Croatia Itinerary Help - September
 

Croatia is a delightful destination, but some of your statements and questions confuse me.

First, do you already have your flight reservations? If not, don’t fly into and out of the same city – that forces you to face the cost, in time and money, to backtrack. In most cases, “open jaw” tickets (in one city, out of another, identified on many airline booking sites as “multi-city” itineraries) will be no more costly than round trips once you consider all the costs.

You say, “We REALLY enjoy immersing ourselves in the culture of the places we travel to; we typically use airbnb and try to stay in a central location”—but of course, staying in an apartment where you will not be interacting with anyone else is not necessarily a way to expose yourselves to “the culture” of any place. If you prefer an apartment, go for it – but do recognize its limits.

With less than 2 weeks and a desire to go from Zagreb to Dubrovnik, you can see some wonderful things, but you will need to be extremely selective, particularly if you want a rather laid-back trip. You might want to consider just the northern part of Croatia (Zagreb, the Plitvice Lakes, Istria, maybe as far south as Split depending on your interests; if islands are a priority, look at Krk, Rab, and Pag) – and even then, you will (I think) need to be selective. If you really want some islands, then think about limiting yourself to the southern part of Croation – maybe Dubrovnik, Korcula, Hvar, Split, Trogir, and whatever day trips work for you.

If you don’t already have it, please consult the Rough Guide – you’ll learn a lot about your options that are not readily available elsewhere.

Good luck!

Thank you for your constructive reply Kja! We are planning to fly into Zagreb and out through Dubrovnik... from a cost and travel standpoint, that made the most sense. I have kept an eye on flights back through Split, but they seem to cost substantially more. I do recognize the limitations of airbnb/apartments, but I feel as though we're pretty good at getting out and about and visiting/conversing with the locals, so I'm not entirely concerned about that.

We have spoken to a couple of travel agents, and they seem to push the "big city" itineraries - we're just hoping to find something a little more our travel style. There is nothing wrong with larger cities, but we would also love to see some picturesque smaller towns as well. Maybe we need to rethink flying into Zagreb and change to Dubrovnik; we have just been told by multiple people (both friends who have traveled there as well as agents) that we shouldn't miss Plitivice, so we were trying to make it a point of hitting that for a day.