wrenwood

We have driven once in Denmark and Sweden and multiple times in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and the British Isles with little difficulty.

Wondering about driving, getting around, road signs in Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro?

English language common in most tourist spots?

rialtogrl

Driving is easy in Slovenia and Croatia, great roads and fairly good sportsmanship by other drivers. You have to have a vignette for your car to drive highways in Slovenia. In Croatia, there are toll roads that can be expensive.

Montenegro is easy navigation wise, roads are pretty good but drivers can be aggressive and there are a lot of speed stops by police. The drive around Kotor Bay is extremely beautiful and not too stressful because it’s too curvy to go too fast.

‘Try not to do it in summer, especially July and August.

yes, English is common. so is French, Italian, German, Russian…

rialtogrl

One more thing, if you rent your car in Croatia you have to have a special insurance for Montenegro. Just tell your rental agency you are taking the car there.

yorkshire

I always found English widely spoken. Roads appeared excellent, and I'd have no concerns--but on four trips (Croatia and Montenegro), we never found the need to drive (we definitely would for our next visit). It really depends on where you are going though.

thursdaysd

I had no trouble getting around by public transport.

KarenWoo

Driving in Croatia and Slovenia is very, very easy. We picked up our rental car the day we were leaving Dubrovnik. You don't need a car in Dubrovnik. While in Dubrovnik, we did a daytrip around the Bay of Kotor. We decided to hire a private driver for this part so that my husband wouldn't have to worry about parking in Budva, Kotor and Perast. We returned our rental car to Zagreb, where we spent 2 nights, and then took the train to Ljubljana. While in Slovenia, we rented a car for a day to drive over the mountains to Lake Bled for a daytrip. Signage was easy and we never hit any traffic.

MichGuy

Same experience here. Rialtogrl's summary is great. Just adding:
-- The main roads in Croatia are excellent but they're toll roads. You can use your credit card at the toll booths, I used both AmEx and MC with no problems. Didn't think tolls were too expensive.
-- The vignette in Slovenia is important. There's a heavy fine if you don't have one. I recall buying ours at the first toll plaza we came to, driving in from Austria.
-- We had rented our car in Munich. We took a day trip to the Bay of Kotor from Dubrovnik without setting up insurance beforehand. You can buy a short term (one day?) policy for your car at the border crossing. I recall that it cost around US$20 and took half an hour to secure. The border official was very helpful. He told us to pull over to another building to get the insurance, kept our passports while we did so, and let us just walk back and hand him the paperwork and continue on. No hassle.