Istria, Kvarner & Zadar

A great trip for scenery, history, food and wine with stays at pleasant hotels. We did this in October (for when we hope that Inntravel will pick up some of our suggestions about both advantages and challenges to update their guidance notes). Recommended.

Rab and Losinj (lovely bay for swimming by Hotel Manora) perhaps the highlight of our holiday, hotels were lovely. Beautiful old town of Rab, lovely gentle walks, good retaurants. The delightful Banova Vila bar is worth a mention, you can sip delicious wine, watch the sunset (and they do food) open til 8pm.

Osor and Veli Losinj also well worth a visit, both lovely Osor peaceful, and a lovely walk into Veli Losinj ( as per itinerary) a sweet bustling ( but not too much) little port.

NB we did make a brief visit to Krk but found it very crowded and touristy.

The highlights of our trip were many - our bike rides in the country and lunch in Spinovci Tikel, our many ferry journeys, fireworks and regatta in Nerezine. We would recommend a stay at the friendly family run hotel in Skradin called Bonaca which has a great restaurant. 

Very well organised and documented. Excellent, very responsive and intelligent service.

An excellent, interesting and varied holiday; we thoroughly recommend it.
Our flight times necessitated a night in Pula at the start, and we had time for quite a bit of exploration. This, we felt was a real bonus and made a very good start to the holiday.
Whilst in Motovun, we felt that we did not want to drive too far and so confined ourselves to an exploration of Groznjan (as mentioned in the notes) which was an excellent morning destination leaving plenty of time for exploration of Motovun in the rest of the day.
Nerezine was a lovely place to stay longer, as we chose to do. The coastal footpath, not far below the hotel, was lovely to use especially when using the very good bikes that the hotel provides for guests, for free. When eating away from the Hotel Manora, the Hotel Televrin in the town centre provided an interesting and varied menu -- we used it twice.
Hotel Arbiana in Rab is in a wonderful location, right on the town quay, and makes an excellent base. The whole town is a delight to wander slowly around exploring its many corners; we also recommend the gentle walk north on the coastal path to the Franciscan monastery, which was a beautiful, quiet place to visit. As suggested in the notes, we found the scope for swimming was huge; it was easy to find a tiny rocky bay with the chance to swim in all sorts of locations.
Be prepared for the comparative busyness of Zadar; however the rich history of the town is very rewarding. The Archaeological Museum is a real gem. Another piece of history that we enjoyed visiting was the town of Nin, to the north of Zadar. And we would echo the recommendation in the notes for the Konoba Dalmacija; a lovely welcome and an very good meal eaten in their delightful "secret garden".
We finished our holiday with a self-booked night in Sibenik, which proved to be another beautiful and fascinating historic town, very well worth visiting.
We concluded that September was a very good time to visit. We enjoyed excellent weather (not guaranteed of course) whilst most places were really not too busy.

Personal highlights:

Rab town

Walking in Komrcar park down to deserted coves - useful hiking map provided by Inntravel

Water taxi to beaches in same area

Krk National Park - well worth a visit from Zadar

Walk from Mali Losinj to Rovenska beach (good place for a swim)

Bar Bora in Rovenska for delicious homemade pasta overlooking the small harbour 

Excellent small beach attached to Hotel Manora (5 min walk)

Cres and Losinj are wonderfully scenic with a great corniche style road, pretty harbours and spectacular scenery. You may see the vultures as we did driving back to Merag without needing to go up to Beli. Hotel Manora is very much a family rather than boutique hotel but very comfortable and with a lovely private beach with its own attendant, kayaks, sups etc.

This was our (I think) eighth holiday with Inntravel and again did not disappoint. The hotels chosen were all superb and in good locations with excellent rooms and included meals with friendly helpful staff. The varied locations give a good overview of Northern Croatia, each different to the other. We opted for an extra night in Zadar to allow for a visit to Plitvice lakes which are well worth a visit and are about a just under 2 hour drive away. We also added 3 nights in Trogir before returning from Split airport, although unfortunately Inntravel were unable to book this part of the holiday for us as their hotel (Trogir Palace) there was fully booked. If adding a 3 night stay in Trogir, a visit to Krka national park is definitely a must.

We loved it - especially the old town of Rab, the sea organ at Zadar and swimming with cormorants on Lošinj.

Overall a very enjoyable holiday. Motovun and Rab Island were particular highlights with good quality hotels in great locations. Bastion Hotel was also good quality but it has no balconies and small rooms. The variability of the other hotels was a bit of a disappointment, particularly the final hotel in Trogir. It is a little unclear why hotels of such variable standards were packaged together. I would suggest more information should have been provided about the standard of each hotel. Communication by Inntravel is also an area where there is opportunity for improvement. We received messages about delays three weeks before we travelled, other messages about access restrictions for the wrong date, and missing ferry tickets. Despite these comments we would still strongly recommend Inntravel and use them again but would probably research hotels included a little more thoroughly. Without the range of destinations offered by this tour we would never have seen so many locations and experienced the wide ranging beauty of Croatia, so kudos to Inntravel for compiling the itinerary. 

The heated pools in the hotels in Motovun, Nerezine and Rab had shady outdoor areas. In Nerezine there were bikes at our disposal and going the coastal track in both directions from the hotel was a short but easy ride. In Rab the hotel had bikes to hire and again going a coastal route in both directions was excellent. In Rab we had lovely meals at the Astoria restaurant. At Zadar in the heatwave we took a passenger ferry to Preko (£2,50). This ferry left from very near the hotel. It was a real find with excellent swimming and a few restaurants.  All in all it was a great trip. The dinner in Motovun was the best and the ArBriana in Rab was our favourite. We returned from Split stopping on route at Primosten which was a find.

We loved the tranquility of the islands and spectacular sea scapes. We took a boat trip from Zadar to the islands and explored osljak which had no roads and chatted to some of the inhabitants with the guide about their simple way of life. 

Watching the sunset at Zadar with a big crowd who clapped as it disappeared into the sea , all accompanied by the haunting sounds of the sea organ.

A kayak trip from Dubrovnik [a tailored add-on to the holiday] round the island Lokrum visiting a sea cave for a swim and to snorkel , great fun to do with a group with great views of the city . We also enjoyed exploring the island using the walk notes although it was very hot.

Our personal highlights were the coastal walk from Mali Losinj to Veli Losinj and the picturesque harbour of Veli Losinj itself. Rab has a good mix of beaches, walks, restaurants and history. The hotel was perfectly located with lovely views from the harbour-facing rooms. The Zadar hotel arranged a really nice morning boat trip to a couple of islands as an alternative to the full fay required to visit to the Kornati national park. We found the instructions clear and accurate regarding the hotels and ferries. If you want to visit the vulture sanctuary on Cres, do it straight after getting off the ferry. The one problem we had was the car hire. The service from Budget/Avis was terrible. There was a lot of pressure to take out additional insurance which we declined because we had purchased the Excess insurance recommended by Inntravel. The Dacia Sandero provided was very basic with no spare tyre and a fuel gauge didn't work among other shortcomings. When we handed the car back a small scratch had appeared which we are pretty certain hadn’t been there the night before. We were charged €400. Without going into the details, in hindsight we feel we might have avoided the problems if we'd taken out the additional insurance locally. It costs €25 a day

We struck lucky with the weather, our overall feeling about the structure of the trip was that 3 nights at the Hotel Manora in Nerezine was too much, another night in Rab would have been better. There are herb gardens etc. in Losinj which we only found out about on our return and would have added to our enjoyment.

Try to extend the holiday by a day at as many destinations as possible.

On route from Zadar to Trogir [add-on] a visit to the Krka National Park is very worthwhile and saves a day in Trogir.  The falls in the Park are spectacular.    

A good paced holiday, visiting some beautiful old towns with good quality accommodation. 

Promenade walk from Veli Losinj to Mali Losinj was good with many lunch choices in Mali Losinj; to park, follow road to the end at Veli Losinj. In Osor on Cres, the Konoba Bonifacic served excellent food in delightful gardens which contained free range tortoises. Loved the Hotel Arbiana in Rab and boat trip from Rab to Jablanac. Free Spirit walking tour in Zadar was good.

What a lovely place Istria is! We could have done with an extra day to do more exploring. The wine tasting was great fun and well organised. One problem we encountered was, because it was October, a number of the recommended restaurants were closed for the season. This was really only a problem in Nerezine, being a tiny place, but the two hotels did us proud. Also the ferry from Krk to Rab was on winter schedule and we had to drive the long way round along the coast. We were sorry to miss that experience.  Food highlights were Konoba Rab in Rab, along with the meal on our first night at Hotel Arbiana, which was the best of the week. The walking up onto the high limestone peninsular above Veli Losinj was wonderful, if rocky! And we could have done with some route notes. The overall highlight was the amazing scents from the herbs everywhere.

Our highlights? The sheer beauty of the scenery and arriving in Nerezine for the end of their Traditional Boat Festival

We loved the variety of the Croatian holiday. Ranging from hilltop town and winery tour in Motovun to the barren islands of Cres and Losinj and the fascinating towns of Osor and Veli Losinj, then on to gorgeous Rab (where we would happily have spent all ten days) ending in Zadar, full of Roman ruins and weird sea organs. Great trip.

INNTRAVEL NOTE: these customers first did our Lakes & Julian Alps walking holiday in Slovenia, followed by our 10 night SlowMotion journey - Istria, Kvarner & Zadar - in Croatia.

Enjoyable first visit to Croatia and our first touring trip with Inntravel. With four hotels in 10 days it was a lot of travel for us.  We expected more detailed walks to be included as in previous walking holidays. Other customer reviews were helpful in good places to walk but finding a place to park not always easy. Ferries were easy to manage after the first one, not done this before. Really do just join the queue. Walk to the start of the queue and find the red tiled booth to buy ticket. Road tolls were inexpensive, 42 kuna for the longest one about £5. The notes warned about mozzies. Even in day got many bites, usual jungle spray not very effective here.

This was an excellent introduction to Croatia, moving from hill-top village to busy town. We were very glad we had booked an extra night on both the islands. The ferries became addictive, the roads were mainly very quiet and easy and the distances not too great. As mentioned above, we found The Rough Guide invaluable. Town walls at Motovun free before 10am. Another great Inntravel holiday (our first was in 1986!)

Old town Croatia was splendid and we particularly loved Zadar. Kastel at Motovun a stunning location and site. The crystal clear blue water of the Adriatic was wonderful.