Island input needed (Korcula, Hvar, Vis or Split)
 

Hey all,

I am starting to feel like my cheap and easy dream vacation is turning into one of the most expensive and complicated trips of my life. We thought we would be getting an easy free trip to Croatia with BA miles and Hilton points. I'll spare you the details but here is my current travel plans. Denver -> London>Venice. Spend two night in Venice. Take a late night flight from Venice to Dubrovnik. Spend three nights in Dubrovnik. Then we have 3-4 night to do what we want. We are leaning towards making this as relaxing as possible. There isn't enough time to hit everything we want to see and our return flights are horrible. Originally we were going to head up to Split and branch out from there but it is a fairly long trip from Dubrovnik. We also looked into renting a place in Vis but is sounds like you have to go to Split and then Vis?

The most logical options are Hvar and Korcula. It will be me and my wife with my 13 year old daughter. Hvar worries me that it is the next Ibiza.

If you could find an house/apartment on any island which would you chose?

We do like a pool or bring close to the beach..

T

you might like Brac and the town of Bol, some ok beaches and hotels. You might also like Sumartin. You can catch a ferry https://www.croatiaferries.com/sumar...rska-ferry.htm from makarska and then move up to Bol before taking the Hydrafoil into split https://www.croatiaferries.com/bol-split-ferry.htm or cross the island and take the ferry from Supetar. All a bit more low key than Hvar when I was last there, but do a bit more research to be up to date.

We had 8 days in Croatia a few years ago - Dubrovnik with day trips to Mostar and Kotor, Korcula and Split with day trip to Trogir. I didn't go to Hvar but from what I saw of it from the boat, and what I've read, and having been to Korcula, I'm glad we did Korcula.

Here is my trip report - I give locations we stayed at and transportation details and I think you can get a sense of how long things take. Scroll down to post number 56 to get to the Croatia part of the report.
https://www.fodors.com/community/eur...-854867/page3/

Photos are now here: Zenfolio | Isabel's_View | Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro

IMO, either Hvar or Korcula could be a good choice -- just don't stay in Hvar Town itself if you want to avoid the party crowd.

i haven't been there yet but have been doing lots of planning. We made our island selection (near Supetar on Brac) based on easy ferry/catamaran schedules from Split. You might want to check the boat schedules. From Dubrovnik, Korkula seems to be easier to get to than some of the other islands -- certainly easier and closer than Hvar. When I researched Korcula it sounded and looked lovely. There's also Mijet, which could be interesting since it's a national park (I think).
i am also finding my "cheap and easy" vacation having turned into much more expensive than I expected, especially the hotels since also using awards ticket. And our return from Dubrovnik is obscenely early morning as well.
As others have mentioned, maybe do day trips from Dubrovnik? There seem to be many options including various islands, adventure tours, going to Kotor (13 year olds love going to yet another country), etc. We are doing a countryside cooking class through Dubrovnik Food Story that might be fun for a family. I'm sure there are lots of other family friendly activities in the environs including Kayaking adventures and the like.
We return in June and I'll be posting a TR and hope it's helpful to you if you haven't gone already.

Where do you fly back from? Dubrovnik? Or can you return from Split? Do you have return flights already booked?