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Help appreciated for family trip to italy slovenia and croatia

Dear all,
My family of four will be flying in and out of rome in mid may. We have about 15 nights.
Am in the process of settling the logistics in terms of transport and will really any advice on the best way to get from one city to the other.
My tentative plans are:

Option 1:
- day 1: arrive in rome
- Train to naples n get driver to go to amalfi coast (AC)
- days 2-4: 3 nights in AC ( either 1 night in sorrento n 2 nights in positano or all three nights in one)

Day 4-6:
- train from sorrento to florence (2 nights)

Day 6-7:
- train from florence to venice (1 night)

Day 7-10:
- venice to slovenia (3-4 nights). What is the best way for us to go to slovenia? Ferry? Land transport?
- Rent a car
- Places to see: lake bled, ljubljana, rovinj, Istria coast (should we base in one place or travel as we drive along towards croatia)

Days 10-13:
- croatia: probably base in split: to visit zadar, mostar, split n dubrovnik
- Fly back to rome for last 2 nights from split

Option 2:
- rome to AC (to bari to dubrovnik) move northwards to split, slovenia, venice, florence n finally to rome.

I know my itinerary is very ambitious. Trying my best to fit in places that we all will love to go.
Thank you in advance!

Posted by
1652 posts

I realize that everyone travels differently, but your itinerary is extremely overly ambitious. You will be spending most of your time traveling to each destination and hardly any time at the destination. Have you been to Rome before? Right now you have 1 to 1.5 days allocated for Rome, a major European capital that deserves a minimum of 4 -5 nights, if not more. We spent a week in Rome and didn't see everything. You can't visit Dubrovnik as a day trip from Split. It would be at least a 6-hour roundtrip. You have allocated 3-4 nights for Slovenia, but you want to visit 4 places there, including Istria which is in Croatia. For comparison purposes, we spent 3 nights in Slovenia, which included only Ljubljana and a day at Lake Bled.

You can check rome2rio to find modes of transportation from one place to the other. You have to click on the underlying links to get accurate schedules.

If it were me, but it's not, I would spend the 2 weeks in Italy, OR divide the 2 weeks between Croatia and Slovenia.

Posted by
8 posts

Hi there!
Thanks for sharing. I know it’s overly ambitious. 😬 My husband and i have been to rome before but not my girls. Didnt quite have a pleasant experience there n that’s why we allocated only 2 nights since we are flying out from rome. My girls want to go to amalfi coast and florence while slovenia and croatia. Will probably axe either croatia or slovenia.

Posted by
774 posts

You're going to fly 17 hours then go to the train station for another couple of hours to Naples? How many time zones are we talking about? With this itinerary, you'll spend at least half of your two weeks actually in planes, trains and automobiles, and you'll be exhausted doing it. For example:

day one: arrive Rome, By the time you pick up bags, go through immigration, go to train station, take 1.5 hour ride to Naples, pick up a driver and head to Sorrento, find hotel and check in, I'd bet it's day 2. Are you planning on sleeping at all?

day two: OK, so you've made it to Sorrento and/or Positano. You could kill 3 days there, for sure, but why? Pretty, but not for 3 days, In my view. But then again, trying to drive the Amalfi Coast in mid-May, it probably will take 3 days.

days 4-6: it's another 4 hours on the train to Florence.

days 6-7: Florence to venice for one night? You'll have enough time to find a hotel, check in and eat dinner. Sleep. Then you're off again.

days 7-10: Venice to Slovenia. Best case scenario, it's a 2 hour drive, more like 6 or 7 on the train. If there's a ferry, it would go to Koper, which is at least a couple of hours from Ljubljana. Overnight in Ljubljana.

Pick up the car at the crack of dawn and drive to Bled, walk around the Lake and keep going. Through the Julian Alps to Rovinj, at least 5 hours without a stop.

Get to "Istria". Spend a day in Rovinj, then back in the car.

Days 10-13: My apologies, but this is just lunacy. Rovinj to Split, driving 5 to 8 hours. Split to Mostar, at least 2. Going back to Split? 2 more hours. Split to Zadar, about 2 hours, 2 more to return. R/T Split to Dubrovnik, a good 8 hours. Day trips? Mostar, probably. Zadar, possible. Maybe, if your idea of a day trip involves driving most of the day, spending an hour looking for parking, spending an hour ( maybe two) at the sights, eat, and returning to Split in the middle of the night. And, are you planning to see anything in Split?

Then back to Rome for 2 nights? Where you will take a shower and collapse until your flight home?

Very ambitious, no, very impossible. What can you actually see/do in a few hours anywhere? Are you planning to do one sight before moving on? You're not factoring in reasonable amounts of time for any logistics. Think about it--hotels in and out, moving from hotels to transportation, waiting for transportation, 2 hour meals, accounting for traffic, getting lost, border crossings, bathroom breaks. How long does it take to do these sorts of things in Singapore? And that's, presumably, with your being familiar with everything. And you're traveling with 4 people. Just getting in and out of the shower every day will take the family at least an hour. That's just a short list. Even if you had a personal car and driver and guide for the entire time, it wouldn't work. I hate to be Debbie Downer here, but I think it would be seriously hopeless to accomplish this itinerary with any degree of satisfaction.

With some ruthless editing, this is itinerary is salvageable. I'd suggest picking one country. You'll be pressed to do any of them justice in two weeks. Let us know how you decide to proceed.

Posted by
441 posts

We spent 10 days in Slovenija (Piran (4 nights) and Ljubljana (6 nights)) last October. We loved it. Highly recommended. We stayed in Treviso (3 nights) and took the train to Trieste and then the ferry to Piran.

But, you should NOT go there on this trip.

You are wasting way too much time on travel.
Slow down.
We have found that there is a huge difference between 3 nights in a location versus 2. You just get to see so much more with 3.