Tours & Vacations for Senior Travelers

We are a couple in our upper seventies who recently returned from a fabulous 10-day private tour of Croatia. Of the many places we have visited around the globe, Croatia is among our favorites. The country offers extraordinary national parks, a gorgeous, dramatic coastline, warm, friendly people, great food, and a cosmopolitan culture with a rich history. The weather was splendid in late May.

Zicasso's travel specialist worked closely with us to put together an itinerary that was truly perfect in terms of the pace and the types of activities we like to do. She is a great listener and truly understood our concerns as senior travelers. We were very pleased to meet her for breakfast at the end of our trip. Although we had not been directly in touch earlier during the tour, we had the sense that she was checking in with our guides along the way, just to make sure every detail was attended to. When the Meštrović Museum in Split was closed while we were there, she arranged for us to have a private tour, just one example of her thoughtfulness.

At every phase of the tour, we had wonderful drivers and guides. All were extraordinarily interesting individuals, willing to share their personal experiences and opinions about the complicated and painful history of recent decades. We feel we learned a great deal and came to admire the resilience of these remarkable people. Despite great hardship, they remain positive and optimistic, and are very proud to introduce their culture to visitors.

We visited Zagreb, Zadar, Split, Hvar, Dubrovnik, and Mostar, and had walking tours of each. Truly every place we visited offered highlights. Among our favorites: Plitvice Lakes and Krka National Parks (the two are quite different and both are worth seeing); the Meštrović Museum in Split; walking the walls of Dubrovnik; an incredible Middle Eastern lunch following a trek to the historic bridge in Mostar; the Sea Organ and Greeting to the Sun in Zadar; lunch featuring prawns buzara at a harborside restaurant on a glistening day in the Elaphiti Islands. Indeed, too many fine restaurants to mention!

In sum, Zicasso's travel company created a superlative tour for us, for which we thank our travel specialist and her marvelous team.

We just returned home from a very memorable trip to Croatia. Thanks to Zicasso's travel expert and her company for the terrific itinerary. Dubrovnik, Hvar, Split, Rovinj, and Zagreb were all toured with knowledgeable guides and experienced drivers to get us there!

There were many highlights, including the beautiful Adriatic countryside, Plitvice Lakes National Park, and a dinner with wine pairing. Of course, there were many more delightful experiences, but too many to include all of them!

We received top-shelf transportation, well thought out itineraries, and first-rate services. I would highly recommend this travel company!

Overall, our trip was well planned and brought different views to Croatia with each destination we visited. The 3 destinations (Dubrovnik, Hvar, Split) provided us with a different view that allowed us to truly experience the country's culture and highlights.

Zicasso's travel agency had wonderful activities that allowed for a more personable experience. We particularly enjoyed the Karaka boat tour, Hvar wine tasting and island tour and Krka park tour. The tour guides were experienced, interactive, and knowledgeable.

Overall, it was easy to communicate our needs and questions. Would be easier to just use email instead of the portal.

Zicasso’s travel specialist was very attentive to our personal preferences in planning an unforgettable honeymoon. Her knowledge of the area allowed us to have a diverse itinerary, which included city and hiking tours with personable local guides, a flexible skipper trip with options to snorkel and visit islands and caves, and a chef's table to sample local cuisine with a personal chef. We had the opportunity to stay in Dubrovnik, Hvar, and Split at high-quality hotels in convenient locations.

She was very responsive and connected us with drivers, our skipper, and guides to assist with coordination. Overall, the trip was made stress-free thanks to the personalized itinerary, recommendations, bookings, and ferry/park tickets provided ahead of time.

Zicasso's tour company is fantastic. They designed a perfect custom itinerary for us that included boating, hiking, biking, wine tasting, and much more. Our days were filled with interesting activities and meeting some of the most lovely people as our guides.

Though there were too many highlights to list them all, a few unexpected ones were a cooking class near Split that included shopping for fresh ingredients, snorkeling, lunching off a luxury boat near Hvar, and lunch at an oyster farm.

We had the most lovely guide in Dubrovnik who works for the tourist board and gave us the insider's guide to places in the old town. We even had an authentic meal, one that takes days to prepare, outside of Hvar. There is so much to love about Croatia. This tour company will help you find it.

The entire nine days of travel from Slovenia to Montenegro were seamless as far as being picked up at the arrival airport and departure as planned. Transportaion was on schedule, which was important to me in a foreign country and eliminated any stress. Each private guide and/or driver throughout our trip was courteous and spoke English, which avoided any misunderstanding about all the wonderful sites we saw.

Lake Bled was absolutely wonderful. The guide parked the van at this family home four blocks from the lake and introduced us to his mother and sister, who welcomed us, and we saw how they lived in this beautiful village. The walk of four blocks to the lake also gave us the opportunity to see more of this quaint place to live. Since the lake does not allow power boats, we and about 20 other people were rowed to the island, where an ancient church was located. We found out that this family, in the past, were the caretakers of the island and our tour guide had to row himself to the shore to go to school and, in the winter, skate to school every day.

Next, we were driven to the castle on top of a small mountain, which had a perfect, 360-degree view of the area. Beautiful!

The next day we went to Plitvice Lakes National Park, with too many waterfalls to count and water that looked as crystal clear as any natural water I have ever seen. The four-kilometer walk upstream was nothing like I've ever seen in the USA.

We spent the night in a wonderful mountain lodge, with individual lodges and an upper-end-style bed and breakfast theme.

Split was a city with parts dating back to the third century, with many Roman influences in its many buildings.

Mostar in Bosnia was very interesting and had a central arch-style bridge which seemed to be a central point for all to see. There was so much we saw that it is too much to describe here.

We also stopped at a wine tasting at the most modern winery I've ever been to. It even had 12 guest rooms, with a pool.

On our way to Dubrovnik, we stopped at Ston to have an unbelievable lunch. At the restaurant, we had an oyster tasting of fresh oysters being farmed several hundred yards from the restaurant. We were served oysters three ways, from raw to fried and baked, and they were the best I will ever eat in my life.

We next went to Dubrovnik, which was particularly interesting to me because it is where Game of Thrones was filmed. Our guide was excellent, as he worked as a "roadie" for the film company, helping set the scenes by taking down modern signs or anything modern, and putting them back after filming. He had large screen shots in a spiral binder and would take us to a cove and hold up the screen shot of the actual scene from the movie to show us the similarity. His behind-the-scenes knowledge of the actors and the reaction from the town and church was beyond expectations. My wife and I were fans of GOT and so excited that we are going to watch if all again one day.

Our last day was in Montenegro, which again was beautiful, and we spent the day next to the water there. We were ferried to a man-made island with an old church on it.

Overall, the Adriatic Sea along the coast of these countries was one of the most beautiful stretches of water you could imagine.

Our expectations of this tour were met and exceeded.