RealCroatia

Highlights:
* Day 1 -Our Hotel and view from our room in Dubrovnik was amazing! The many options for meals (which were delicious) and the beautiful views from those areas were great! The beautiful pools, and the safe places to jump into the Adriatic and swim was really exciting!
* Day 2 - Our friendly local guide, Alberto, was SO knowledgeable about the history and people of Old Town through the centuries. He shared great tips for our own self-touring that afternoon. An extra highlight was that we were able to meet
Marija, in person that a.m. as she was there with another group and made a point of finding us to meet in person. That was a fun surprise.
* Day 3 - Marija planned our seamless arrival of our rental car and we were on our way to Split. Our local tour guide, Ivana, met us at our boutique hotel and it was a convenient walk to Diocietian's Palace. Ivana, who grew up in Split, was a great guide and pointed out the amazing features of the Palace, as well as sharing her experiences as a young girl growing up during the 5 year war.
* Day 4 - We had a beautiful drive to Krka National Park. The waterfalls there were spectacular and this day was a highlight of our trip! On to Zadar where we checked in to the Hotel Bastion, with views of the harbor nearby and easy
walk to experience the Roman and Venetian ruins on the Old Town peninsula. Lots of restaurants to choose from as well!
*Day 5 - Drove to the most famous National Park in Croatia, Plitvice Lakes where Marija had already provided tickets for
us to tour the area. Again, the waterfalls were stunning, and were so worth the walk, in spite of the cloudy day! Then on to
the capitol, Zagreb. We had another seamless transfer to our hotel after dropping off our rental car. Our driver was a great young man who shared his perspective about the 5 yr. war (at my urging). He had been a "celebration baby." His
father had survived the war, married his mother and he was born. He shared that every year they go back to the city in Eastern Croatia, where his father had fought alongside other Croatians to remember those who were lost, such a poignant story.
*Day 6 - Met up with our local guide, Josie, at our hotel and got a great tour of the center of Zagreb. Josie is a vibrant and energetic young woman who loves her city and was so excited to show the many highlights and learn from her about Zagreb's history..... from the City Square, to the famous Cathedral of Zagreb, St. Marks Church, the Dolac Market (amazing daily fresh produce, meat markets, bakeries, wine/olive oil specialties galore!), and riding the Funicular Railway from the upper town back down to the lower town. It was a FUN last day and we topped it off with having an authentic Croatian dinner where the locals go to have a great meal (one of Josie's favorites that she recommended to us). We were not disappointed!!! The BEST local food and great people!
*Day 7 - Marija arranged for our on-time driver to pick us up at 4:30 a.m. for a short, relaxing drive to the Zagreb Airport.
We had plenty of time to relax, buy a few more souvenirs and talk about what an AMAZING trip we'd had.
THANK YOU MARIJA!!!

Summary with details following: I would not recommend Bruno. He can be cranky and short tempered. This was a second trip with Kimkim and they were a disappointment also. I was planning another trip with Kimkim, that I have cancelled. Thankfully, I had not paid the deposit.
Bruno was good during the planning phases with customizing our trip. The trip was a 5* trip for a group of 6 seniors (3 couples). One of the main reasons for using Kimkim was that they had someone local that we could chat with whenever we needed to. Once when I was asking Bruno questions he came back with a response "You are not my only client". I was not expecting an instant response. I don't know why he got annoyed.
He scheduled us, based on our request, to go to Vrsic pass. The roads had been closed for a while and we just happened to find out when we mentioned it to the person at the hotel desk. As my agent there, he should have known this. We could have spent a couple of hours driving there and found out, but we lucked out.
We had rented a van that turned out to be a diesel van. Not understanding the nomenclature, we ended up pumping regular gas in the van. In the US, the nozzle typically will not fit, but apparantly not in Europe. Lesson learned. It was a Sunday evening and the van started sputtering and we got an "engine failure likely" warning. Luckily, we got off the highway and managed to get to a gas station in the boonies. Bruno was very irritated and kept telling me it was my fault and wanted to make sure to tell me that I had to pay for it. I never had an expectation that he would cover it. He later told me that because of this he lost family time and wanted me to feel sorry for him. Remember, it was 6 senior citizens stranded in some unknown village not knowing the language and dealing with an irritated specialist, Bruno. We lost a day of site seeing and Bruno had to do some re-arranging of our itinerary due to this. Yes, it was not his fault for sure, but shit happens. If family time is more important, get a 9 to 5 job.
One of the hotels (Pallazo) was a disaster. We stayed there for 2 nights and we had AC and internet issues the whole time. I had to move rooms twice (3 different rooms in 2 nights) and another couple had to move once and the third couple had to put up with boiling temperatures for one night. Remember, we had requested the best hotels and this was a disaster. The total cost of the 11 day trip was over $28K and I insisted on some compensation and the best they could do was a total refund of $340 plus $100 Kimkim credit for each couple. We were paying about $2500 per day ($5000 for 2 days) and the best they could do was $340. The credit is useless, since I don't plan on using Kimkim anymore. When I told Bruno that I would follow up with Kimkim, he told me to not bother and that they could not do anything. He was right. So having Kimkim as the parent organization buys you nothing, You just pay more since they take their commission off the top and provide no value when it comes to issues like this.
Kimkim's planning online interface is nice until you need to remove people that may have dropped out. The emails continued going to the people that dropped out and the message authors were mixed up with some message. Basically it seems to have some annoying issues. The group organizer cannot add and remove people. Simple email questions in the chat window ends up going to everyone creating a lot more communications than necessary. I could not send a chat message to Bruno privately.

Our visit to Croatia was amazing. Our organiser, Tina, created the perfect itinerary for our week travelling from Zagreb to Dubrovnik. The entire week was seemless, from our first transfer to Split via Plitvice Lakes. The private tour guides in Plitvice Lakes and Dubrovnik were amazing. Every transfer from multiple ferry trips, car transfers and cable cars happened without any hiccups. Our hotel accommodation in every port was perfect, especially the beautiful Hilton in Dubrovnik. To be located only 100 metres from the Old Town made our visit so easy and enjoyable. We had an amazing day on a jet boat tour in Hvar which was one of our favourite activities on our month long holiday. in Europe. This perfect week was made possible by Tina’s creation of the perfect itinerary. I would definitely recommend KimKim and especially Tina. Mary-Ellen and Adrian

Bruno was immensely helpful from start to finish…organizing the tour with great stop/hotels/guides in specific cities, providing daily guidance on the itinerary for the next day and being immediately responsive to address all questions…highly recommend Bruno and his team for organizing your Croatia vacation!