diannetraynor

I know this is broad...but if you had 7 days flying in and out of Dubrovnik, what would you do? Gee...I'd like someone to help me plan a trip that does not include sitting on a beach.

kit

I'll be watching this thread because Dubrovnik's on my hitlist, too. And I also don't like the beach. But I'll warn you as you appear to be new to the Forums -- you're going to have to help everyone out a bit. Budget? Interests? Are you traveling solo? Things like that. Search previous threads and all the good information on this travel site and do a little work yourself (maybe you have, can't tell). Right now, the experts on the board may let your thread just fall to the bottom because they won't know how to best help.

isabel

We had four days there and spent two of them doing day trips - one to Kotor in Montenegro and the other to Mostar in Bosnia. They were both worthwhile. The other two days we spend in Dubrovnik itself. One day we took a short boat ride around the area close to Dubrovnik. Dubrovnik is wonderful but quite small so it doesn't take long to walk up and down every single street. During cruise ship season (I think about May-Oct) it can get very crowded between 10am and 5pm but is lovely at other times.

After Dubrovnik we took a ferry to Korcula for two days and then another to Split for two more days. Since you are flying back out of Dubrovnik (we departed from Split) you could just do Korcula (or Hvar, the other popular island) and then return to Dubrovnik to fly out. You can get there either by ferry or bus (and then just a very short ferry).

Here is my trip report and link to photos http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...rful-weeks.cfm
You need to scroll about halfway down to get to the Croatia part.

diannetraynor

Thank you Isabel! We will rent a car and travel as much as we can out of the city, but...where to go? We like to get as much seen as possible. We will probably do two nights here..two nights there...but where? We are not on any budget and we are traveling as two couples (but we aren't in our twenties...far from it). We are extremely adventurous (have traveled throughout Middle East on our own--even the wrong bank in Israel).

KayF

We had 4 nights in Dubrovnik, staying in the Old Town, and loved it. It wasn't too long for us but we prefer to stay 3 or 4 nights in most places. We did a half day trip on a boat out to Lokrum, not much there but good for a wander around.

We climbed up the hill opposite Dubrovnik and could look down on the town for wonderful views. You can drive up too which would be a lot easier. I did find it a bit creepy up there, you could still see lots of bullet holes in things from the war.

I'd also recommend doing a walk along the top of the walls, wonderful views along the way.

On that trip we didn't venture outside the walls much, except to get to and fro the airport. Another trip we visited Rovinj which is beautiful and a couple of other places further north/east.

Kay

Ackislander

You can do everything there is to "do" in Dubrovnik in two short days, as the posters above attest.

If you are the kind of person who needs to do stuff, you may well be planning too long a stay there. You can and should take day trips on water and land, but you will see from other posts here on Fodors that perhaps taking a tour, booked locally, will be easier than renting a car and driving yourself. These places (Mostar and Kotor) are in different countries, and they are not like the eurozone countries. They have different currencies and somewhat different languages and sometimes significant border crossings because they don't necessarily like each other.

I think KayF points to something that is more interesting than the ordinary tourist sites: trying to understand why Dubrovnik is what it is and looking for evidence of its Roman, Venetian, Austrian, and recent past. There is a small war museum, and it quickly shows you how the happy scene before you looked when the Serbians and Montenegrans occupied the heights above town and rained shells day after day. If you walk around the walls (you should) you will see that most of the buildings have new or newish tile roofs. That's because the old roofs were destroyed by the shelling.

In addition to the political and military and architectural history, Dubrovnik presents a fascinating social history as it adapts to an international tourist economy. So you can spend four or five days there, but they won't be spent on heavy duty tourist sites. They will be spent sitting in a bar watching the world go by and coming to understand it.

You won't sit on the beach because there aren't really much of any beaches: very small sandy spaces in a very rocky coast line.