Two weeks in Croatia/northeast Italy. Suggestions?
 

Shipping my bike to just outside Milan in late May, and I have two weeks before dropping it off for shipping back home. Got a ferry ticket from Ancona to Split overnight, and then I will have ~10 days to get back to Bergamo.

I've previously done the Grossglockner-Tolmezzo-Vrsic Pass section, but would love to have suggestions on must-see things on the way this time!

Things on my list so far are to take the new Komarna bridge and bypass Bosnia & Herzegovina, maybe go down as far Montenegro; the Zadar seaside with the Sea Organ; and the Plitvicka underground airbase. Maybe stop in Trieste on the way back (its history of briefly being an independent city-state in the 20th century is interesting to me). Would it be reasonable to go down as far as Montenegro in that time?

I'm flying in a few days before and out a few days after the bike pickup/dropoff, so I will have time to hang out around the Italian lakes, go to the Moto Guzzi museum, etc.

EDIT: Riding an asphalt-focused bike (Honda Crossrunner), not particularly planning to camp.

Hi AnTyx,

No personal experience.....yet, but they say Pag Island in Croatia should be a nice place. I am planning a trip down there for later this year and I am very Interrested in the Majstorska Cesta road but that´s a gravel road tho.
Another place I am planning to see is Ravni Dabar and Dosen Dabar and road number D25 in the Velebit mountains. Also the area between Jasenice and Golubic seems interesting, at least on Google maps.
5 years ago I went to Postojna cave and Predjama castle in Slovenia, very touristic but nice if that are sites who interrest you. Or maybe lake Bled and Vintgar gorge, or are they maybe to far out of your route?

If you go down to Montenegro then Kotor and Budva are main tourist atractions but i would say the Kotor to Cetinje mountain road is a nice drive and there is Lovcen NP what can be interesting.


Best regards,

Rögnvaldur

I highly recommend checking out Bosnia and Sarajevo; I would say that Bosnia has been the most "pleasant surprise country" during all of my travels. Very beautiful countryside, and Sarajevo is a really cool city.

I find the Adriatic coast kind of boring and touristy so can't recommend much there. Kotor in Montenegro is OK, but super-touristy, and you can't ride your moto into the city, you have to leave it outside the walls, which is kind of a pain.

As you head north, you might want to check out Plitvice Lakes National Park, a series of connected lakes. It is OK, but not the Grand Canyon or anything, so no major tragedy if you don't make it.

Personally I found Trieste rather drab and boring, but its on the way, so perhaps worth a stop. My favorite city in that general area is Verona...also rather touristy but it has a really nice vibe (and a really cool roman amphiteatre right in the center. One of my favorite places in Northern Italy is Lake Como, and the road from Como City to Bellagio is my absolute favorite, it is fun to ride and stunningly beautiful. Bellagio itself can be super-touristy but early and late in the season it is actually pretty nice, with no crowds at all. If you're getting there in early June though it will probably be throbbing with tourists.

Thanks! Yeah I did Lake Bled and Vintgar gorge on the same previous trip as Vrsic pass - definitely very cool places. I will check out your suggestions! I think the caves in Slovenia already popped up in my googlemaps-browsing.

I suspect that the total time available won't be enough to do BH as well. Maybe another time.

Yup, I will be in that area anyway because it's where the Zeljava underground air base is.

I will drop a pin on that one, cheers!

Well, now I'm a bit annoyed that I didn't know about the underground airbase, because I would definitely have gone to see that!

It is close to Plitvica lakes.

And the airbase is really nice.

But be aware:
In the middle of the airbase, there is the border to Bosnia, crossing it may cause troubles.

And also really take care about the Signs with mines, they are definitely around off the asphalt !

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I visited Croatia in 2019, and wasn't sure about the legalities of visiting Zeljava. So I located the local police station and emailed them to ask if I could get a permit or something to visit. They politely replied that no, it was off limits and dangerous, so I went anyway. Awesome place and I note they have cleared the vegetation away from the old DC3 to make it better for tourist photos! :rofl: The base is awesome but do take the mines signs seriously and stay on the tarmac, and of course take care in the tunnels - they go for many hundreds of metres and if you get lost in there you're properly lost.

Elsewhere in the country get up into the Velebit mountains and try to avoid the tourist hot spots - beautiful towns but absolutely rammed with emmets. Split and Dubrovnik completely ruined. We liked Zadar and given a bit more time would have wanted to explore further inland. The beaches aren't generally great (think Skegness, 1965) but inland is more unspoiled, very friendly, and reasonably cheap.

Italy I'm afraid I wasn't too impressed with. Everyone drives either like a granny or like a total idiot, and they put speed cameras everywhere. I also met the world's rudest, most ignorant petrol pump attendant. I didn't really have an itinerary so should have done more research on places to go, but I accidentally found Orvieto which was gorgeous.

OK, now I'm super-annoyed! :oops2:

Oh well, something to do for next time!

:scooter:

https://goo.gl/maps/4WkJr37UUQSyfJV56

So, this is the plan so far.

Split and Dubrovnik are interesting cities, but crawling with tourists. Also the road to and from these places was rammed. Avoid. We thought Zadar, Trogir and Novigrad were nice. Other than that inland is probably nicer than the coast. If you have time Ljubljana is a lovely city and quite easy to see most of in a day.

I've been to Ljubljana on a previous trip - the old town and castle are nice, but I grew up in Tallinn, so medieval town centers are not a novelty. :D

Gonna have a full day in Split after the ferry, and a short overnight in Dubrovnik.

Welp, no backing out now, wish me luck :)

Hi,

I wish you luck and a good trip.
Northeast Italy and no one mentions the Dolomites mountains.
Am I missing something ? I thought the Dolomites where a favorite among motor riders like the other mountain areas in the Alps.

Rögnvaldur

The lakes
 

All these lakes are very nice to ride around

Came back from the trip last night (bike's back some time next week). Will try to do a ride report, but here's a quick review:

It's definitely an interesting place - a good detour between Zadar and Plitvice. While the rest of Croatia in those parts is pretty green, Pag is entirely a moonscape, almost entirely devoid of vegetation, just sun-bleached rocks. Can be windy. But nice roads, especially north of the main town and towards the ferry terminal.

Postojna cave was an absolute highlight.

Indeed, did the loop - up from Kotor via the Serpentine, up towards Lovcen NP and the hilltop memorial to the old prince who unified Montenegro, down to the old capital Cetinje that was very nice to walk around, and down towards Budva, and back to my guesthouse near Kotor. Very nice loop that was doable in half a day after seeing Kotor old town itself.

I didn't make it all the way to Sarajevo, but did go to Mostar, and I agree - BiH was a very pleasant surprise. The smaller roads are great, Mostar itself is amazing (make sure you go on the Sheva walking tour!), I also saw Vjetrenica cave and Kravnica waterfall.

The part of BiH I saw was definitely much cheaper than Croatia and much nicer than the non-cruiseshipy bits of Montenegro. The country still has a lot of problems that affect its residents, but for visitors, it's great. Honestly, the only downside is that it's not in the EU roam-like-home scheme yet, so I needed a tourist sim. :)

In practice, the airbase has an active visible presence by both the Croatian police and their border guard... but they absolutely could not give less of a damn about tourists - they're only there because it's right on the BiH border and they're worried about illegal crossings into the Schengen area. The DC-3 is not just cleared of vegetation, but there's now a summer cafe set up next to it. :)


I respected the speed camera warnings, but once you start paying a bit of attention, you'll realize they put speed camera boxes everywhere. Almost all of them are empty and just have stickers to look like lenses!

I ended up skipping Trieste and instead doing Dolomites - up the Soca river valley in Slovenia, across the Vrsic Pass to Kranjska Gora, then over towards Stelvio pass.