You’ll need to spend some serious planning time with ferry and flight schedules. I think this requires plotting this out with the exact trains, planes, buses and ferries you are going to take. 4 days may not be enough time for Athens and an island — particularly with the very limited ferry schedules in the off season. Flying to Athens can easily kill a day. Getting there by train-overnight ferry-train/bus could kill the better part of two days. You’ll want at least a full day in Athens – 1 1/2 to 2 would be better. You may kill the better part of a day getting to an island and you’re likely to need to get back to Athens (another day?). You might kill another full day getting to Croatia from Greece.

Getting around Croatia and Bosnia/Herzegovina is not as fast or easy as it may appear on the map.

It’s also not easy at all to go from Greece to Croatia, in terms of time/price. At least last summer, I couldn’t find a direct flight b/w the 2 countries. I don’t think 4 days is enough time for an island and Athens. I’d want min. 3-4 days on an island, not counting travel time, and Athens is good for 2 days. I’d cut Athens and focus on Balkans.

Split is fine, 2 days would be plenty. I prefer the nearby island of Hvar, but I don’t know what it’s like in March. I loved Dubrovnik; 3-4 days is ideal.

I know that your trip is already over, but I’m wondering what happened. I’m going on a similar trip in May and June. The first part of my trip is Athens-Ohrid-Skopje-Dubrovnik-Mostar-Sarajevo-Belgrade-Ljubljana

To get from Athens to Dubrovnik there was only one flight that I found. It was very expensive and would have taken the better part of a day. I decided to plan a cheaper alternate route. For my trip I am going to end up spending one night in Skopje and taking the 6:10AM flight to Dubrovnik. It was the only fight offered which is why I’m staying in Skopje the night before.

It seems as though there is no easy way to get around the Balkans.