Our plans have just shifted and we are now renting a car and driving from Dubrovnik to Split on the 30th.
Could you recommend a good spot to stop to see something along the way and offer tips on which route to take? Looking more for natural beauty than anything else with this group.
I'm guessing the road that looks the most scenic takes a lot longer--but can you tell me how long?
I really appreciate any help we can get!
Meta
I've never driven in Europe, but ViaMichelin seems to be the go-to website for routes and driving-time estimates. The partly-inland route it suggests for your trip is estimated at 3 hr. 40 min. You'd need to add time for stops, traffic, getting lost, finding parking, etc. The coastal route--which I forced VM to cough up by saying I wanted to go through Podgora and Dugi Rat, is estimated at a bit over 5 hours. One imagines traffic could be much more of an issue along the coast, but in late October, who knows?
If you take a look at VM's default route and zoom in a bit, you can see that the road along the coast is highlighted in light green. That means VM considers it especially scenic. I'd ask for local opinions about how long the drive might take; it seems like it would be worth quite a bit of extra time.
Be sure you know how much, if anything, your car-rental company is going to charge you for driving across the unavoidable bit of Bosnia-Hercegovina.
If you were driving the fastest route, you'd pick up the A1 highway going north at Metković. The A1 (aka E65 on Google Maps) is not particularly scenic, but the drive from Dubrovnik north to Metković is slow coastal highway anyway and often quite scenic. You need not drive the slow road all the way north. You could detour off the A1 part of the way as well say around the Makarska region for a while. The Markarska Riviera is probably going to be pretty slow by this time of year; I spent a night there in the town of Baska Voda some years ago in early October (interesting town, nothing amazing, pleasant place to stop).
As noted, you do need to make sure your rental car allows you to drive through Bosnia - or at least through the "Neum Corridor." Some rental car companies offer exceptions for driving just through this tiny coastal section of Bosnia and don't charge you extra or at least as much as driving inland into Bosnia. Because otherwise, you may need an insurance card to cross the border ("green card") from the rental car company.
