PJ Travel Savvy

May 2007

Staying: Regent Esplanade, in a lovely location and recently refurbished. Was originally owned by the Orient Express in the days when they stopped in Zagreb. www.theregentzagreb.com 01/456 6666.

Eating: Room service at the hotel was very good and promptly served. Next day lunch at Boban (one of Croatia’s soccer players), in downtown shopping area. Many, many inexpensive pasta selections. Good and fun. Very crowded and no reservations. www.boban.hr Gajeva 9 01/48 11 549. Dinner at Dubravkin Put. Fifteen minute taxi ride up in the hills. Contemporary space. One table was filled with government types, including the minister of education and science. They had arranged for a group of singers, who sang beautiful plaintive songs. Really made a pleasant restaurant memorable. (We shared a fish and salad and ended our meal with one of the herb grappas produced locally. Must be an acquired taste.)

May 2007

We took the ferry to Hvar from Split. The hydrofoil takes 50 minutes; if you’re on a yacht the trip will take however long you’d like it to. We were there during the shoulder season; if you go during the summer there is much more frequent service.

Hvartown is charming–the travel writers that call it the next St Tropez are doing it a disservice. True, the port has berths for lots of boats–not many when we were there in May but, I am sure, crowded in July and August. The piazza is next to the port and very Venetian in both look and feel (this area was owned by Venice for centuries). It is lovely to sit in the cafes and watch the passing parade of families while drinking a cafe or a glass of wine. The weather was perfect and we felt we could have spent much more time there than the two days we had allotted.

Staying:

We stayed at the Palace Hotel, a very tired 1930′s hotel right off the square owned by Suncani, the company that owns most of the hotels in Hvartown. Our room was large with a water view. The hotel is to be closed for remodelling shortly, and will reopen summer 2008. www.suncanihvar.com/palace 021/750 750. Meanwhile, the Riva Hotel has just been remodelled. It is right on the port with a stunning outdoor restaurant and bar. The rooms, however, are very contemporary and small with some of the showers opening into the rooms. No pool. The Adriatic is magnificently clear and lovely but the beaches are pebble, thus hard to lie on. www.suncanihvar/riva 021/750 100.

A less expensive option is to rent a room from one of the people who meets the boats with pictures of bedrooms.

Eating:

Fish again. Plain grilled with fabulous olive oil splashed on top, and then sprinkled with fresh herbs. The salads are uniformly composed of local ingredients, with very good olive oil and vinegar. The white wine, garlic, parsley and olive oil sauce on the shells is excellent.

Macondo. (pasta with lobster in the shell; excellent spiny variety with v. thin shells but still hard work to crack.) 021/742 850.

Yaksa. (chicken dish with honey for R; Grilled octopus on corn blini for me.) www.yaksahvar.com 021/717 202.

Shopping:

Jewelry gallery, Tanja Curin, had terrific things (also branch in Zagreb). 091/506 7140.

We arrived there on the Sunday of an unexpected (to us) holiday weekend. The Monday was Saint Domnius (the patron saint of Split) Day. Split is a city of over 100,000 people and they all seemed to be out promenading at the port adjacent to the old town. Also adjacent to where we were Staying, in the walls of Diocletian’s palace. The Vestibul Palace was charming, a contemporary space with an accommodating staff. Our room was nice-sized, with good lighting and AC, a modern bathroom and excellent breakfast. www.vestibulpalace.com Iza Vestibula 4 021/329 329.

The festival included market stalls, which were a disappointment unless you wanted wooden boxes and fly swatters.

Eating:

Dinner at Nostromo www.restoran-nostromo.hr Kraj Svete Marije 10 091/405 6666. (We had starters of salad and spaghetti napolitana, then shared a fresh, fileted fish, served with olive oil and parsley.) Without exception, the fresh fish, plainly served, was marvelous. One was usually enough to share. And, the ice cream was uniformly yummy, here and in Dubrovnik.

The next night was the most interesting. We walked to the port (5 mins from hotel), where we were picked up by the owner of a restaurant in the suburbs (15 mins drive). The owner of Konoba Nikola spoke English excellently, as did everyone else we met who had anything to do with the tourism industry. (He showed us a plate of “shells”, mostly different clams, and suggested that we have a mixture. Each one tasted different, delicious and unlike most of what we get in the US. We shared a John Dory and a salad. Nikola insisted we have dessert, one similar to creme brulee with fresh fruit baked in. Lovely. We had another terrific Croatian red wine–we are not white wine drinkers and tried several but really didn’t care for them; they were light and somewhat sweet, to our palates.) Ivankova 42 (in Strobrec) 021/326 235.

Our last night we were sent to Varos, a typical “meat” restaurant. (started with salad caprese; unfortunately mozzerella was the only Croatian cheese we found not to be good. Then shared a pasticada, very close to a sauerbraten without the vinegary flavor. Good wine and espresso.) Ban Mladenova 7 021/396 138.

Lunches: Gust. Pizza. Packed. Sperun. Marvelous octopus salad. Pasta. Terrific bread, like everywhere we ate. Sperun 3 021/346 999.

Shopping:

None. We bought soccer shirts for the boys and Croatian dolls for the girls. I actually didn’t mind, because we were having such a good time that it became immaterial.

We went by way of Mostar (Bosnia-Herzogovina), which was badly damaged during the war and still shows it. Charming small old town with several mosques, a very famous bridge the tackiest souvenirs I’ve ever seen (mind you, that’s saying A LOT). I could find nothing to buy! We sat outside by the river and had a typical lunch, reminiscent of the dinners my Russian mother served.

We stayed at the Grand Villa Argentina, a 10 minute walk from the old town. It’s a large hotel facing the Adriatic and offering all the amenities, including well-sized rooms, good lighting, a spa and a swimming pool. The people at the front desk were moderately helpful. Grand Villa Argentina Frana Supila 14 020/440 555.

I also checked out the Hilton Imperial Dubrovnik, a slightly longer walk from the old town and away from the sea. They showed me an unremarkable suite and told me that the rates were flexible. The pool is indoors, very few rooms have sea views and the bathrooms were meager. Not so appealing. Hilton Imperial Dubrovnik. Marijana Blazica 2 020/320 320.

The Pucic Palace is the fanciest of the three. It’s small and in the old town. The public areas are charming and there is a spa. The rooms are purported to be on the small side. The Pucic Palace. Ulica Od Puca 1 020/324 226.

Eating:

Lunch: a pizza contest. Due to Croatia’s history of close ties with Venice, there remains a fair amount of Italian influence. The best we had was on our day-trip to the island of Korcula, at a pizzeria named Amfora. (aside: the salads we had at almost every meal were wonderful–different local lettuces, good tomatoes, shredded mild cabbage, olives and the strongest onions I’ve ever tasted. The Croatian red wines were good as well, but not inexpensive.) Another great lunch place was Konoba/Spaghetteria Toni. They offered a very large selection of pastas. Nikole Bozidarevica 14 020/323 134. Mea Culpa is reputed to have the best pizza in Dubrovnik, but we found it a tad too cheesy (a type of gouda is the pizza cheese of choice in Croatia). www.mea-culpa.hr Za Rokom 3 020/323 430.

Dinner: Most Dubrovnik restaurants specialize in fish. The first night we ate at Restaurant Atlas Club Nautika (R started with a salad; I had oysters from Ston–a nearby town famous for its oysters, and justly so; we shared a sea bass simply grilled and filleted, served with a bit of the excellent Croatian olive oil. The popular side dish we shared, that of spinach or escarole with potatoes, we found dull.) The food and service were good but overpriced compared to other restaurants, particularly Proto (see below), which they also own. www.esculap-teo.hr Brsalje 3 020/44 25 26.

The next night was Arsenal, in–guess what–the former arsenal. It’s a large restaurant with a big bar area and, on that particular night, a group of Croatian singers and musicians (all men). They made a mediocre restaurant lots of fun. www.mea-culpa.hr Pred Dvorom 1 020/321 065.

Back to Proto. We ate here twice, after having drinks at Arsenal, where the group both nights was singing Frank Sinatra/Dean Martin-type songs. (R ate veg soup and whitefish with a tomato and vegetable sauce. I ate octopus salad and grilled scampi the first night; the second I had a bowl of the super local black mussels and grilled squid). www.esculap-teo.hr 020/32 32 34.