Day 1. A walking tour of Dubrovnik old town (including monastery and harbour) - one street down the centre and small side streets/alleys off. Free time for lunch and then in cable car up Srd hill for the view.More free time and back to hotel. I walked past the restaurants around the peninsula -a pleasant walk.

Day 2. A trip to Montenegro ,only 20 minutes away ,but took about 1 hour for the exit/entry border crossing. This is a mountainous country . We visited an artificial island in a bay and then Kotor -a walled town where we had a short walking tour with a local guide. There was a large cruise cruise ship moored next to the old town.

Heavy rain during lunch. Returned back across the bay with our coach on a ferry. At the border there was only a 20 minute delay.

Day 3.A free day. 3 of us took the 45 minute boat trip from Cavtat to Dubrovnik  stopping at Lokram island  to pick up/set down passengers on the way. There is an admission charge to the island which is a nature reserve.We did see peacocks .

In Dubrovnik we walked on a section of the old wall , had lunch had a walk in the old town in a shower,back by boat.

Day 4 .Optional excursion to Mostar in Bosnia - a long day leaving the hotel at 0745 and back at about 2030. The biggest problem was border crossings . Croatia is in 2 parts separated by 9 km of Bosnia along the coast.We had to cross from Croatia to Bosnia and into the other part of Croatia before heading inland to another border with Bosnia with an exit and entry post . This crossing took 1 hour and then it was another hour to Mostar where we arrived 1330 ,had lunch which had a Turkish influence, visited a mosque and a traditional house. The main feature was an arch type bridge from the 1500s which had to be rebuilt after the 1990s war. The stones forming the road  were very shiny and would be slippery in rain. We should have had free time but nearly everyone elected to start the return journey.

Day 5. A relaxing day for a cruise from Dubrovnik to 3 of the Elafiti islands. We had a buffet lunch on board and there was also musical entertainment.  We landed on  all 3 islands - the longest break of 3 hours on the last island.

Day 6 . Awaking with a thunderstorm,we departed for Ston which has the 3rd longest wall in the world. We saw the salt pans where the water evaporates during the summer. As it was raining we had coffee and after a little free time - only 1 person walked on the wall ,we continued to a winery for wine and grappa tasting and a lunch of mussels and/or oysters or cheese and ham. We were back at the hotel mid-afternoon for some frree time before departing for a local farmhouse for a final dinner of homemade food and wine - very good.

Many thanks for this review, it is on my wish list so I was very interested to read it.  Glad you had a good time, pity the weather wasn't better though!

Best wishes,

Bob

Thank you very much for writing this great and detailed review. Pleased you had  a lovely holiday.

I am thinking of this holiday for summer 2019 and apart from going to Dubrovnik I am keen to go to Mostar, don't know why Mostar appeals apart from hearing about the bridge years ago and I think it was included in old Yugoslavia tours years ago, before I travelled anywhere.

Train trip next, is it?

Best wishes

Di

On arrival at Split we had a 2 hour coach trip to our hotel, arriving to a cold plate of ham and cheese.

We had a lady with possibly dementia, that we all spent supporting all week. Our tour guide was shall we say relaxed! No people skills or help to get the group together. He made promises to the group to sort a couple of issues out, but did nothing

On a positive note I met some great fellow travellers, whom I plan to keep in contact with.

On our coach back to the airport, he seemed to change, he was quite jovial, I will leave you to make your own decisions as to why.

Hi Peter,

Many thanks for this review, it is on my wish list so I was very interested to read it.  Glad you had a good time, pity the weather wasn't better though!

Best wishes,

Bob

Hi Bob

What are your travel plans for this year? Its been a while :)

Mark

Looks as if you had nice time despite the weather. I have heard Dubrovnik is a really nice place to visit. I would like to see more of Croatia and hopefully will be able to go there soon. At the moment am concentrating on long hauls.

Regards

Jaya

I am going to dubrovnik on 17th June 2018 .It is my first trip with Just you so i am exited and nervous at the same time .However i have wanted to go to Croatia for a few years and i am really looking forward to the trip .I will be travelling out from Manchester so i assume i will meet my fellow travellers at Dubrovnik Airport. Any tips you can give me would be gratefully received .

Happy many more trips

Sue .

Maybe you can ask Vickie the moderator if there are any other people on the Manchester flight who are on this trip and you be able to meet them at Manchester airport. Put a Just You luggage label on your hand luggage so you can be recognized.

At Dubrovnik airport once having passed through passport control and collected your luggage you enter the arrivals hall where there should be the Just You tour manager with a clipboard assuming it is a local person as it was in my case. There were 5 flights from UK airports arriving within about an hour of each other; the Gatwick one was first. When those from the first 4 flights had arrived the tour manager took us to the coach for the 10 minute transfer. She remained at the airport to greet the 5th flight and await the return of the coach.

As we arrived at the hotel around noon,not all rooms were ready.

For Croatia you need kuna currency . Montenegro uses Euro and Bosnia accepts kuna and euro although it has its own currency and neither are in the EU.

Hope you have a great holiday and I recommend a boat trip to Dubrovnik on your free day. 100 kunas return.

Peter

I returned yesterday from my first holiday alone and also with JY and my fears about whether I would get on with the other travellers in the group were unfounded. I discovered 28 other wonderful people with similar desires to travel & explore as myself. They were just like me & I was amazed at how well the group gelled & how well we all got on together.

I see that Peter G has written a comprehensive description of the trip so I’ll try to fill in some other useful information & tips for those of you still considering & going on this holiday:

1.    Money: even though Croatia is in the EU, it doesn’t have Euros. The currency there is Croation Kuna. Kuna 

apparently means pine martin in Croatian. I had to order my currency a week in advance with the Post Office. There’s an ATM in the Hotel lobby and they are everywhere in Dubrovnik & Kotor. I used my credit card and bank debit card without problem in shops & restaurants.

2.    Hotel Croatia: it has everything you could wish for and more beside.  A very large and clean roomy hotel with many floors and with a fabulous position overlooking beautiful Cavtat and the Adriatic. Staff at reception & elsewhere is polite and helpful. My room was ample for just me, with a balcony, tea & coffee making facilities, a safe and a TV (movies are charged).

The bathroom is roomy with a shower over the bath. It is easy to miss the rainfall shower directly hanging from the ceiling whilst thinking there is only a hand held showerhead - good shower. I am somewhat vertically challenged at 5 foot tall and found it a little difficult to get into & out of the bath without a swift scissor jump from my school hurdling days, but a step stool was provided on request.

3.    Hotel Buggy into Cavtat: I found this useful as the hotel is set on a hillside amongst pine trees. There is a bellboy who will happily run hotel guests down the hill into Cavtat if asked. The buggy runs backwards and forwards on a regular basis but with no set times. I asked about a lift back up to the hotel & was given the hotel number - simply ring and the buggy would come for me. It was like having my own chauffeur!

Note: Cavtat is pronounced Savtat in Croatian.

4.    Beaches: the beaches on this coastline are not like the ones in the UK. I saw that the locals sit on the rocks or pieces of flat concrete around the edge of the hotel to sunbathe and swim from there. There are jettys out into the sea and steps to aid getting in & out in Cavtat & other places along the coast. It’s just a matter of changing the way that I was used to entering the sea. The beaches tend to be mainly pebbles and there are sea urchins in the water. I found my sea shoes useful. The sea is so clear and clean you will want to get into it!

5.    Pool towels: these are provided by the indoor pool on floor 5 for use in the hotel only. As hotel towels are not allowed to be taken out of the hotel, it may be useful to bring a towel with you if you are considering swimming in the sea at some stage (Elafiti Island trip).

6.    Trip to Kotor in Montenegro: Euros are needed for this trip. There are 3 ATMs in Kotor centre so there’s no problem about withdrawing money there, but you may have some at home you might like to bring with you. Departure was at 9.15am and we were back for 5pm.

7.    Trip to Mostar: this tour is a 5-hour coach drive each way. We left the hotel at 7.45am to arrive in Mostar at 1pm and left again at 3pm. Arrival back at the hotel was 9pm. 10 hours in total on the coach. Like Peter G said, there’s a lot of waiting around at border crossings and there were 6 of these each way – 2 each time when leaving one country followed by entering another.

The 3 hours in Mostar was spent eating a Turkish lunch and the town tour, with just 45 minutes free time. The bridge, although beautiful when viewed from the other town bridge further down, is very slippy and difficult to walk across and actually only 15 years old. Shoes with a good grip are essential for this.

8.    Coach & driver: this is with you all week so you have the same driver. Our driver this week was Iviza who was a careful driver with a cheerful and smiling disposition. On trip days it is possible to leave things in the coach that you may not want to carry around with you all day long.

9.    Meals at Hotel Croatia: of course this varies according to each person’s tastes. Food was well cooked & fresh, both in the hotel and at the restaurants on trips. I had in mind that as it was a 5 star Hotel, the food might be 5 star too, but as it mentions somewhere in Just You information, a 5 star hotel abroad may not be a 5 star hotel in the UK. Hence, if you are expecting 5 star food for half board, you may be out of luck.

The buffet style evening meals were fine. There was an excellent choice for breakfast, the evening meals were changed each evening and there was a wide variety of seafood. There was plenty of food to choose from and dishes were replaced regularly as they emptied.

The Hotel does have a Steak Restaurant on the ground floor open in the evenings, a café restaurant on the pool floor open from 12.00 to 6pm and the Spinnaker Beach Restaurant which was only open for lunches in May. There is nothing knocked off the price of a meal there for half-board guests if they decide to eat there instead of the main restaurant. I didn’t try any of these.

In Cavtat there are many restaurants on the promenade to try if you want a change.

For our last meal we ate outside at a restaurant in a lovely river setting where lamb is cooked under “a bell”. It is helpful to bring a jumper/jacket once the sun goes down although they kindly provided us with blankets.

10. Local guides: the guides we had in Kotor and in Mostar were very good and spoke good English with the tours not being too long.

Sandra was our JY guide for the week & met us at the airport. She was very knowledgeable and informative on the local history and on everything about Croatia; its history, the war in the 1990s and how the people live there. She didn’t eat any meals with us, nor did she socialise. We had her phone number in case of problems. 

I travelled from Manchester where I believe there was a JY rep, but I missed her whilst concentrating on tackling the DIY luggage tag machines! There were 5 of us on this flight although I didn't actually spot anyone until baggage reclaim in Dubrovnik when I saw another's JY luggage tag on her rucksack. It is so helpful to use these JY luggage tags to be able to locate one another. Sandra, our guide was waiting outside of the airport "nothing to declare" exit and we were ready to get on the coach. For anyone worried about the airport side of things, there really is nothing to be concerned about. You just follow everyone else at the airport and look for the JY luggage labels.

I had a wonderful relaxing holiday on my first solo holiday with my fabulous group and was surprised at how pretty the Dalmation Coast is around Cavtat. I would very much recommend this holiday & hope these tips help.

Sandra was our TM for the first trip out in 2017.  Lots of problems on that trip mainly to do with the hotel, which thankfully has been changed.  I grew to like Sandra.  She was efficient (she had a lot to deal with!), and although not as you say very sociable I was more than happy with her.

To Sue.  I would imagine that you will meet your TM at Dubrovnik Airport.  It's a fairly modern airport, easy to find your way round, and only about 10 minutes or so transfer to Cavat.  Cavtat is a smashing little town, lots of bars and eating places, and also good shopping.  There is a restaurant down by the bus station looking on to the harbour that I can heartily recommend.  There is also a good sized supermarket and also a post office.  

I went on all the trips apart from Mostar, and they were all good.  Do make sure you take comfortable footwear though, and also beach shoes if you want to go in the water.  

I can't tell you anything about the hotel sadly.  

I would love to go back incidentally.

Many thanks for all your tips - this trip is firmly on my radar and I look forward to doing it in a few years.  Great to hear the hotel is so good, after the problems the first departures had with the other hotel.  Yes I've learnt that overseas four or five star doesn't necessarily mean what we might expect it to - but then again, at home, it doesn't necessarily mean that either!  My understanding the star ratings are more to do with amenities and facilities offered, rather than reflecting the room or food quality.

Best wishes,

Bob

There are 6 people flying from Manchester, including yourself 🙂

Thanks,

Vickie

I will put in a report when I return .

Julie