note to xyz99 - We are just back from hungary & croatia, so a note about our rental from Kemwell. they were (kemwell/europecar) again wonderful... but the dropoff point in Dubrovnik was even better than usual. Because the drive from near Split to Dubrovnik is nightmarishly long (it took us almost 6 hours... many tourist towns with crosswalks, many road repairs... yikes) AND i made another miscalculation, we got the car in at 7pm when it should have been in at 11am. Not only did the guy not charge us for the day... but when we remembered that we hadn't gotten gas (we were stressed), he simply offered to drive with us to the gas station so we could fill up, then drop us at our sobe, which was at the other end of town. He was just wonderful!!!

I always use economy car rentals, they have good service and I think a middle sized car is about 377$ for ten days, but you should check out the web page www.economycarrentals.com for more info. Good luck to you!

Kawh,
Thanks for all this info, good to know you had such a god experience with Kemwell. I only found out about them (and decided to use them) based on the posts on this forum.

Besides the drive from Split to Dubrovnik being nightmarish, did you enjoy the scenery? Is t worth such a long drive? We’ll be doing it on Sept 12, so hopefully with fewer crowds.

Our other option for the day (we’ll need to get from Hvar to Dubrovnik) is take the ferry to Orebic and drive through the Peljesac peninsula. Any thoughts, should we do that instead of taking the ferry back to Split and drive from Slit to Dubrovnik?
Thanks

i live in california about 30 minutes from the coast, so perhaps i have a different attitude than others might about the coast... but i would call the coastal drive pretty unremarkable for the first 2/3 of the drive (even without the traffic headaches) and quite stunning the last 1/3. perhaps you should pose this question as its own heading and see what others have to say. for me, i would say take the ferry... but most might not agree.

make SURE to check the ferry schedules very closely. we made the mistake of scheduling everything before checking the hvar schedule (assuming the ferry was daily) and found that, even in the summer, the ferry to/from dubrovnik is only 3 times a week. that threw everything off.

also, as i am usually a really careful (obsessive?) planner, i had stressed a little about getting reservations for the ferry. we had reservations for the sleeper into italy from hvar, but not from split to hvar, as we were told we wouldn't need them. of course we got to split after a long bus ride back up the coast from dubrovnik and ferry tickets were sold out hours ago! yikes... this is what makes travel an adventure, right? we found another ferry line up the road and ere able to get out that evening... you won't have those problems, i'm sure, since you will not travel during the summer rush.

i can't speak to those other islands, as we only went to hvar. i hear great things about all of them, though.

don't miss out on renting a scooter on hvar... it's the only way to get around and just so much fun! (and we're in our mid-50's...)
great swimming, too.
-k.

Kawh,
Thanks. We live on the East coast, so for us, any coast driving is great :)
But in the end, I think we will skip the Split – Dubrovnik drive, and take the ferry to Korcula, then to Orebic, then drive from there to Dubrovnik through the Peljesac peninsula. This of course, assuming the car ferry runs on Sept 12 from Hvar (Stari Grad) to Dubrovnik.

Hello xyz99 !!

I see our plans are again "almost overlapping". Last year, it was Portugal (I think) and this year its Croatia. We'll be in Slovenia and northern Croatia at the beginning of October.

Hi sssteve,
It wasn’t Portugal (that is coming sometime in the future, not sure when, the list is too long) but the Utah and the Southwest trip. Anyway, I have your web site bookmarked, and every time we go somewhere I check it – you traveled a lot more than we did, but it seems we like the same things and places. Where in northern Croatia are you going?

We're flying into and out of Ljubljana. We'll visit Bled and then head south, stop in Trieste, then into Istria, and from there down the coast to Zadar. On the way we'll visit Plitvica and probably Krka falls.