubrovnik for touring Montenegro and Mostar on your own.%26quot;
I like the sound of that.
Of course, we could also do that going north, right?
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igs: %26quot;It%26#39;s not difficult to get from Dubrovnik to Korchula to Split? I can see us just renting a car for a couple of days in Dubrovnik and then again for a couple of days in Split. Not sure how we%26#39;d get to Rovinj after that, but I%26#39;m sure it%26#39;d doable.%26quot;
I just did Dubrovnik to Korcula to Split without a car. I took a bus from Dubrovnik to Korcula and the Krilo catamaran from Korcula to Split. In the summer you%26#39;d have the option of taking a passenger ferry from Dubrovnik to Korcula, which is how I%26#39;d recommend you do it. The ferry between Dubrovnik and Korcula was no longer running by October. The bus ride I took was long. There%26#39;s also a travel agency in Dubrovnik that runs a shuttle service to Korcula weekdays - since I was traveling on a Saturday I was stuck with the bus option. Even if you had a car and drove to Korcula, you%26#39;d still be stuck with a fairly tedious drive up the peninsula to Orebić and take the car ferry across to Korcula.
The downside of NOT having a car on Korcula is that it%26#39;s hard to get away from the town itself - the island is much larger than the town if you want to branch out and see it (I didn%26#39;t - there are local buses but I didn%26#39;t bother.) If you stay in town, you absolutely have no need for a car in Korcula - it%26#39;s small and easy to walk anywhere.
You can also take the car ferries between the three cities, but they don%26#39;t run every day, so you have to plan your itinerary carefully if you wish to rely on them. But again, I%26#39;d look at not having a car if you can - gives you the most flexibility.
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%26quot;The downside of NOT having a car on Korcula is that it%26#39;s hard to get away from the town itself - the island is much larger than the town if you want to branch out and see it%26quot;
Is it possible to rent a scooter? Safe? We%26#39;ve driven around some small Italian islands on a scooter rental before, and that was a lot of fun.
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I think it is possible to rent a scooter on Korcula - I seem to recall seeing signs for such rentals, but I didn%26#39;t try renting one.
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Please avoid taking cars to islands - you can rent locally cars and scooters and not have such an impact on the environment and local community. Besides, the ferries are expensive, parking is hard to find and you may not even feel like driving on some days...
One of the reasons why I would do it from North would be to avoid a 6 AM catamaran from Korcula to Hvar (the only catamaran between those two islands) :)))))))))
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%26quot;One of the reasons why I would do it from North would be to avoid a 6 AM catamaran from Korcula to Hvar (the only catamaran between those two islands) :)))))))))%26quot;
Ouch! That%26#39;s a pretty good reason to go south, rather than north. I gather the catamaran sailing from Hvar to Korcula is a little more reasonable?
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