My husband and I are at the end of a month long trip in Croatia and Slovenia, with 4 nights left in Istria. We'd like to locate ourselves in one place and do day trips (we have a car). We've done cities, nature, islands, Julian Alps, Dalmatian coast. Any ideas for the perfect location to stay in a Penzion or B & B or small hotel?? Also not opposed to apartments.

This is not a hypothetical question for us. We've planned out a Sept. Croatia trip that includes 5 nights in Istria... and we opted for an apartment in the 'old town' of Rovinj. The one we booked is owned by the Casa Garzotto B&B, and is just around the corner from the hotel.

We're going in July. Booked in Rovinj at the Villa Tuttorotto. I'll let you know how it goes!

Fwiw, I found the comments below this NY Times article - http://intransit.blogs.nytimes.com/2...stria-croatia/ - very interesting.

bookmarking

Mr Go - just want to give you a slight warning about Casa Garzotto. They get great reviews on TA and they are probably a good hotel - in fact if I ever do get to Rovinj I still might stay there. But I had a bad experience with them trying to get a refund of a deposit. Back in January I booked two nights, got a confirmation email. Then a couple months later I emailed them to add an additional night, again a nice email confirmation but this time they charged one night to my visa card (nothing on web site about that, and they didn't do it the first time). Not that much of an issue, lots of places do charge a deposit (though it usually says so somewhere in the email or website). But then I needed to change my plans again and cancel the whole thing. They insisted they couldn't refund the deposit back to visa, they wanted me to send bank details so they could sent it to my bank. I was not about to send my bank details, that's why I use visa for making all reservations (as do most people). Anyway, had to get visa involved and it was just a pain, especially compared to the other hotels I had to switch which were with booking.com and took two seconds. Like I said, I'd probably still give them a chance as they look like a nice place but just be careful with your financial transactios with them.

I am going to Piran instead of Rovinj (because of transportation to my next destination) and it also looks like a great little town. Have a good time in Rovinj.

Thanks for the heads-up isabel. Hopefully that won't be an issue for us. BTW, my mom & dad liked Piran... have a great time!

We stayed at Villa Tuttorotto in Rovinj. I just posted a long trip report in the Istria Forum of TripAdvisor, in case you're interested. (@Mr_Go, we stayed at the Jaegerhorn in Zagreb, too. It's fairly basic, but in a great location. We stayed two nights, and had two very different rooms. One was almost a dorm and the other was more like a hotel room.)

The Casa Garzotto, which you can book through booking.com (and so avoid the problem isabel unfortunately experienced).