Villas Sv. Antona by Istarski Dvori

We stayed for a week in one of the villas, which is a few minutes from the main reception in a collection of villas. It was a good location, a few minutes’ walk to the village centre, where we went to the pizza restaurant 4 times! The villa itself looked good, was big (family of 5 staying), and was well stocked. Air con in every room. The pool was secluded and big enough. Only reason for lack of 5 stars is that we had to contend with wasps. The staff did apparently come out to sort out the nest but couldn’t find it. So we couldn’t eat outside, and were forever fishing them out of the pool! No stings though, so it could have been worse. Thanks for having us!

The Villa is lovely with all comforts catered for in a wonderfully peaceful area we enjoyed exploring the area but felt like we could have stayed longer as so much to explore beautiful little villages with so much history and so pretty and unspoiled great places to eat with superb local dishes we would love to return to carry on the adventure

Istarski Dvori own a large number of villas in Istria and based on our experience, we would strongly advise you to stay clear. We would never use them again. This is why. We booked and paid the deposit on Villa Melissa (an Istarski Dvori villa)on 9 October 2017 for 1-15 July 2018. On 17 November we became aware the villa was being offered on the Vintage Travel website (UK based travel company) for our dates. Istarski Dvori when contacted assured us it was “an admin thing” and our booking was “definitely in our diary”. Three days before departure we were contacted by Istarski Dvori to say there was a problem with Villa Melissa and it was not habitable saying, “The house it self is in a really bad shape“. In a follow up call and e-mail, they said it was infested with “worms”. They offered us Villa Malva (another villa owned by Istarski Dvori)as an alternative. Given the short notice and other expenses (flights etc.), we reluctantly accepted, although we would not have chosen it as the pool and patio were at the front of the villa. On arrival we were greeted with 8 young Austrians (plus up to 20 additional friends at times) next door with booming music and a pool party which continued for the next three days, despite assurances they were asked to turn it down – not a great start. The next day, we found there were guests in Villa Melissa and it turned out Istarski Dvori had accepted a booking from Vintage Travel in January for our dates (four months after we had booked). It quickly became obvious, the “worms” were a lie, and our booking had been simply been replaced. Had they told us earlier we could have made alternative arrangements. By giving us such short notice, we believe they knew we had no alternative but to accept Villa Malva. Despite e-mails backwards and forwards, Istarski Dvori, whilst claiming they wished to resolve the matter have failed to do so and are now ignoring us. The villa itself was clean, relatively well equipped and spacious. However, the air conditioning didn’t work properly in three rooms including the main living area and master bedroom. All the air con controller batteries were flat, the coffee maker didn’t work properly, the safety handle on the pool was very loose, there was a smoke alarm mount but the alarm was missing, light bulbs were missing or dead, shutters didn’t close properly and the ash tray on the master bedroom balcony had not been emptied for a long time. The pool area also looked tired and worn with a number of loose and broken surrounding stones. In short the villa suffered from a lack of attention to detail, which combined with the deception, significantly detracted from our holiday.

Best villas in Istria!

Beautiful villa😁