Overall a well designed trip, with quick responses from Ivan and Sarah regarding any questions, requests or problems.
Croatia
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Jul 4 - Jul 13, 2026
The "Foodie" tour in Zagreb was fun, and provided some interesting information about the city as well as introduction to some local foods.
We especially liked the visit to the lakes and falls at Plitvice. It was a 5 hour walk but most of it was level and where the trail might have been wet or steep, it was "paved" with logs, bridges and where steep, with steps. There were 4 ferries crossing the lake, but with a 1 hour wait in the July sun, we opted to walk around the lakes instead, which was in retrospect a good choice.
The boat trip from Hvar harbor around the islands, with several stops for swimming & snorkeling (mask and snorkels provided). We got to swim into a couple of huge ( 50-100 meters high/wide and 200-300 meters deep) sea-caves that were not boat accessible. I wished we had our underwater camera to capture the views. Many Swifts lived in and flew about the caves.
Dubrovnik is lovely, historic and in high season (July & August) very crowded. A Dubrovnik Pass is helpful so that you don't have to keep paying admissions to different historic buildings. Unfortunately if you want to walk the city walls, you need to know that admission fees including the Pass only allow one trip (we accidentally used that up looking for our guide, so missed that walk).
Our guide (Dubrovna was her name...easy to remember). was well educated and provided much information on the city. We aren't "Game of Thrones" fans, so she didn't dwell on the details of the filming there.
Activity Reviews
Swimming in the Adriatic, especially the caves we swam into, was great.
We were very pleasantly surprised that this visit to the Family Farm included a cooking class. We were served two locally made cheeses and bread, almonds, dried figs with some iced cherry juice (we don't drink alcohol, so didn't try the local wine). We then began our cooking class. We made a family recipe for chicken cooked with olive oil peaches, plums, onions, garlic, cherry juice, salt, pepper, rosemary and bay leaves. We toured their garden and picked up rosemary, bay laurel leaves, tomatoes, cucumbers, arugula, parsley and fennel. They grow their own limes and grapefruits, pomegranates, almonds, figs, olives and much more. Back in the kitchen, we learned to make a twirly pasta by hand, and a peach & plum topped cake. After that we ate the dinner we had prepared. It was truly delicious (including a chicken soup with carrots and farina dumplings).