Please help us to decide if we should skip some of these places or if there are places we are missing that we should stay in and for how long? thanks
Sept 22 arrive in Barcelona, get on train to Girnoa stay two nights, Sept 24 - 25 take train to Figueras, rent a car and go to Cadeques, stay two nights, spend the next 2 days exploring the region. Sept 28 drop car off in Figueras and take train to Montpellier, Stay one or 2 nights, Sept 30, rent car and explore Languedoc. Oct 2, Take the same car to Provence and stay in Arles and/or Saint Remy, explore the region for a week. Oct 9, Drop car off in Nice and take train to Verona . Oct 8- Oct 17 explore italy. not sure where. Oct 17 go to Rome. we leave from Rome on Oct 20th so we will get there a few days before so we can roam around Rome.
We would love to see Croatia too but only if we zip through costa brava and the Langedoc region and end up with more time on the back end. The big questions in our minds right now is: it it worth checking out Languedoc or skip it and go to Provence? and will be kicking ourselves if we spend a bunch of time in Languedoc and miss Croatia.
A big part of this trip is that we want to live in Europe for 6 months out of the year. We love Spain and France and italy, So this trip is is searching for somewhere we can spend half our lives. We live in Southern California now and we love the Mediterranean climate, We love water, Lakes, rivers and beaches but beaches can be a drive. From what we read, Italy is not an easy place to semi retie in, Visa red tape and tax stuff, so we are leaning towards Spain and France. A lot of blogs talk about valencia Spain but it seems kind of big.
We don't want to live in a giant city like Barcelona but we do want to be within 20-30 minutes from a city the size of Bordeuax or San Sebastian or Montpellier. We would probably want to live just outside in the country and walking distance to a small town or village.