In person: Losinj
A breath of fresh air I
t’s not every day you get to fly in a seaplane. But anyone who has been to the Maldives will know the thrill –
and slight anticipation – of getting in a teeny aircraft that lifts off and lands on water, carrying you over myriad islands scattered across the ocean. Uniquely, my seaplane trip was in Croatia,
where its 1,000 or so islands look just as beautiful from the air as those of the Maldives, and I was travelling with European Coastal Airlines, which in 2014 launched Europe’s only scheduled seaplane services. With a fleet of three de Havilland Canada
DHC-6 Twin Otter seaplanes, they are able to shuttle people around Croatia, whether that be Hvar, Rab, Rijeka, Dubrovnik, Pula, Zagreb or even now Italy, with services to Ancona. I was dropped off at a marina in Split, but I had been to Losinj, an island that is creeping on to the radar of in-the-know travellers. The aircraft is in fact amphibious, so an hour before arriving at Split, I had been pacing around what amounted to little more than a shed – also known as Mali Losinj airport – eyeing the horizon for something, anything, to arrive on the airstrip. Transportation is perhaps both the joy, and
the pain, of Losinj. An incredible island in the northern Adriatic, its slight inaccessibility is one of the things that has kept it so pristine. It is connected by road to the mainland via a bridge, so German and Austrian travellers have been trundling down here for years. But for us Brits, it’s a bit more tricky, especially when there are so many other resorts more immediately reachable by quick flights and short transfers.
How to book it Operators including Classic Collection, Steppes Travel, Wellbeing Escapes and Prestige Holidays have been featuring the island. Prestige Holidays offers a week at Hotel Bellevue from £1,177pp, including flights from Heathrow to Rijeka, breakfast, air-taxi transfer to Mali Losinj airport and private transfers to hotel. As well as air-taxi transfers from Pula or Rijeka airports to Mali Losinj airport, Prestige’s transfer options also include by road and ferry from Pula or Rijeka airports. Tel: 01425 480400,
prestigeholidays.co.uk
My journey out to Losinj involved a Croatian
Airlines flight from Heathrow to Rijeka – and once in the little airport at Rijeka, while all the other passengers seemed to go off in cars, I was taken back onto the runway for my “air taxi” and clambered into a four-seater King Air. Nervous fliers look away now, as when I say clambered, I mean climbed up onto the wing and into the seat behind the pilot for the 20-minute flight to the island. So is it worth all this palaver? Absolutely. The island has had some degree of fame as a health resort for treatments of respiratory diseases and allergies for years, with its appeal spotted in the 19th century by European aristocrats who came here to “take the air”, walk the pine-clad hills and bathe in the crystal-clear sea. Set in the Kvarner gulf, it was declared by the Austro-Hungarian government as a “natural climatic health resort” in 1892 and the wealthy flocked here to build holiday homes. But with a tradition of tourism stretching back
more than 120 years, why haven’t we heard more? Brits did come here in the 1970s and 1980s heyday of tourism to Yugoslavia, but since Croatian independence in 1991 and the subsequent growth of the country’s own tourism, it seems we hadn’t made it back quite this far yet.
But all that is about to change as millions of
euros are being pumped into the island to grow its international tourism appeal. The work is being undertaken by Losinj Hotels & Villas, part of Jadranka, the country’s fifth largest tourism company and the biggest employer in the Losinj-Cres archipelago. Jadranka is also creating an eco-golf course with Ernie Els on the island of Cres and plans to invest in the reconstruction of Losinj airport, making it capable of receiving aircraft with capacity of up to 180 seats.
Island life The first wave of tourism grew up around beautiful Cikat Bay, which I cannot enthuse enough about; there is definitely a special quality to the air here, a unique sparkle to the sea, and when the wind blows through the pines, you can’t help but start to feel just a little bit healthier. Everyone cycles or hikes around the island, but in Cikat Bay, a paved promenade facilitates an easy stroll, so you could make your way
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TTGLUXURY.COM WINTER 2015 DESTINATIONS
An island originally popular with European aristocrats in the 19th century for its therapeutic powers, then later visited by Brits in the 1970s, Croatia’s Losinj in the northern Adriatic now looks ripe for a luxury renaissance author: April Hutchinson
around the various hotels and restaurants fringing the bay. Sandy beaches are not a thing here sadly; there are some little ones, but it’s more a case of platforms over the rocks, or as has been done by Losinj Hotels, concrete sunbathing areas decked with comfy loungers and shades with ladders to the sea when you need a dip. The huge 206-room Hotel Bellevue is the anchor of Cikat Bay and while it could be seen as imposing, it’s actually very impressive. First built in the 1960s, in July 2014 it was reopened after a €50 million facelift that saw it become the first five-star hotel on Losinj. It might seem a white monolith at first, but inside, there is a giant garden courtyard surrounded by glass walls so that you are never too far from a view of some greenery or the sea. With so much white around and with the
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