Замечательный отдых Wonderful holiday

Tour chose a long time. Having studied a lot of reviews about holidays in Croatia, I decided that it was worth a trip. Naturally, you want cheaper and better. By chance, I saw information about this hotel on the Internet. I thought about it for a long time, looked for bits and pieces of reviews and other information from different sites. It bribed that this hotel offers apartments for any number of people and the more people travel, the cheaper it goes per person. For economic reasons, the period of the trip from 06.09. 08 to 13.09. 08 was also chosen. it is during this period that the prices for the tour are much lower, the weather in the first half of September in Istria is still usually good (information from reviews from various sites). Since we were going to fly the four of us (a family with almost adult children), it remained to find someone who would sell the tour. The tour operator was chosen by UTE Megapolus. True, judging by the reviews from the Internet, tourists had complaints about it. A tour for four people, including fuel surcharges, cost me 72.5 thousand rubles. Meals are not included. But half board is possible, which can be purchased on the spot. The carrier was Krasair. They flew during the scandals associated with it. It was a little awkward.
And then the day of departure. We are at the airport. We get the documents without any problems, go through the registration and we are on the plane. Exactly on schedule, we are in the air. Boeing 767 is taking us to Croatia. Excellent service on board. Nothing stresses. In Pula, all formalities are completed very quickly, and at the exit from the airport we find a representative of our tour operator, who immediately shows where to go. We boarded a comfortable bus which set off almost immediately. Local representatives of UTE Megapolis Reshat and Meggi Immediately handed out envelopes with information about the country, with the time and place of the meeting in the future. We were the only ones on the plane to this hotel. I must say that we did not have a single complaint against these UTE representatives. Everything is very punctual, friendly, accessible (in the sense of getting through to them).
From the reviews about the hotel, I realized that the Russian language at the reception was a bit tight and was ready to explain myself in English, but what was my surprise when the young receptionist greeted me at the reception: "hello! " Very promptly, within 5-10 minutes I was handed the keys to the room. We didn't fill out any forms. Upon departure, they put the keys on the counter and said "Goodbye" and that's it. No one took our number. Although there was a lot of easy-to-carry stuff in it.

We got the apartments on the second floor of the house next to the reception. The windows of the bedrooms overlooked Villa Antonia - this is a beautiful building with a beautiful little garden, usually on sites where the hotel is described there are photos of it. It was wonderful to watch how a whole army of cleaners at 7 in the morning was scrubbing the paths of the public garden with powders. Separately about the room. It was 4DST.
The description of the hotel says what it is. It's nice that all the reviews on the sites that I found and the descriptions of the hotel and photos are true (except for the obviously outdated ones, where it says that the hotel has 3 stars and photos of 6-7 years ago). Very cozy apartments. Snow-white bed linen, towels of three types, shampoos, soap, shower caps, sets of garbage bags, a sewing kit (needles, threads, buttons), matches. Crockery like in a china shop - every type, shines with cleanliness. The next morning at 10 o'clock there was a knock on the door. Housemaid.
"A present for you from the hotel, " he hands over a box of assorted cookies. "Should we change the towels? " Then we also just threw towels and tablecloths on the floor. Everything changed. They just filled up with toilet paper.
When I read that the hotel's pool is the best in Istria, I doubted it, but once visiting it out of greed, we went to it after the sea. So clean and cozy! Beat underwater jets. There is a good restaurant nearby. The menu in many restaurants is in Russian. English never came in handy. They don't speak it. They understand that you are Russian - they communicate slowly in Croatian, if they know any Russian words - they insert it. Generally, always tolerably explained to everyone. The hotel area is very clean, as well as the whole coast. There are a lot of Germans and Italians, but in the evening and at night the silence is incredible! Downstairs at Galliot Lagoon there is live music in the cafe. The entertainer, along with the main European languages, also uses Russian.

The minus of the hotel, as other tourists write, is a steep slope. Buying a tour to this hotel, I was well aware of this. The stairs are long, it will be difficult for older people to walk from the beach to the reception. But we seem to be not old and easily overcame these steps. There are just paths that go in arcs and snakes along the slope among the pines and apartments. If you don't like stairs, you can walk on them.
Everything seems to be written about the beaches. You can choose platforms from which you can jump, you can just wander from where. Slippers bought only daughter themselves bathed without them. There were indeed sea urchins. We did not come across in places of calls, but if we dive with a mask, we came across decent colonies not far from the coast. Therefore, swimming barefoot or in slippers is a purely individual decision for everyone.
We had lunch and dinner at various restaurants. Prices and menus are similar. Perfectly cooked meat in various varieties and seafood. There are also soups on the menu, but these turned out to be clearly dissolved bouillon cubes. Only in one restaurant in Poreč (it seems the "Old Saloon", which is located on the Fisherman's Square and occupies the whole of it, since it is very small and is located among old Italian-style houses) we were served quite tasty champignon soup. I would especially like to note pizza in this restaurant. We had breakfast in the apartment sitting on the balcony. Products and wines were most often taken in Poreč in one of the supermarkets of the Konzum chain. The nearest one is located at the entrance to Porec next to the building with the sign "CASINO". The lowest prices and rich assortment.
On the way back, Krasair changed the departure time (an hour later), the airport and the plane (Vnukovo instead of Domodedovo and Boeing 757 instead of 767). But we were warned the day before and this gave us an extra hour. In the morning we went to the sea and swam to our heart's content. Even though it was 8 am, the water and air were warm.

I especially want to note the weather. We didn't fail. The weather has been wonderful all week. The air temperature is about 30, and the water is 25. But the weather in Croatia ended on the day of our departure, after we checked in. Suddenly a thunderstorm broke out, it got colder, but we saw all this only from the window of the airport and while boarding the plane. Then, following the Internet for the weather in Pula, we saw that it was rainy and not hot there at 18-20, the water in the sea gradually cooled to 18 degrees over two weeks.