Croatia travel agent?
 

I'm planning to take my honeymoon next June in Croatia and I'm doing some initial research. I'm not normally a travel agent kind of gal, but for this trip it seems appropriate. Can anyone recommend a good one for Croatia, no escorted tours, please, perhaps in New York? So far, I've found Travel Time, Blue Heart Tours and Atlas Travel.

Thanks!

Meg

http://www.panadriatic.com/main.html

Meg -
This is the second time I've used panAdriatic - they're in Queens. Got a rd trip in Sept for a little more than $700.

I am very interested in going to Croatia, and for those who've been, would like to know whether you'd recommend it for a family with two teens. We're considering it for next summer. Any suggestions on particular cities to visit, etc. would be great.

Thanks!

The only old-established tourist service of Croatia (the successor to the pan-Yugoslav service offered under Tito) is Croatia Tours, 52 440 Porec, O. Kersovani 7, Croatia, Tel: + 385 52 451 111, Fax: + 385 52 434 055, E-mail:[email protected],
http://www.croatia-tours.hr. I think you could e-mail them, give your postal address, and ask them how you could set up a suitable package tour. They may well have a printed brochure that they can send you.

[email protected]

Weadles, I ABSOLUTELY recommend it for a family with teens. I went in May/June and loved it. What you would want to do would depend on your interests. I started on the Istrian Peninsula and took the ferry to Dubrovnik. There are over a thousand islands and lots of ruins and wonderful walled cities. Tell me more about your interests and I can make some recommendations.

Thanks for the recs, I'm looking into those.

Grasshopper, I'd love to hear more about your trip, sounds like what I'm looking for.

Couple more questions:
1) If we spend a night or two in Venice on the way in/out, is it better to just fly in there and ferry over to Croatia? How is this best done?
2) I'm trying to find some nice hotels for the trip, since it is our honeymoon, but most of the major tourist hotels seem very impersonal and outdated. Are we better off renting a villa or apartment?

Thanks again!

Meg, Feel free to email me... [email protected]

Meg & Weadles -
There are numerous articles at the nytimes.com and washingtonpost.com. I have an article at home regarding a family that visited Hvar - I'll post the link tonight.

Meg -
You may also want to give the croatian Tourist Board a call - they can send a you a load of free booklets - really nice.
Croatian Tourist Board - 212.279.8672.

Weadles - sorry, not sure if you're which side of the pond you're on.

Meg - the view from my terrace at the Hotel Excelsior in Dubrovnik was fantastic - I believe they have honeymoon suites.

http://www.hotel-excelsior.hr/eng/index.html

Another alternative south of the Old Town:

http://www.hoteli-argentina.hr/

I visited Croatia in June with my husband and daughters aged 20 and 16.We had difficulty getting cheap flights to do an open-jaw as we wanted to fly in one end and out the other.Eventually we got a return to Venice , hired a car drove to Rijeka and picked up a ferry to Dubrovik which took about 20 hours.This turned out to be a really good idea because the ferry stopped or passed several islands and so we visited on the return journey, those we liked the look of.
The only disadvantage with this was that in 48 hours we'd been in both Venice and Dubrovnik and ran out of superlatives!
After two nights in Dubrovik we drove north via Korcula,Hvar,Trogir,Rab, Rovinj and Motovun.
We generally stayed in apartments which were very good value and spacious and about 45-55 euros a night. The only place we had difficulty finding accomodation was Rovinj.
My daughters enjoyed it very much. The combination of cities, walled towns , national parks ,harbourside at night and inland Istria went down well.
I agree that many of the hotels appeared concrete and characterless and this is why we decided to go B&B. We didn't know before going that apartments were going to be available and this was a big bonus. There were loads of them!

We were in Croatia in June, 2001, and loved every minute of it. We bought our plane tickets through Panadriatic (www.panadriatic.com) with no problems and good prices.

We found that we could arrive in a town and go to the tourist agency to rent a room very easily ($15-$30/night. In Zadar, I did arrange ahead of time by e-mail the rental of an apartment through the Turisthotel agency, at [email protected]). We ended up having a large apartment for $18/night. Marlin Tours was the local agency.

June was a great time to travel in Croatia and we found it very easy to get rooms.

We have a trip to Croatia planned for early October. We used Paul Laifer Tours to make our arrangements (air, hotels, transfers.) Tomi is the agent handling our trip, and he is a native of Croatia. Although we haven't been on the trip yet, so far we have been pleased with the service and the price. Paul Laifer arranged a trip to the Czech Republic and Poland for us last year and it went off without a hitch. Good luck. www.laifertours.com or e-mail is [email protected]