So one of my best friends is leaving today to spend 6 months on a small Croatian island in the Adriatic, off the Dalmatian coast. (Long story.)
I’m thinking of taking another multi-leg European trip in the fall – when else will I have a friend to stay with in Croatia? – and Easyjet has great fares (17.99 GBP! Way cheaper than the train!) from London to Venice or Ljubljana, but both look to be a couple hundred miles away from the spot where I’d have to catch the ferry to the island where my friend will be (I think the ferry leaves from Riijeka, and he’ll be in Mali Losinj). Easyjet has nothing either to Split or to Zagreb, which would be easier and more direct, and I think flying there on a major airline will be hideously expensive.
Anyone know how much of a pain it is to get from Venice or Ljubljana to the Adriatic coast of Croatia? The only detailed rail maps/schedules I’ve been able to find for that area are in Slovenian or Croatian, which is not terribly helpful. (I’d even settle for one in Italian; I’d have half a chance of being able to read it.) What else should I now about traveling in that neck of the woods? I’m a relatively experienced traveler and a language nut, but I’ve never been to southeastern Europe at all, and never traveled outside of Western Europe completely by myself. All tips and travel stories welcome!
One of the Venice-Budapest Trains stops in Zagreb (we took the wrong one by accident, meant to go through Vienna!), from there it should not be hard to get out to the countryside. I’ve heard the coast is very very nice. I want to say the Zagreb train leaves in the evening, but check your timetable.
First, I envy your friend. I wanna spend 6 months on a Croatian island! I have to be content with 2 weeks there this summer.
You may want to check out this place http://visitcroatia.proboards21.com . Seems to be some locals hanging out there who can help you. I’m sure there is bus service from Ljubljana to Rijeka.
If leaving from Venice, a ferry or hydrofoil to Pula may be your best bet, where you can probably catch a ferry to Mali Losinj.
Hey, deos anyone know of a ferry company that runs past August from Venice to Mali Losinj? It seems most of them are only in the summer, but that’s when the transatlantic airfares are most hideous - I probably wouldn’t take this trip until late September at the earliest. A ferry would save lots of travel time over a train, either from Venice or from Ljubljana, because I’m going to have to take a ferry anyway to Mali Losinj and it will save at least one transfer and attendant confusion and time gaps between modes of transportation. I can’t seem to find any comprehensive train maps; most of them stop at the Italy-Croatia border.
(Plus if I get lost or whatever, I’ll have a much easier time functioning in Italian than in Croatian. I hate speaking English in Europe and feeling like a dumb American tourist, even if everyone in the tourist industry speaks English, but I can fake basic Italian tolerably well.)
Bear with me; this whole mess is highly theoretical at this point. But hey, a girl’s gotta have fantasies, right?
I flew into Zagreb from Paris. I’m not sure how you’d go from Italy but it shouldn’t be a problem as there are a lot of Italian tourists there.
In theory, you can either take the train or the bus from Zagreb to the Adriatic. In practice, though, the trains are very, very slow and run infrequently. This is why you can’t find good train maps of Croatia, no one takes the train. The bus is the only way to go.
Tourism is a big deal in the Adriatic and I have found that people associated with hotels and restaurant to be extremely professional. This usually means being perfectly fluent in German, Italian and English. Since the place is absolutely flooded with Germans and Italians, looking like a dumb American is less likely than looking like a dumb German or Italian. English is fine.
I went in similar circumstances to yours, except without any sort of planning, and boy was this ever a good decision!
