Venice or Ljubljana to Trieste Cruise Port by Rental Car

The table settles one thing fast — Trieste’s own airport is the short run, and the other two are proper drives.

Venice adds about 68.3 miles over Trieste’s airport. Ljubljana sits in between — but in another country.

If you’re flying into Trieste, the airport page is the one you want. This page is for the other two.

We already cover the plain Venice-to-Trieste drive, with the line-by-line port table, on our Venice outlying-ports page. Here we stick to what’s different at the Trieste end.

Holland America: Venice’s airport is “94 miles or 150 kilometers (2 hours, depending on traffic)” from the Trieste terminal, and it runs transfers from Marco Polo only, not Treviso. Princess’s blog (July 2026) says to plan on a longer transfer, “approximately 2.5 hours”, if you make port in Trieste.

Plan on Princess’s figure — the ship won’t wait for a slow A4.

For a renter, the question that matters is where the car ends its rental.

Drop it at Trieste Airport and you’re 24.6 miles short of the ship, with a train or a €75 cab still to go.

Drop it by the station and you’re under a mile away — but the station desks shut at 12:30 on Saturdays, and Enterprise is closed Sundays.

Enterprise’s station key box takes cars around the clock — check your contract allows an after-hours one-way return before you lean on it.

Holland America’s own Marco Polo transfer takes the drive off your hands — its port page just doesn’t show a price.

Ljubljana’s Jože Pučnik airport, at Brnik, is about 72.0 miles (115.9 km) from the pier by our routing, roughly 1 hr 23 min on empty roads.

Fuel for the run is about €19 (about US$20) at 30 mpg, priced at Italian pump rates; we didn’t read Slovenian ones.

Two things set this route apart — it crosses a border, and it starts in Slovenia, where any motorway stretch needs the vignette below.

A Slovenian rental dropped in Italy is a cross-border one-way. We didn’t obtain any brand’s fee or rules for that — ask before you book, not at the desk.

Whether Slovenia wants an International Driving Permit from a US licence holder is a question we couldn’t settle. Italy’s answer is clear, so carry one anyway.

The airport’s train page lists two daily trains between Trieste Airport station and Ljubljana — a car-free option if the times fit.

Slovenia’s motorways and expressways need an e-vignette for any vehicle up to 3.5 tonnes. A car pays €16 for a week, €32 for a month or €117.50 for a year, per the Slovenian tourist board; AutoScout24’s 2026 price list gives the same figures. That’s about US$18 for the week.

The vignette is tied to the plate and its country, and DARS, which sells it, treats a wrong plate as no vignette at all. Type the plate exactly as it reads on the car — one wrong character and it’s void.

Driving a Slovenian motorway without one is a €300 to €800 fine, about US$335 to US$900.

The tourist board says to ask the rental company whether one is included. A Slovenian rental may carry one already; with an Italian car, plan to buy it yourself unless the company says otherwise.

Slovenia’s limits are 50 km/h in town, 90 on regional roads, 110 on expressways and 130 on motorways; dipped headlights stay on all day, and from Nov 15 to Mar 15 you need winter tires or chains in the car.

Day trips into Slovenia from the pier need the same sticker. Piran and Postojna are on the day-drives page.

Buy it before the first Slovenian motorway, not at the first rest stop.

The A4 Venice–Trieste motorway is run by Autostrade Alto Adriatico, and its toll calculator wouldn’t give us a figure, so no toll is in any total here.

Local press reported in December 2025 that the A4 tolls weren’t rising for 2026, unchanged since 2018; that’s a newspaper, not the operator.

So there’s a toll, and it may not have moved in years — but we can’t tell you the number.

The operator takes Telepass, Visa, Mastercard and Amex, debit cards, Viacard and cash at staffed booths. Autostrade lets you settle an unpaid toll online.

Pick the card or cash lanes, not the Telepass lane — unless the rental company says the car carries a transponder.

Check the toll on Autostrade Alto Adriatico’s site the week you travel, then add it to the one-way box below.

Before any one-way fee, the car comes to about €64 (about US$70), our arithmetic — about €24 of it fuel.

The only one-way fee on file is €74.50 for a different town in that 2018 Avis Budget tariff, too old to plan on.

That fee decides it. It’s also the one number we couldn’t find printed.

Search with the real drop-off so it lands in the total. Our one-way guide covers how brands set it.

Set the pickup at Marco Polo and the drop-off at the Trieste desk you can actually reach on your sailing day.

A weekend sailing points to Trieste Airport or the station key box, never a counter that closed at 12:30.

Euro-to-dollar conversions here use the European Central Bank’s reference rate for Oct 2, 2026, close to $1.12. What your card charges will differ.