Traveling within Croatia

I would look into flying. Venice to rijeka is about 3 hours. And rijeka to Dubrovnik is about 7-8 hours. We’ve done both drives but on different days. Driving in Croatia is easy since the New roads were built but parking is almost impossible. We’ll be driving from rijeka to Split to Orebić to Dubrovnik to Zagreb (hotel has parking) in September and are researching parking lots outside of each city to park till we leave again.

Croatia doesn't have a lot of rail service. Buses fill in the gaps. I found the buses comfortable, but it isn't quite as easy to find reliable schedule information online for buses as it is for trains. That can be a challenge if you're trying to move rapidly from place to place.

One quirk to know about is that there is usually a small fee to stow your luggage in the hold under the bus. As of 2015 it was the equivalent of about $1. So if a bus-company hold out an empty palm to you, he's not soliciting a tip, nor is it a scam.

Thank you both so much. Did you take any of the ferries? Wondering if that might be an option.

I go to the Balkans fairly often; Croatia a few times. I never go without discussing the plans with Dijana. She has helped a lot over the years, from simple .... ehhhh, dont do it, to full fledged plans with the travel solved.

Dijana Krkotic
Executive director
Doclea Travel
Address: Bulevar Sv. Petra
Cetinjskog br. 79
81 000 Podgorica
Phone: +382 20 675 197
Mob: +382 69 277 749
E-mail:dijana@docleatravel.com

Mike, I've been to Croatia three times and driven on two of the trips. Driving in Croatia is really easy except in a few cities (like Dubrovnik (where I have driven) and Split (where I haven't). While you can certainly take buses and ferries, sometimes a car is going to save you an enormous amount of time and hassle over a bus. You don't have to drive the entire time, but having a car for part of your journey may make sense. If you post a rough itinerary, we can help you with options.

If you start in Venice, you might want to take the ferry across to Croatian Istria or take a bus around to get down there. If you have time, I'd highly recommend a stop in Slovenia to. If you wanted to go from say Venice to Ljubljana, Slovenia, you can take a train from there on to Zagreb or Rijeka, Croatia and pick up a car there. (You want to avoid dropping off a rental car in a different country from the one where you rented it - that could incur a huge drop-off fee.)

Take a look at small boating/cruising tours, among the islands. And/or biking tours (e-bikes are available).

We looked at both back in 2018. Decided against boat tours, as they appeared too "Party-Hearty" or "Sedate and Sherry" for our tastes. We chose a 6 night bike tour with a three day, so-called pre-tour add-on that took us from Zagreb to Split, with a night and day at Plitvice and another night at Zadar along the way. Our pre-tour included entrance tickets at Plitvice and also at Krka. The pre-tour included a rental car and driving was a piece of cake. Some on very adequate roads, some on excellent highways.

The company we used - and loved - was Meridien Ten, a local company based in Split. All spoke excellent English and they seem to pitch to the US/Canada/Australia/NZ client base. It was a bit pricey for the guided bike tour, but what a pleasure! There are less expensive 'self-guided' options from Meridien Ten (https://www.meridienten.com), and there are other vendors. We used e-bikes (we were over 65). Others were around 50 and used road bikes or "cross" bikes.

I would fly from Venice to Split or Dubrovnik. For getting around within Croatia, we used ferries and Octopus Transfers, and that worked out very well. https://www.octopustransferscroatia.com

We rented a car while in Croatia, and my husband did the driving. We picked up our rental car the day we left Dubrovnik, and we returned it in Zagreb. Driving in Croatia is very easy. The highways are in good shape, and we never encountered a lot of traffic. We drove from Dubrovnik to Split to Plitvice Lakes NP and then to Zagreb.