After 18 long months of booking, amending, cancelling and re-booking, I was highly gratified to be able to send my lovely clients Louise and Jason off to captivating Cavtat in Croatia. I've been booking their holidays for almost ten years and know just how much it meant to them to be able to escape the UK for foreign climes...
Phew! We finally made it!
After numerous rebooks and ably assisted by Jo’s remarkable Covid resistant patience, our first trip to the beautiful town of Cavtat in Croatia was a much-needed ten days of sunshine and laziness.
After the apprehension to make sure we had completed the compulsory testing properly and weren't going to be stopped from flying, it was all pretty smooth really.
We did the PCR test at Stansted Airport the night before flying. The test itself and getting the results were easy enough and nothing seemed to be checked that thoroughly before we boarded.
Jo had pre-booked a short private transfer to the aptly named Hotel Croatia, located in a great area with easy access to the town for restaurants.
The sea views from the hotel were exceptional, the room was great, very clean and surprisingly quiet given the hotel’s size, with no noise at all from surrounding rooms.
Unfortunately, the breakfast buffet was not quite so good, and it was difficult to get what we wanted at times. With food behind screens that you had to ask for, labelling items would have been helpful and service was strange and average at best. We only went for breakfast a few times as it was all a bit of a drama and Jason was equally disappointed with an evening buffet meal.
However, though half-board was included, we hadn’t intended to eat at the evening buffet as there seems little point when surrounded with decent restaurants nearby.
The pool area was lovely, although much of it in the shade, so we preferred to sunbathe in an area away from the pool, which was a shame as when laying down you couldn’t enjoy the fantastic views. Standing up rectified that but looking down was straight onto the nudist beach!
Although this was predominantly a relaxing in the sun and getting away from everything after a rubbish year kind of holiday, we did enjoy venturing out a bit too.
We mainly stayed in the local area, other than a boat to lovely Dubrovnik, which was a bit longer than we had been led to believe, so sadly we didn't get that long there. In hindsight we would have liked to have spent more time seeing and wandering around the old town. If you are doing the day trip, take a jacket as it was freezing at night on the return.
The restaurants in Cavtat were enjoyable.
Bugenvila, the Michelin star restaurant, and Dalmantino were excellent; the latter we ate at a couple of times and also visited for drinks on several occasions.
Ciparis was our favourite for ambience and the views, but I chose badly for my main course, although Jason loved his tuna steak.
We would return, probably staying in smaller more personal accommodation though, with less trees around the pool and ideally mid-summer to guarantee sunshine every day.
Our tests at the airport, the night before flying back to the UK were a bit of a farce. We filled in a form, a swab was stuck up halfway up our nostrils for less than half a second and we received a piece of paper half an hour later, obviously saying negative!
Jo, you were a star yet again and we are ready to book our next holiday - a couple of weeks in Greece early next summer. We can’t wait!
Louise & Jason
