Greece, Croatia or Portugal - Summer 2018?

[Anonymous]

Family with two kids (9yo) thinking of summer vacation (late July) and came up with Greece, Croatia(coast)/Slovenia (lakes and Mtns) and Portugal. We have been to Spain in the summer (side trip to Andorra- Mtns) and London in spring and had great times at both. We like the beach, but don't want to spend the entire vaca on the beach. We like getting out and seeing and doing other adventurous things as well as some typical touristy site seeing. Airfare looks close for all 3 ~$5K (yikes). Where should we go?

[Anonymous]

Our early 20 age kids had a great time in Croatia. I wish I had gone. Just don't fly to Istanbul to get there.

[Anonymous]

I just went to Portugal and it was one of my favorite trips. I have been to Slovenia but not Croatia or Greece.

[Anonymous]

Of what you list, I've only been to Greece but the other 2 are on my list!

That said I might do Portugal if I were you because it's the closest and it should be a good time for the beach.

[Anonymous]

Croatia is beautiful and the food is amazing!

[Anonymous]

Love Portugal and Croatia but both are very popular summer destinations for Europeans and also very, very hot. I'd try to go late June or early July if at all possible. Both are great!

[Anonymous]

We loved Croatia in August- if you want to go swimming in the water don't go any earlier in the summer as the water won't be warm enough!

[Anonymous]

GREECE

[Anonymous]

Loved Croatia- not sure about PP raving about food. Go for the sights.

[Anonymous]

Portugal

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I just went to Portugal and it was one of my favorite trips. I have been to Slovenia but not Croatia or Greece.

Can you please share the details of your trip (where you went, stayed, any highlights you would recommend)? We are going for 10 days in May - just starting to plan the details.

[Anonymous]

We went to Croatia last summer and absolutely loved it. We went with another family and between our kids and theirs, we had two 9 yr olds, one 11 yr old, and one 7 yr old. They all had an amazing time, and so did we. We did Korcula, Dubrovnik, Rovinj, Split, and Plitvice (stunning national park). You can get a great mixture of beautiful nature and charming towns and cities, islands, cliffs...it's so great. Highly recommend.

[Anonymous]

We found Slovenia to be a less exciting Switzerland. It was snooze-worthy after seeing the spectacular sights in Bosnia and Croatia. We really loved Croatia. It was spectacular. If you have extra time after Croatia, I'd add on Bosnia, Serbia or Budapest. All three are more interesting than Slovenia. Sarajevo, in particular, is amazing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We went to Croatia last summer and absolutely loved it. We went with another family and between our kids and theirs, we had two 9 yr olds, one 11 yr old, and one 7 yr old. They all had an amazing time, and so did we. We did Korcula, Dubrovnik, Rovinj, Split, and Plitvice (stunning national park). You can get a great mixture of beautiful nature and charming towns and cities, islands, cliffs...it's so great. Highly recommend.

]


Anyone who has done this--or the PP who might see this--how long were you there? These places are all VERY far apart.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We went to Croatia last summer and absolutely loved it. We went with another family and between our kids and theirs, we had two 9 yr olds, one 11 yr old, and one 7 yr old. They all had an amazing time, and so did we. We did Korcula, Dubrovnik, Rovinj, Split, and Plitvice (stunning national park). You can get a great mixture of beautiful nature and charming towns and cities, islands, cliffs...it's so great. Highly recommend.

]


Anyone who has done this--or the PP who might see this--how long were you there? These places are all VERY far apart.

Not PP but we did this a few years ago. Flew into Zagreb, spent a night or two, drove to Rovinj and spent a few nights there (stayed at a cool resort/design hotel). From there we drove to Plitvice, spent the night in the Soviet-era hotel on site, then drove to Split. In Split we dropped off our rental and stayed a couple of nights, then took a ferry to Hvar for a couple of nights. Then we ferried to Korcula, spent 1 or 2 nights there, then ferried to the mainland and got someone to drive us to Dubrovnik (stopping at a winery and Salt on the way). Stayed in Dubrovnik a few nights and flew home from there.

It was a lot of moving around but we really liked it. I think getting to/from Rovinj requiring longish drives (3-4 hours?) but we were glad we included it (Zagreb to Rovinj was an easy drive on nice roads; we ended up following the GPS and taking a small road to Plitvice which I think saved us time but was a little too small for preference). Most Americans don't get to Istria and it is very picturesque with great food (reminiscent of Italy, which is just across the Adriatic). Outside of Istria I'd say we had great seafood and good food generally (Dubrovnik was the hardest place to find good food because it gets swamped by cruise tourists, but Split seemed to have a bit of foodie scene that was very affordable).

OP another option you might consider is Sicily (Siracusa, Taormina, and Cefalu would be a nice trip but there's a lot more).

Also we were looking for flights to Portugal recently and concluded we might have to fly from JFK or Boston (Boston/Providence have big Portuguese populations that immigrated from the Azores) to get affordable flights, or else on Air Canada via Montreal.