You can surely fit some islands in those 2 weeks. Athens has a great asset, which can not be easily found in other destinations. It has many beautiful islands in a close distance (that means 1-2 hours by ferry). The islands near Athens are located either in the Saronic Gulf or in the Aegean Sea (Cyclades). They are numerous, and each of them has something really different to offer. If you can't decide which island to choose, you can definitely explore more islands as the distance between the islands is very short. Greek Island Hopping near Athens is a must, June is OK for swimming. People have already started heading to the Greek beaches for 2 weeks now. I'm going to Mykonos this weekend! I plan to swim every day from the moment I step my feet on the island. Some of the best Greek islands to visit in Spring are : Hydra, Santorini, Mykonos, Crete, Rhodes, Corfu, Skopelos.

I loved the Amalfi Coast. We went for my 50th birthday and 10 year anniversary. Stunning!

Amalfi Coast TR 2015

Karen - you can’t go wrong with any of your choices. We spent a month in the Western Balkans this year and loved it. I agree with Lancaster that mostar and Sarajevo should be paired together. While we loved the beautiful coastal cities of croatia, we found the cities in Bosnia and Herzegovenia to be most interesting. We loved our time in Slovenia as well. Unfortunately, to do all this will take more time than two weeks. We also spent two weeks in Greece this year (our third trip there). IMO - going off season makes more sense for touring. Mid April/May would be ideal. We loved Santorini in April and avoided the heavier traffic that many complain about during season. We also loved the Peloppenese peninsula and would recommend crossing the Corinth canal, visiting Mycenae, Olympia, Naplion, Delphi and Athens. Meteora is also magical and highly recommended. We go to sicily in September so I have no advice there, but it seems to me that you may want to devote more time for that region. We plan to spend a month in Sicily alone.

Lancaster - please report back upon your return from the eastern Balkans. That is on our bucket list for a future trip. Would love to see a trip report.

Thank you Annie sweetie pie, Denisea & dgunbug! All your comments are interesting and helpful in planning the trip, but also makes it more difficult to decide where to go. Each country sounds amazing!

What a good choice of places, Karen

And it makes it difficult to choose, as all three are great destinations!

Croatia would be a good option in late spring for sightseeing, but probably it will be too cold for a beach holiday. We visited Split, Dubrovnik, Zadar and Plitvice Lakes in April 2014 during the Balkan trip, and I loved it. Not crowded, and the nature was so beautiful...especially Plitvice!!!

Greece - you could spend a week in Athens (I guess the city has changed a lot), do a day trip to Meteora, I think it's one of the must-visit places in Europe! And then spend a week on an island like Gorfu or Rhodes.

Italy - for some reason I'm not such a big fan...I found people in Croatia and Greece more friendly and hospitable than in Italy. In touristy places people don't seem to care too much...it's like they have all this heritage, so they have to do nothing to draw tourist crowds.

There is a nice tool you could use to choose the right place to visit in a chosen time: RoveMe. It might give you some more ideas where to go in spring 2019

I've been to all three, but am just back from a trip and so haven't responded yet. If you want my input, please let me know where you are with your decision-making....

We have not made any decisions yet. I am so torn. Right now I think my top 2 choices are Croatia or Greece. However, friends of ours just returned from spending 3 months in Italy and they loved the Amalfi Coast. hmmmm? Amalfi Coast would be great, too! So I would love to hear your input! I think my husband is still not convinced about Croatia but he is not on this forum and he doesn't do the research and reading that I do. I am sure he will love Croatia once we are there.

Where did you go on your trip? Will you be posting a trip report? I love your Greece report from last year!

Thank you, kja!

OK, so as I understand it, you are looking for a 2-week trip to Croatia, Greece, or Italy to occur in late April of May. I’ve been to all three and at least part of my time in each was in May, which can be a glorious time to travel to this regions as the wildflowers are often in full bloom then. I’ll offer some thoughts on 2-week options and then some comparisons.

Re: Croatia. If you go to Croatia, I would strongly encourage you to trip you wish list a bit – although one can see all the places you list in 2 weeks, you would skip a LOT. With two weeks, consider EITHER the southern part (roughly Split and south, to include the Bay of Kotor) OR the northern part (roughly Split and north, to include a bit of Slovenia) OR perhaps just the center (Split and surrounds, including an island or two, and perhaps Mostar and / or Sarajevo).

Re: Greece: I think your plan to include Athens (at the end of your trip), Crete (perhaps to start), Naxos, and a few other Cycladic islands makes a lot of sense for your time frame. I think you’ve already seen my trip report….

Re: Italy: A week on the Amalfi Coast seems to me like a reasonable allocation of time for your interests – or you might spend most of your time there, if you include fascinating Naples and some other nearby locations. Although one can enjoy a part (small part) of Sicily in one week, I’d urge you to wait for Sicily until you can give it at least 2 weeks – there’s such a lot to see (hard to compress into JUST 2 weeks!) and getting there takes enough time, IMO, to justify waiting until you can use your time to maximum benefit. JMO, of course! And Italy has such a wealth of options that it isn’t like you would have difficulty finding a more convenient place to spend your second week if the Amalfi Coast and Naples and Paestum don’t offer enough of interest to you to fill your time.

As for observations: I found these 3 locations remarkably different from each other, despite certain similarities. I must admit that I did not find Croatia much like Italy, except (of course) for Istria – which was part of Italy until around WWII. But you should note that each of my trips was for more than 2 weeks and each trip was planned to maximize the diversity of what I saw, so my perspective on these locations could well be different from those of other travelers, and in sharing my views, I am not – by any means – trying to dispute the perceptions of any one else.

For me, the delights of Croatia (and neighboring bits of countries that were once part of Yugoslavia) included (in no particular order):
(a) the diversity of cultural influences in various parts of the country – Ottoman, Venetian, Roman, Italian, Austro-Hungarian, Alpine – all overlaid with unique elements;

(b) the stunning natural scenery – and the diversity of scenic elements across the country – lakes and travertine formations and flooded mountain ranges (the coastal islands) and eroding hills, etc.;

(c) the diversity of local traditions, including different cuisines, from one part of the country to another.

The delights of Greece, for me, incliuded (again, in no particular order):
(a) the extraordinary archeological sites, with their often monumental structures and their evidence of technological skill and OMG, the murals and their evidence of the refinement of ancient life;

(b) the stunning natural scenery, and its diversity, including fractured mountains and seemingly endless series of inlets and promentories and distant snowcaps….; and

(c) the evidence of a thousand years of Byzantine rule, with its architectural and artistic achievements…

The delights of Italy for me, included (in no order):
(a) the extraordinary legacy of art and architecture from the Renaissance (and before and after);

(b) the cuisine (and BTW, I thoroughly enjoyed my meals in Croatia and Greece); and

(c) the opportunity to see areas that seem very close to one another, but are distant enough to have been – and to remain – quite different. Case in point: Sicily is, I think, unlike any other place in Italy. Etc.


So, basically, you have no bad choices – just different ones! If it helps, I often decide which trip to take next based on an assessment of what will be harder / easier for me as I age. Maybe your specific interests will make one area more / less difficult when you are older?

Kja, thank you so much for taking the time to write such a detailed response. I have a lot to think about. After reading what you say about Sicily, and what others have said, I will leave it for a separate trip. Would the Amalfi Coast and Florence and Venice make sense for 2 weeks? Although that might not work if we want to see Naples and Pompeii, too. A lot to consider.

KarenWoo, I'm also thinking of a trip to the Amalfi Coast for 2019, although more likely we'll go in the early fall. If you go to the Amalfi Coast + Naples + Pompeii, why not a return trip to Rome for the rest of the 2 weeks? If the last time you were in Rome was the 1970s, it wouldn't exactly be the same thing! We went to Rome last year for a week and loved it, and could easily have spent more time. In fact, if we do the trip I've just outlined, I would include several days more in Rome to see some of the sights we didn't get to see (and enjoy a few more days in that wonderful city). I would also add Herculaneum as a possible day trip (that's on my list, too).

I hope you found my comments helpful!

I think deferring Sicily makes a lot of sense.

Whether the Amalfi Coast AND Florence AND Venice makes sense for 2 weeks really depends on what YOU want to see an experience. For me, it would be too much -- but then, I felt rushed with "just" six days in Florence.

As noted above, I think a week on the Amalfi Coast is reasonable for most people. Depending on your interests, that week could include the Amalfi Coast towns, Capri and / or Ischia, seriously underrated (IMO) Salerno, Pompeii and / or Herculaneum (both of which are between the AC and Naples), and Paestum. Many people give Naples only a part of a day; I loved Naples and would love to have a week there; YMMV.

I just returned from 2 weeks in Croatia. I would say it's a beautiful country, with a nice mix of historical sights and natural beauty, very nice people and great food. IMHO there aren't the "must sees" of places like Italy (although Dubrovnik is truly a jewel), but it makes a great 2-week trip and May was a perfect time to be there. I will post a TR soon, but wanted to give KarenWoo my input. We did this at a very relaxing pace and only included the Dalmatian Coast. We also included R&R at an island for 4 nights. Our itinerary was 5 nights Split (including day trips to Zadar and to Krka National Park), plus a half-day by ferry to the very lovely island of Hvar. Split has a very interesting historic district and Diocletian's Palace is very special. Croatia has a robust tourist infrastructure and we used drivers for our two long day trips (although we certainly could have done the trip by rental car). Then, after 4 nights at a luxury boutique Hotel Lemongarden on Island of Brac (fantastic!) a driver took us from Split to Dubrovnik via Mostar. I have to say that the overlay of the 90's war adds a dimension to visiting this part of the world. Mostar was a very sad, but interesting, detour. Because we cut a day trip to Kotor from our 3 days in Dubrovnik, I would say that we had one too many days there. However, even with the tourist hordes, Dubrovnik is breathtaking.
Croatia requires a bit of planning to figure out when to take ferries/catamarans. Since we didn't use a car ferry (didn't even rent a car this trip) and wanted to avoid early mornings, we ended up with land transfer from Split to Dubrovnik so we didn't have to deal with the ferry schedule between those cities.
I wouldn't put Croatia on the very top of anyone's destination list, but for those of us who have traveled through much of Europe it's a very nice addition. And one could add Slovenia, which we heard was wonderful, and many people really enjoy some time in Montenegro. We kept this particular trip very simple.
Based on KarenWoo's remarks, I think Croatia would "fit the bill." However, if you haven't been to Rome in decades, that's always a great destination. I have been to Rome several times (but not since 1994) and we are looking at a future trip pairing Rome with another area of Italy. We never tire of Italy, but it's a big world out there. Please let me know if you have any specific questions about our Croatia trip and I should have the TR up in the next couple of weeks.

Alison, thank you for your helpful comments. Was it difficult making ferry arrangements to Hvar and Brac? Are there many ferries going there in May? did you make ferry reservations in advance?

Just curious, why did you choose a private driver instead of renting a car? Was the private driver expensive? We have never done that.

I look forward to your trip report! You are right that it's a big world out there, which is why I would like to visit a country I haven't been to. OTOH, my husband has not been to Greece, and the Amalfi Coast sounds beautiful!

SueBi, thank you for your helpful comments. How long were you in Croatia?

Ferry schedules in Croatia usually change around 1 June -- you have to do some research if you want to find out what will work for you. And much of Croatia can be seen perfectly well by public transportation, although of course some people prefer to have their own car.

@KarenWoo, the ferry/catamaran frequency increases May 1 and then again June 1. The ferry from Split to Supetar on Brac is among the most frequent -- almost hourly when we were there. That's part of the reason we picked staying on Brac for our R and R. The Hvar catamaran going to Hvar Town (the ferry goes to Stari Grad) hadn't previously been well designed for day trips from Split, but at least this season there were options for day trips or -- in our case -- half day trips.

As for using private driver, it was a definite splurge ranging from 169 euro to 250 euro per day depending on where we were going. It was particularly helpful for going from Split to Dubrovnik via Mostar. Everything could have been done by rental car, but it made it very convenient and allowed my husband to do wine-tasting, etc.
ask me any other questions or PM me on TA @alison18losangeles.

Hi Karen!

I followed you to Lisbon this year, I may be following you to Croatia next year!

I have been to Greece (Santorini) and the Amalfi Coast. I, too, am considering Croatia for my next Euro vacation.

I would without hesitation pick the Amalfi Coast! My wife and I both loved our time there! We stayed in Villa Magia in Portofino and Hotel Excelsior Parco in Capri. We took the ferry to Amalfi and taxi up to Ravello.

The area is simply magical and worth going to immediately!

Santorini was beautiful. We stayed in Oia. We loved that too, but not even close to AC.

Good luck with your decision!

Alison, thank you for your comments about the ferry schedules and the private driver.

Masterphil, I hope you enjoyed Lisbon as much as we did. Did you eat roast chicken at Bonjardim?

If it's for next spring, wait with your planning at least until Christmas, too many things may change in the meantime.

What do you mean that too many things may change? Ferry schedules, bus and train schedules?