Our Clients Testimonials 3 | Central Holidays

Ray and Maria,
I want to thank you for a Fabulous trip to Peru. Everything about this trip was exceptional in every way. Richard and I had a fantastic trip.
Ray I thank you for all your help and you were correct in having me book the higher priced hotels. They were excellent.
Absolutely everything about this trip was superb, the weather, Condor Travel and Journey Travel. Every tour guide was punctual and excellent.
They all went out of their way to please everyone and they did. We could not have had a better trip, it was 6*, at least.
Thank you so very much

Joan and Richard, American Express Travel
27 Sep 2018

I have been meaning to contact you all week to let you know what a wonderful time we had.

Mykonos was great. The car service used to pick us up at every island was terrific. Very nice cars & the drivers were so friendly and informative. We had been upgraded to "The Villas" in Mykonos & our room was beautiful. The service at the hotel was terrific & we enjoyed the energy of the island. The food was terrific everywhere we went. The ferry was very nice but I would recommend first class tickets instead of the economy class as they were allowed to go up to the upper deck. The hotel at Santorini was also great, it was like a small apartment with a hot tub. We went on a Catamaran boat ride & saw the island from a different view, just beautiful! We could walk to the town from our hotel & we did that every night. Athens was also wonderful & I appreciate your quick & helpful response to our room accommodations. The tour guide was great & kept us all very interested. The hotel was centrally located so we could walk everywhere. Perfect!

I can't thank you enough for the wonderful package you put together for us. Every piece of the package was excellent, your choice of hotels, pick up service & even the flights were perfect.
Thank You Again & hope to work with you on our next big trip.

Debbie L.
20 Sep 2018

As I promised, here is my tour review (sorry it took me so long)

Our trip was beyond my expectations, and we travel a lot, at least two international trips per year, so it is not easy to be impressed by an entire journey. First of all, thank you very much for making our travel plans easy, we had our pre-tour time as planned before joining the group.

Since we booked our flights by ourselves, I can't complain much about them, but just in case other customers ask, flying to Dubrovnik by Iberia was a good choice (JFK-Mad, MAD-DBV), brand new plane, very good service (premium economy); coming back wasn't that good, we flew British Airlines (ZAG-LHR, LHR-JFK), very crowded old dirty 747, and not so good service (premium economy).

Once in Dubrovnik, the transfer was on us since we booked a pre-tour hotel near the Old Town. Our first hotel, Grand Villa Argentina, was superb, excellent service, nice room overlooking the Adriatic Sea and Lokrum Island with a small balcony with seating area.

Before our tour, we did activities that wasn't included in the tour like going to Montenegro (very nice visiting Perast and Kotor, but Budva was a waste of time), riding the gondola up to Mount Srd, kayaking during sunset, walking the Dubrovnik walls, and visiting the other fort.

Our tour started on September 1st as planned, check in at the hotel was easy, and then at 7pm we had our first meeting with the tour leader (Ivana) and the group, followed by dinner at the hotel. At the beginning we were a little scared if that is the word, because there weren't other people from NJ/NY like it happened before, but a large Filipino-American group from California (26 people), and other five friends from Australia, but it happened to be the best group we ever had, everybody was friendly, funny, and treated us like family since the beginning of the tour. I guess we were very lucky to tour with them.

The next day we had our walking tour of the Old Town of Dubrovnik in the morning, and free the rest of the day, with an optional tour for those that wanted to join it (we didn't take any optional, we like to have our free time or to book other activities).

On September 3rd, we went on the road with Dalivor as our driver (I hope I spelled his name right). We stop in Markaska (beautiful small coastal town), and then in Split were we had our walking tour, and dinner. After that was Trogir in the morning (the only rainy day), arriving at Plitvice Lakes in the afternoon for the walking tour (actually we did both, lower and upper walking tour with other 4 people from the group). After Plitvice Lakes we went to Slovenia, first was Postonja Caves, then Bled, and some time in Ljubljana before going back to Croatia. In Bled we left the group during the visit to the castle to do some hiking around the lake, and we didn't join the optional.
The last part of the tour was Zagreb were we had time for ourselves after the morning city walking tour.

Now, I want to review the hotels:
Dubrovnik: Lapad Hotel. We supposed to have the Valamar Lacroma Hotel, but Kompas changed for the Lapad Hotel. This hotel is far from Old Town, but accessible by bus #6 (15 kuna each way) about 10-15 minutes ride. The hotel has no views, a huge new marina is being built in front of it an all you can see is a floating metal platform with a high roof. Rooms are quite small but nice, modern, and nicely decorated, but the garden view was a wall four feet away with bushes. Good breakfast with plenty of seating accommodating all the tour groups.

Split: Atrium hotel. Walking distance from the Diocletian Palace. Good dinner, good breakfast. Wonderful room, large, very comfortable beds, huge bathroom with double sinks, everything brand new.

Plitvice Lakes: Jezero Hotel. Perfect location, just right on the park, but it was all the good of it. Dated rooms, small, and yellowing for some deep cleaning (mold in a leaking bathroom). Service was bad, kind of rude waiters. Dinner and breakfast were OK but far from a first class hotel.

Bled; Park Hotel (Savas group) right on the lake, dinner and breakfast were good with nice selections; rooms were OK.

Zagreb; Westin Zagreb Hotel. Beautiful hotel, nice rooms, excellent breakfast.

Tour guide and driver
Ivana was our tour guide (I'm regretting not asking her address to send her a thank you note). She was perfect! As a former teacher, she talked about places and history in the most didactic way. She was lively and funny to the extent that everybody ended singing and laughing. Best tour guide I've ever had!
Dalivor was our driver, very professional and polite.
And I can't forget to mention the bus! Brand new bus, very comfortable, with plenty of room.

Wonderful trip, beautiful places, the only downside of this trip was coming back to the routine, but this can't be avoided. Thank you Lina for doing our booking! I'll be glad to write my review if you need it, Central Holidays was great with us ten years ago when we went to Greece, and once again with this trip. We will book with you again, that's for sure! Thank you again.

Valeria
18 Sep 2018

My clients had a great trip. Here is some feedback for you...

Condor Travel is FANTASTIC. Flawless execution – I can see why Central Holidays uses them as their in-country resource. We had the same tour guide all through Lima, then another tour guide all through Urubamba/Cusco/Machu Picchu. That meant we were able to develop a meaningful rapport with both of them that turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip.

With regard to our hotels – they were all AMAZING.

We were VERY glad we ended up at the Hotel Sumac in Machu Picchu Pueblo. The Inkaterra MAPI is in the center of the pueblo – surrounded by hostels, bars, restaurants, souvenir shops, narrow streets, and every tourist and backpacker in the area. I hope the luxury includes thick soundproof walls! And the Belmond Sanctuary is “at the entrance to Machu Picchu” which means at the top of the hill where the buses drop off, turn around, and line up – John and I said, “it’s basically a luxury experience at Port Authority.” Sumac is at the edge of town. That distance (and by that I mean a tiny distance, it’s a 5-7 minute walk to get to the center of the pueblo) makes you feel like you’re not even in a town, more like it’s plopped down off by itself at the foot of Machu Picchu mountain.

I’m also glad that the Hiram Bingham was able to be arranged one-way (both ways was a bit too much $$). It was a unique experience and a wonderful evening. If you have clients who are leery of the cost, I would definitely recommend doing what we did – the Vistadome on the way there, during the day with the big windows so you can see the valley as you journey to Machu Picchu Pueblo. Then, the Hiram Bingham back down in the evening – you don’t miss seeing outside, because you already did that, and you can relax and have a lot of wine – we avoided drinking alcohol in MP Pueblo because of the physical exertion of climbing around the ruins, and felt deserving of it on the way back to Cusco!

Thanks for your extensive help in planning this trip!

Grace
13 Sep 2018

I just wanted to let you know my clients are back from Italy and they are raving about
Central Holidays. They loved everything. The trip went smoothly from airport pick up,
to great hotels, an excellent guide, a small group of only 13 people and on...and on.

Thanks to you and Central Holidays for having such a great product. My clients have
referred a friend of theirs that wants to do the same trip. I'll let you know when I
hear from her.

Have a great day