Hello!

I just got married, and my husband and I are planning on saving up to embark on our honeymoon adventure in June of 2017. I know it's a while away, but I'm so excited I want to get planning now! And I know June is the high season, so I assume things will book up (correct me if I'm wrong, though). We've decided on a week in Croatia and a week in Italy (wish it could be more! Darn you, full time healthcare job.) I'm in charge of planning the week in Croatia, and he's in charge of planning the week in Italy. We'll do Croatia the 1st week, then Italy the 2nd week. Our plan is to fly in to Dubrovnik. Here's what I've got so far:

1) DUBROVNIK: 2 days
--- 1 day in Dubrovnik
--- Day trip to Lokrum Island? Mijet Island?

2) HVAR: 1 day --> Any suggestions re: a better island to visit?

3) SPLIT: 1 day --> Do we need more than 1 day?

4) PLITVICE LAKE NATIONAL PARK: 2 days
--- Bus from Zadar to Plitvice Lake Nat’l. Park (approx 2.5 hrs)
--- Bus from Zadar to Rovinj (approx 7 hrs)

5) ROVINJ: 1 day --> Do we need more than 1 day?

Ferry from Rovinj to Venice…

--------------------------
Any and all tips, suggestions, modifications are greatly appreciated as we've never travelled to Croatia. Our overall budget (including international flights from USA to Europe) for both weeks is around $11,000.00 USD.
THANK YOU TRAVELERS! Hope to hear from you!

A little info. www.inyourpocket.com/Croatia

Croatia is a beautiful place and I can understand why you want to see these places. But I'm afraid that with this itinerary, you would see very little, as you would be spending almost all of your time in transit instead of actually visiting anything. BUT only you can decide what you want to see and do.

SO: Get some good guidebooks (or spend some time with a few in your local library), identify the things you most want to see in each location, check their opening/closing times on the internet, and mark them on a calendar. Then pencil in your transportation (you can use rome2rio.com to get a sense of your options and then do some more internet searches to get the details). Be sure to add some time on either side for getting to/from your lodging, checking in/out, packing/unpacking, getting oriented, etc. Only then can you decide if your plan would suit your interests.

Good luck!

I loved Rovinj, but if you are also doing a week in Italy, I'd consider skipping it, unless it makes sense because you will pass through anyway. (Rovinj used to be part of Italy and feels very Venetian due to the bell tower and the architecture; Istria is still officially bilingual.)

One option would be be to ferry from Split to Italy - or Dubrovnik from Italy, if you could fly into Split. Or, fly into Zagreb, then do Plitvice, Split, Hvar, and Dubrovnik, then ferry over from Dubrovnik. Check the ferry schedules; they may not run every day. It may even be possible to fly from Split or Dubrovnik to Rome or Milan on budget flights in the summer. It's too early to check any of these schedules for 2017, but you can check for this June and hope things are about the same next year.

You don't need two nights at Plitvice. It's a lovely park, a real gem, but you can see it easily in 5-6 hours. I recommend staying over in or near the park so you can get in first thing the next morning (park opens at 7am) to avoid the big tour groups that show up by late morning. Plitvice is a well developed park with boardwalks and even some concessions, not exactly virgin wildness, so expect it to be busy in June. You could even stop over in Plitvice as a day stop between Zagreb and Split (or Zadar) or as a long day trip from Split, but that would put you in the park at mid-day at the busy time.

Seriously consider renting a car, at least for a few days. It's easy for Americans to drive in Croatia. Much of your driving would be on the modern A1 highway, which is probably nicer than many American interstates. With such a limited time, having a car will save you hours and give you more flexibility to get around. You can do one-way rentals. You can even find car ferries, but not having one in Hvar might be easier (then you can take passenger catamarans). If you really want to end in Rovinj, you could rent the car in Split, drive to Plitvice, overnight there, then drive to Rovinj and drop the car there. This would also let you make a few stops going north (towns like Sibinek and Zadar for example), get into Plitvice late, explore the park the next morning and be on your way to Rovinj by mid-afternoon. Trying to schedule a bus like that would be pretty challenging with your time constraints.

Try car rental sites like Kemwel, EconomyCarRentals, and Auto Europe to check car prices on one-way rentals. For under four days, the price may be higher (or you would be charged a drop fee), but it still may be worth it.

(In Italy, I wouldn't rent a car - except maybe in Tuscany, if at all - because they have a fantastic train network, and driving in some of the Italian cities looks nuts - never done it myself.)

Thank you all SO MUCH. This is extremely helpful information. Sounds like it makes a lot of sense to shave off a couple of spots. I don't want us to be darting from place to place like chickens with our heads cut off and not get to take any of it in.

Does it make sense to go in May 2017 instead of June 2017? Is it a lot less busy? Is the weather drastically different?

Thanks for the continued info!!

i agree that with that tight time frame, you might want to rent a car. we found driving in croatia to be very easy... though we found the road along the coast was slower than the Michelin guide said. call kemwel (they are our fav) rather than research online... and see what it would cost to do a one-way car rental.

we were super tired after hike/walking all over plitvice park and were glad to have a place to stay, rather than get in the car... so i actually like planning 2 nights there... with a very early departure after a good night's sleep.

We took an overnight ferry from split to italy in order to save time. it was super comfy and very cost-effective. don't know whether that is offered from rovinj.

dubrovnik is wonderful and you could also consider spending more time there, rather than going to hvar. loved hvar, but maybe not worth a hectic 1-nighter...??

May is "shoulder season," while June is "high season" -- so yes, there is a difference. For climate information, consult any decent guidebook, wunderground.com, or accuweather.com. Note that some of the major ferry schedules typically change on 1 June (adding times for high season), so depending on where EXACTLY, you hope to go, May can be a bit less convenient than June. May is wildflower season through much of the area, lodging rates are lower, and people in the tourism industry are happy to see guests arrive again. I love traveling in May! YMMV.

If deferring until 2017 also means taking 2 weeks in Italy this year, and then 2 weeks in Croatia next year, then I (for one) would think you were making a very wise choice! JMO.

Can you give us a preview of the Italian portion? That would influence how I would spend my time in Croatia and vice versa.

This current itinerary does not give a lot of time for swimming, but if you do slow down and wanted some sea time, then June will be better for sea temps. May can be gorgeous weather, but I find the sea temps too cold. I would not avoid June for crowd reasons, as I do not think it is as bad as July/August.

At this point my husband has come up with the following:

1) Venice
2) Tuscany
3) Positano
4) Rome

This particular order was chosen because we could take a ferry from Rovinj, Croatia to Venice, and it would be easier to fly back home out of Rome. Days per city/area have not been determined yet. Open to suggestions though!

Venice, Tuscany, Positano, and Rome could easily take 2 weeks, if not 3 -- and that would be a trip that would hit just the highlights. With 2 weeks, you might want to skip Positano, waiting until you can give Naples and the Amalfi Coast at least a week.

Do you really have only seven days for Italy? If so, that's not many days for all of those places - you'll barely have time to see much in any one place. Rome alone is huge, and you'll be losing a lot of time just moving around.

Personally, I think you should give up on the idea of a 7/7 split if you truly have only two weeks. Instead, list the places you really want to see in both countries and prioritize them, then try to connect them.

If you really want more of the time in Italy, then I suggest either Rovinj and Plitvice (fly into Split or Zagreb) and ferry from Rovinj to Italy...or Dubrovnik and Split, then ferry to Italy or fly over. Or it might make more sense to start in Italy and ferry/fly the other way. Try it both ways, see which one gives you the best flights and options. Sometimes it just works better one way vs. the other, other times it doesn't matter.

It wouldn't be a mistake to spend most of the time in Croatia and just a little in Italy or vice versa - it's really up to you. (If you don't make it to Rome, you can see some Roman ruins and even a well-preserved Roman amphitheatre in Pula near Rovinj, though it's hardly the same thing as going to Rome.)

I know we could spend months in Italy alone...and probably any country for that matter. I wish!! Does it seem like if we only have 16/17 days max (including travel days) for the whole trip we should just stick to one country?

Your call, of course, but there are some real advantages to visiting just Italy or just Croatia on this trip: Most notably, you will have more time to actually see things, rather than time devoted to transportation. Trying to smash just Venice, Tuscany, and Rome into one week (and note that I'm not counting Positano) would be unpleasant for me. Trying to smash Croatia into a week would be unpleasant for me. In contrast, I can easily imagine an enjoyable 2-week trip to either country. Again, I think you benefit by trying to mark up a calendar.

If you fly open jaw and visit close by areas (i.e., Venice and Istria) then there is no reason to not visit two adjacent countries--it is just that you have too many places in mind.

I'll quibble just ever so slightly with yorkshire (sorry!): In today's world, combining countries is basically NOT a problem, but (a) Italy and Croatia use different currencies, so you would need to work with both (NOT a big deal by any means!), and (b) they speak different languages, and even though English should be widely spoken, I like to try to at least use the local language for civilities, and I am SO bad with languages, that switching between languages can throw me off enough that I confuse even basics like "thank you" and "good evening" -- MY problem! These are not the considerations that would drive my decision about whether / how to split time in these too countries....

Rather, I agree that the problem is the number and location of places on your wishlist, not that these places are in different countries <i>per se</i>.