The beautiful vacation facility La Casa di Matiki in Žminj near Pazin in Istria has been named by TripAdvisor as the best bed and breakfast in Croatia for this year. It is an award given on the basis of comments from the website’s guests, who evaluate the service, location, price-quality ratio, cleanliness, and even the quality of sleep. “A wonderful stay in rural Croatia,” commented one of the guests. This is the fifth year that Trip Advisor has named Casa Matiki as one of the 25 best bed and breakfasts in Croatia, reports Jutarnji List on February 2, 2019.
The property is managed by Sonja Glavić, who has created the whole concept of this rural bed and breakfast, which offers a lot more than a regular vacation home. She started the business in 1997 and is considered one of the pioneers of rural tourism in Istria. In addition to the two houses with four apartments, where she also offers homemade breakfasts, she has remodelled another building with two suites that are marketed as a farm household. As an additional amenity, the tourists can look at and feed domestic animals since the property has a flock of sheep, several donkeys and horses.
The barn, where the hay is stored, has a separate area for tourists with a bedroom and a bunk bed, with a mattress filled with dry maize leaves. The room is decorated with hay bales that are used for practical purposes – to feed the animals in the morning. Above the small room, there is a loft in the low attic where you can ponder about this unusual experience.
“I decided to do it first and foremost for myself because this has returned me to the days gone by. Also, the idea of sleeping in the barn was given to me by a French group of tourists,” Glavić said.
All those who come here on vacation can, therefore, be in direct contact with domestic animals. On the table, they can find local products of this area, as well as homemade bread, jams and fresh eggs. The owner of the luxuriously decorated facility says that the tourists have become more than guests.
“My dream was to welcome people from all over the world, and that dream has come true. I sometimes feel like a guest myself, and I consider my guests as hosts. The guest has to feel like a royal,” said the owner of the property in the interior of Istria, demonstrating how a different approach to business can bring tourists to the Istrian hinterland all year round.
Translated from Jutarnji List (reported by Barbara Ban).
More news on Istria can be found in the Travel section.
