We have a credit from 2020 from Croatian Airlines. Originally, we had planned to go to Italy and Croatia in May 2020. We used our credits for Italy this past November, but we did not include Croatia at that time, since we felt we'd rather go there during warmer weather.
We had been thinking our next trip after that might be Turkey and Greece.
So, our credit with Croatian Air was extended another year, but now we have to use it to purchase tickets by this April. We are thinking about a trip in May of this year (fingers crossed and booking refundable as much as possible). We are wondering if trying to go to Turkey, Greece, and Croatia will be manageable in a three-week trip. We can't take longer, due to DH's work commitments and the challenge of finding care for our pets.
We are experienced travellers. Compared to some of the posters here, we are fairly fast travellers. We are in our 60s and didn't really start travelling until our 50s, so we know we may have a limited time to see the places we'd like to see. However, that doesn't mean we want to spend more time in transit than on the ground.
In Turkey, we'd like to visit Istanbul, Ephesus and Cappadocia. In Greece, we'd like to visit Athens and at least one island. In Croatia, our original plans included Dubrovnik, Split (overnight), an island (maybe Brac, with a day trip to the blue grotto), Zadar (overnight), Plitvice (overnight), and Zagreb. I realize this is probably too much for 3 weeks, especially since the distances in Turkey are greater than I'd originally thought.
To be honest, if I had to drop one country of the three, I'd drop Croatia. However, our credit is with Croatian Airlines (worth over $600), so it makes more financial sense at this point to drop one of the others. However, which one? Greece has been a lifelong dream, especially since I've always loved classics and mythology. But we WERE just in Rome recently. And I feel like Turkey may be more of a challenge to do as we get older and have less energy. And my brother, who used to spend months at a time travelling around Europe, says that Turkey was his favourite. Geographically, I think Greece makes more sense, but then we might never get to Turkey, as it's more of an outlier.
Thoughts?