Our Croatia – Bosnia – Montenegro round trip in rental car started and ended in Dubrovnik Croatia. (This is Balkan report 3 of 3).
Pics include:
- Dubrovnik Old City known as “The white city” in Game of Thrones.
- The ‘school bag only hand luggage travel trick’™
- A very random meeting in the coastal town of Cavtat
- Village stay in Skurici
For trip costs (Total for Croatia, Bosnia and Montenegro) please see last pic in album.
(All shots taken and edited with iPhone11 Pro. Delayed posting after we have returned to DK)
PRACTICAL INFO
DRIVING IN Croatia: Is fairly easy. However some city roads are narrow and very winding and parking on those can be tricky. Speed varies btw 30-70 km/h and there is a lot of speed control. It is somewhat stressful to continuously having to reduce speed.
CROSS BORDER: We paid around a 100 USD extra for a ‘cross border’ card allowing us to take the car from Croatia to Bosnia and Montenegro (and a bunch of other countries) and back. Insurance and roadside assistance were also included when abroad.
PARKING: Parking in central Dubrovnik is expensive. We chose a family apartment 15 minutes walk from the Old Town (with free street parking and were lucky to find a spot)
ACCOMMODATION: Private apartment in Dubrovnik (2 bedroom, 45 Euro pr night for the whole family), village apartment/homestay Skurici (2 bedroom, 40 Euro pr night for the whole family).
FLIGHTS: We flew to Dubrovnik with Norwegian and rented a car from there and drove to Bosnia and Montenegro. You could also fly to Sarajevo or Podgorica and do the same trip.
THE ‘SCHOOL BAG ONLY HAND LUGGAGE TRAVEL TRICK’™ – So Norwegian.com specifically stated (see pic in album) that even with the cheapest LowFare ticket you should be able to add a 55x40x23 hand luggage after the booking. So I hurriedly bought four4 tickets (on Travelgenio to save around 10%) and then afterwards tried to add 4 x hand luggage cabin trolleys directly at Norwegian. However apparently this offer only applies to customers who have bought their tickets directly at Norwegian… So there we were 4 people having to travel to three countries with only four x 30x20x38cm school bags… (or almost pay more for added check in luggage than the tickets themselves had cost).
Hehe not to worry (except for the wrath of Charlotte) because I just went to the airport in advance and bought 4 (1 USD each) CPH Airport plastic bags. These are allowed on board in order for customers to bring their duty free purchases – but they also work well for storing extra clothes that do not fit in your school bag / daypack… hehe – all set to go..
A RANDOM MEETING IN CAVTAT: “Is that Jakob?” a smiling guy with sunglasses and a t-shirt with a Norwegian flag asked me. We had just parked our Citroen C3 at the harbor parking in the little coastal city of Cavtat, Croatia – about 30 minutes’ drive south-east of Dubrovnik. The smiling guy turned out to be Tor Anders Birkenes (accompanied by his equally smiling girlfriend). A Norwegian globetrotter who has visited more than 100 countries.
Turns out that Tor Anders at this time was almost finished reading my book – and that he first recognized Charlotte and the kids from the pictures in the book…
Considering the fact that my Danish languaged book has only sold SIX copies outside of Denmark (three to Norway, one to Sweden, one to a Dane in France and one to the Faroe Islands) I think it is pretty fair to call this the most random meeting with another traveler I have experienced to date…
Hehe – Tor Anders (and Linn) turned out to be great company – and we had many travelers stories to exchange at a little nearby beach (where our kids could swim while the adults were talking). We are both members of the great facebook group “Every Passport Stamp” and it was great finally to meet in person.
