I am getting ready to sign up for Rick's tour called Best of the Adriatic in 14 days (possibly May 2014)....It ends in Dubrovnik and am finding it v difficult to get a flight out of DBV to the states without having a LONG layover, forcing me to stay an extra night somewhere due to the layover. I would gladly visit somewhere else for 1 to 3 nights if I could get a flight back to the USA in ONE day, like from a larger airport like TIVAT (TIV) or Podgorica (TGD)....Does anyone have any suggestions? Would you go to Montenegro? Zagreb? .....or would I have to fly into Venice or Paris to get a flight home in one day?
1. Go overland to Podgorica Stopping in Kotor. Get a guide with a car. 2. Fly Turkish Air to Istanbul (about $275 I think) 3. Istanbul
4. Direct home. You could shorten that up to 3 days by heading straight for the airport in Podgorica and taking the afternoon flight to Istanbul. It's a short flight and will give you some time the first day and all day the second day.
Dubrovnik is a small airport so it's not ideal for getting anywhere, except if you want to link up in Zagreb or Split. It takes a long time to fly to Croatia (at least one stop if not two, I think I even had two) so I don't know about your one day rule...there are no direct flights to the US from there. I would say to go to Montanegro because it's close but it may not help you get home any faster. Istanbul sounds good but you really need more than 2-3 days there, it's a 13 million + megacity.
Check Aer Lingus. They have a non-stop from Dubrovnik to Dublin and you can get a non-stop from there to Cincinnati the next day.
A couple of suggestions 1) Check different days of the week for your return flight. In my case, I could find a much better flight option on Monday than on the weekend. I ended up spending two additional days in Dubrovnik so I could get a one-connection flight (DBV-VIE-IAD) back to the states rather than a two connection flight. You can always do a day trip to Kotor if you stay longer.
2) Check discount flights to other major cities. For example, there are some reasonably priced flights to London. You could fly to London and spend a couple of days there before going home.
When we were there (last year) we had great/easy connections: Dubrovnik -> Frankfurt, from there you can go pretty much everywhere (we went Dubrovnik > Frankfurt > Seattle). Look again.