8-Day Croatia Explorer: Nature and Timeless Beauty

Our travel guide was excellent. Our hotels were perfect and, from the beginning, he accommodated all of my requests, including my need for gluten-free foods. And during the trip, when my daughter got sick, he arranged for a doctor to come to the hotel.

Croatia is a beautiful country to visit. The people we met and the guides we had were all fantastic, professional, knowledgeable and incredibly friendly. Every place we visited, even the more crowded tourist areas, felt very safe.

Our Zicasso travel agent worked really closely with us right from the beginning to make sure the trip gave our family the balance of exploration, relaxation, learning, and adventure that we look for on our vacations. Every aspect of our trip – every tour, every driver, every dinner, everything – flowed exactly as we had planned it.

Our Zicasso travel agent's communication was incredible! She was fast, professional, and always thorough. Everything she planned for us was of such high quality! It was perfect!

Zicasso's travel consultant was so helpful in designing a near-perfect trip for our group of eight travelers. We visited Croatia and Greece. In the planning stages, she was patient yet persistent in moving us toward finalizing the trip. The hotel recommendations and sightseeing choices were, for the most part, outstanding. The ground transfer arrangements were perfect. Most of all, her recommendation for the right Greek island for our group's needs was spot on.

Before our trip, Zicasso's travel specialist assured us we would have an amazing, worry-free trip through Slovenia and Croatia. We most certainly did!!

She had us in beautiful, centrally located hotels, on exciting daily excursions with knowledgeable tour guides, and even on a private speedboat ride!! Our journey included historic sites, wonderful museums, and hikes through caverns, waterfalls, and fortresses!!

Any questions we had were answered in the moment, completely and respectfully! Thank you so much to our travel specialist for her caring attention to detail and for making our trip truly memorable!!

The entire nine days of travel from Slovenia to Montenegro were seamless as far as being picked up at the arrival airport and departure as planned. Transportaion was on schedule, which was important to me in a foreign country and eliminated any stress. Each private guide and/or driver throughout our trip was courteous and spoke English, which avoided any misunderstanding about all the wonderful sites we saw.

Lake Bled was absolutely wonderful. The guide parked the van at this family home four blocks from the lake and introduced us to his mother and sister, who welcomed us, and we saw how they lived in this beautiful village. The walk of four blocks to the lake also gave us the opportunity to see more of this quaint place to live. Since the lake does not allow power boats, we and about 20 other people were rowed to the island, where an ancient church was located. We found out that this family, in the past, were the caretakers of the island and our tour guide had to row himself to the shore to go to school and, in the winter, skate to school every day.

Next, we were driven to the castle on top of a small mountain, which had a perfect, 360-degree view of the area. Beautiful!

The next day we went to Plitvice Lakes National Park, with too many waterfalls to count and water that looked as crystal clear as any natural water I have ever seen. The four-kilometer walk upstream was nothing like I've ever seen in the USA.

We spent the night in a wonderful mountain lodge, with individual lodges and an upper-end-style bed and breakfast theme.

Split was a city with parts dating back to the third century, with many Roman influences in its many buildings.

Mostar in Bosnia was very interesting and had a central arch-style bridge which seemed to be a central point for all to see. There was so much we saw that it is too much to describe here.

We also stopped at a wine tasting at the most modern winery I've ever been to. It even had 12 guest rooms, with a pool.

On our way to Dubrovnik, we stopped at Ston to have an unbelievable lunch. At the restaurant, we had an oyster tasting of fresh oysters being farmed several hundred yards from the restaurant. We were served oysters three ways, from raw to fried and baked, and they were the best I will ever eat in my life.

We next went to Dubrovnik, which was particularly interesting to me because it is where Game of Thrones was filmed. Our guide was excellent, as he worked as a "roadie" for the film company, helping set the scenes by taking down modern signs or anything modern, and putting them back after filming. He had large screen shots in a spiral binder and would take us to a cove and hold up the screen shot of the actual scene from the movie to show us the similarity. His behind-the-scenes knowledge of the actors and the reaction from the town and church was beyond expectations. My wife and I were fans of GOT and so excited that we are going to watch if all again one day.

Our last day was in Montenegro, which again was beautiful, and we spent the day next to the water there. We were ferried to a man-made island with an old church on it.

Overall, the Adriatic Sea along the coast of these countries was one of the most beautiful stretches of water you could imagine.

Our expectations of this tour were met and exceeded.