Hi Wanda,

It was wonderful to finally catch with you after my return from our Vacation via our telephone conversation this afternoon.  As I shared with you, the experience we had on our Croatian vacation was outstanding.   Everything worked very smoothly.  The drivers and guides were all prompt, easy to find and very professional.  The hotel arrangements were the best as were all our side trips to the vineyards, wineries, restaurants, villages and churches.

As for our meeting with our distant relatives, I would describe the experience as very emotional and surreal.   We were able to visit the birthplace of my wife’s grandfather, the church where he was baptized and the local cemetery.  Finally, spending a Saturday afternoon on the “family” farm and having lunch with our distant relatives was an experience of a lifetime.

Please pass on our regards to Iva Raucher, our Croatian concierge, for the outstanding job she did in connecting us with our family.

Thank you again for arranging a wonderful trip.

Dan Machacek – MN
December 15, 2014

Hello Wanda.  Just wanted to say that the trip was awesome.  The drivers, tours guides, and everyone else involved were great.  Our concierge, Iva, was wonderful.  I’m so glad we were able to meet her in Rijeka.  She was in constant contact with us before and during the trip making sure our needs were met.  The best part of the trip, for me, was meeting with our relatives.  I didn’t know what to expect and it turned out to be a very happy and emotional day for all of us.  Thank you to you and tour staff for all that you did in locating these wonderful people for us.  It truly was a trip of a lifetime for me.  I would recommend your company to anyone planning a trip to Croatia.  Should I go back, and I definitely want to, you will be the first one we contact!

Tony Biljan – MN
December 15, 2014

Hi Wanda,

It was a wonderful experience, we over-stayed by a few days, but it was terrific.  My comments are that although The Villa was fantastic, Montenegro, per your warning, is really not ready for tourism, one can skip it.  We only went because we had a couple of extra days and could not change our flights once we realized we had booked beyond our interests and limited walking.  The boats (both) were terrific, Korcula was wonderful, perfect for three nights, Tony was great (his is the only restaurant on the waterfront worth going to, the other one next door was extremely mediocre), the driving tour of the island and the driver’s recommended stop for lunch was fabulous (family farm, wonderful food), the local vineyard for Grrk was fun, the driver from Korcula to Dubrovnik was nice but he arrived with a car that had a non-working window and small size car for a long driver — later discovered he had much better cars in his ‘fleet’ and picked a bad one for us (he should be spoken to about that, Philip was annoyed).  The Ston oysters was a flop, but really given all the great things we saw and experienced between Split, Korcula, Dubrovnik we have no complaints and have recommended to a good friend that she use you for her family’s trip and after the holidays she will be in touch.  I did want to mention that The Villa Dubrovnik was a delight but, again, we were there too long!  The Wall (guide Branca) was fantastic, she is the BEST guide possible.  A delightful lady and so well informed.  Dubrovnik is good for two nights, really awfully commercial, but the day tour by boat were terrific, one day of boats and one day in Dubrovnik and one day to linger would have been great.  

HOWEVER, we had a WONDERFUL TRIP FROM SEPTEMBER 10 – 23, we loved it and YOU!!

Happy Holidays!

Warmest regards, Nancy (we are travelling again but we can speak in January!) ox

Philip & Nancy Greer – Greenwich, CT
November 2014

Hello Wanda,

Judy Boult – Canada
November 5, 2014

Liz D. – MN
October 31, 2014

Wanda,

Thank you for the wonderful trip you planned for us, we a great time. All of our drivers, guides and accommodations were outstanding . We saw amazing sites and had unforgettable experiences. As far as I could tell it all went off without a hitch. (Except for the boarder pass/fine  incident – that we know was not within your control). You invited us to give you feedback as a review of our experience. As I refer to this trip as a “trip of a lifetime”, I have only one comment.  I was disappointed with our time spent on the Island of Murano.  Looking forward to seeing the beautiful glass works of talented artists of the island community, we had a somewhat interesting glass blowing demonstration-then were shuttled upstairs to the their “designer showroom”.  As they poured us champagne I realized their expectations to buy didn’t align with ours. I do know that we signed off on this excursion but was very disappointed to then be ushered to our awaiting water taxi while looking up and down the canal at all the beautiful shops of glass that we had no time to view. I think more explanation or to have been given a choice on how our time would be spent on the island would have been helpful. I hope this feedback is helpful to you.  Thank you again for the terrific trip, we could not have done it without you!

Regards,

Katie Spreitzer – Duluth, MN
May 2014

The trip was wonderful–thank you for your great planning! We enjoyed everything from the guides to the hotels. Nikola in particular was really fantastic! Thank you also for choosing such great places for us to visit–they fit the bill exactly for my writing–and beautiful places to stay. We loved Opatija, and really enjoyed our hotels. And the boutique apartment hotel in Trieste was so unique, and the room so spacious and the innkeepers so very welcoming. Thank you for making our stay memorable and beautiful for us both.

Tosca Lee (New York Times Bestselling Author) – NE
October 15, 2014

Thank you so much for your nice welcome home letter. The trip was terrific! Everything was executed seamlessly, the accommodations most excellent and the people of Croatia were wonderful. The Adriatic as you know is so beautiful. On humorous note, I was a bit over weight on an in country flight but when I told the agent that it was due to bottles of Istrian olive oil she laughed and averaged my husband’s suitcase with mine.

Again thank you for your professionalism and for making this such a personal journey.

Cordial Regards,

Sybil & William Klein – CO
October 10, 2014

Dear Wanda,

We are more or less back to our life before our trip except for being ready for bed by 9:00 p.m. 

At your request, here are my comments which I think reflect the group for the most part.

Venice- Fausto picked us up punctually at all times. Our tour guides were very good at each place where we had guides. They were on time and knowledgeable and friendly. We enjoyed the island trip in the private water taxi. We didn’t know what to expect at the glass factory but were a bit surprised that the shop owner thought we would buy some pretty expensive glass when he led us to his second floor show room. But I found a friend who had that same experience so i guess it it the usual. We might have liked to walk around Murano more to see some other glass shops. The trip to Padua started out with a glitch. It was an add-on right before we left so we didn’t check to see that we were to order our own water taxi. We thought that had been arranged so we were 30 minutes late to meet Fausto. He called ahead and we made some adjustments with our guide. We felt badly that the guide had been waiting for us in the rain. But the chapel was well worth the drive so we were glad we had done this.

Fausto, as you know, did not have the appropriate sticker for his car upon entering Slovenia which it seemed to us he should have had. This caused some problems and Jim Spreitzer ended up putting the ticket on his charge card resulting in an alert from his credit card company. I hope this has been taken care of. Fausto had not done the Slovenia trip before so he struggled a bit along the way. He did find us a very nice restaurant in Aquilea where we got to know him a bit better. 

The hotel in Venice was very nice to say the least and well located. We loved the breakfast room which looked out onto the Grand Canal through open windows- lovely. Your restaurant suggestions were good. We ate at the Assassini- interesting place known by Venetians.

We fell in love with Slovenia and really liked the Antiq Hotel- very charming and unusual but wonderful staff and atmosphere. I would recommend it. It, again, was well located for touring the city. Dragan, our guide, was very good and suggested some restaurants and a walk in the Vindgar Gorge near Lake Bled for a nice afternoon hike. 

Ljubljana is a wonderful city- very energetic with a mix of the old with the new. I would recommend it to travelers as a very friendly and interesting place to visit.

The driver who took us to Croatia was great- Borjo. He was a bit shy at first but we grew to really like him. He was prompt and made a suggestion when we told him we wanted to see Porec. We ended up canceling the lunch reservation you had made but after touring Porec, he took us to a the Restaurant Fjord on the Lim Fjord which was very nice. We got to see the fjord which is a tourist location and enjoyed our lunch.

The Monte Mulini was outstanding. The rooms were large with spacious bathrooms and very comfortable beds. We were able to use their bikes to take a nice ride around the area and there were great hiking and running trails. The grounds were lovely with access to the Adriatic where we swam and even ordered lunch and drinks. Very lovely. We were lucky that we had sunny warm weather while in Rovijn so that helped. It was about a 20 minute walk into the town and the restaurants were great. We did find the Puntilino where we sat on cushions on the rocks at sunset and enjoyed the local wine. We found a great local small restaurant suggested by our guide, Mariam-Gianinos. Great place. Oh, and we liked Puntilino so much we ate dinner there on our last evening. 

Pula was amazing and wonderful and Mariam, our guide, was very good. She is so enthusiastic and friendly and full of facts- very impressive. And Meneghetti was a wonderful place for a relaxing and very good lunch and not as expensive as we thought it might be. The grounds are beautiful. It’s a special place which we really enjoyed.

I would say that had the weather been rainy in Rovinj the resort might not have been as good a place to stay. And we would highly recommend Mariam as a guide and Borjo as a driver. He got up very early to get us to the Pula airport for our early morning flight to Zadar.

At the Pula airport we had to pay extra for our luggage because it was a short flight on a small plane. We did not expect this. Our bags were obviously packed for 2 weeks so were heavier than they allowed. That flight was smooth and Mario was at the other end to pick us up. Because it was so early, he suggested that Zadar would not be a good stop because nothing was open. This was OK because there is not a lot there that we could tell and we needed breakfast. He suggested stopping in Sibenik for breakfast and also to look at the UNESCO site of the St. Jakova Cathedral. We did get inside and it was quite beautiful. We had an added treat of it being a celebration day for the city so suddenly a marching band came down the middle of the street providing some local color for us. Mario took a while to warm up but then was quite informative and knew a lot about the area, obviously.

We all loved Split and the hotel ( Marmont) there was very nice. It was in a great location once again and easy to get to the shops and sites. Once again, the guide there, “Harry” was excellent and gave us a good tour. Our tour the next day to Salona and Trogur was good though it turned into a hot day so walking in Salona was tiring for all of us. it is such an extensive site with lots of walking involved. The guide was once again very good- almost as good as Mariam-Nada. And Mario drove us again.

We could have used more time in Split. There are a lot of good Art Museums and places to explore. Some of us walked/ran up to the top of the hill overlooking the city to a wonderful park. 

The trip was wonderful with few glitches. Our one flight glitch was back in Chicago when our flight to Duluth was canceled because of the problems left over from the fire at the Aurora control tower. They would have put us up in a hotel but didn’t guarantee we could get out even the next day. So we rented a mini van and drove through the night, getting home to Duluth at 6:30 a.m. on Oct. 2nd. It was OK actually as we took turns sleeping and driving and had a good time talking to keep each other awake.

I would recommend this trip to others. The one thing that was awkward was using another agency for the plane reservations. There was some confusion at the beginning about the reservations and the boarding passes. We were a bit unclear about things. I know you don’t do the plane reservations but having another person/agency do this was a bit difficult for us. Part of it was that I was trying to give all the information out while others were on vacation which made the whole thing more difficult.

The hotel choices were very good and the guides and drivers were also very good with the possible exception of Fausto. He did the job but wasn’t as good as the others and then we had the problem of the car sticker. 

Thank you for arranging the trip. We all learned a lot and enjoyed every day of the trip. And we are still speaking to each other! The ruins, antiquities, Basilicas and art were especially enjoyable and pretty amazing. And we were surprised by the beautiful countryside with the vineyards and the beautiful Adriatic. 

Joan Peterson – Duluth, MN
May 2014

Wanda helped us to organize the trip of a lifetime. We had been planning to make this trip for over a year but the logistics were not easy, trying to organize 10 people traveling so far away. My mother in law is from Croatia and has a lot of family still there and in Slovenia. Since we were mainly visiting family and many of us have been there before we chose to drive ourselves and had very specific destinations we wanted to go to. Wanda accommodated all our needs and never pushed us to use services we didn’t need or want. It was very clear that what mattered to her the most was that we have the kind of trip we wanted to have. We spent a couple of days in Ljubljana at a lovely hotel right in the old town and we also visited our family just outside of Ljubljana. Wanda also found us an outstanding place to stay near our relatives farm in Pravutina, The Rural Retreat. It was very secluded, very simple but comfortable with beautiful views and the food was out of this world. From there we were able to spend the days with my husband’s Aunt and cousin. Then we went on to Plitvice Lakes, which is absolutely stunning and has to be seen to be believed. The second week of our stay was in Oprtalj in the north of Croatia. The house, while not the easiest place to get to, was great for us with yet more stunning views and a very friendly outdoor cat, promptly named Friskie by my daughter. Sophie, who owns the house, went out of her way to accommodate us. My mother decided to join us for the week in Orptalj and Sophie put an extra bed in the library so we would have room enough for all without charging extra. She was there to greet us when we arrived and was very kind and helpful. The house was a beautifully restored old house and what we liked the most about it was that although it was so nicely decorated it felt very welcoming and comfortable. We felt as if we could really live in it and not just perch for a few days.

I spent time in the former Jugoslavia as a child with my family and this was my second time back since then. It is still one of my favorite parts of the world, especially Ljubljana and Rovinj. Beautiful, friendly and relatively unspoiled. You can’t do better than have Wanda help you arrange your trip there. She is from Croatia, goes back regularly and knows the places she sends her clients. What I also like is that she wanted to know how our trip was when we got back and welcomed feedback to make sure she is giving the best service possible

What else can I say? There were ten people traveling in all including a 10 year old, a 16 year old and 2 young men in their early 20’s and it really went off without a hitch. Everyone had a great time and it was wonderful to see my daughter run around on her great Aunts farm and for us to swim in the Kupa river where my husband’s mother and sisters swam as children.  Those 2 days on the farm were 2 of the most memorable days of any vacation I’ve taken. There was no tv, no video games, no distractions. Everyone talked about memories they had and the kids drew pictures of our adventures on napkins. The best part for me was to see the reunion of my mother in law with her sister after ten years and to see my sister in law come back to a place where she spent time as a child. I have to admit that I cried to see that and I cried when we left.

Lesley Scammell – NJ
October 6, 2014