Crovatico Centro Vacanze

This is a wonderful place for a relaxing holiday with your children. Ours were in tears when we left! The village consists of small white houses in a beautiful garden, with lots of pine trees for shade, oleanders and other flowers. All is very clean and tidy. Our house was in the central part of the village, it probably took us less than 2 minutes to walk to the beach. The beach itself was lovely, with fine sand and shallow water. As it is reserved for the village guests it was never too crowded, just two rows of umbrellas, with plenty of space to play. There is also a pool, but to be honest we never went, we preferred to be on the beach. Then there is a restaurant, a grocery shop that sells newspapers too and a greengrocer. The produce is fresh, sometimes from the same morning...you don't need to get in your car and drive to a crowded supermarket at all unless you really want to. You can find most of the things you need for simple cooking there. There are some sport facilities too, a tennis court that doubles as football pitch...nothing fancy really, but good enough. The village also offers organized entertainment, aimed at both children and adults. My husband and I were dreading this, we are both rather quiet people. I have to say our fears were completely unfunded. The young people in the team were nice, friendly and never pushy. They asked us to participate in their games but we rarely did. Our kids on the other hand (10 and 7) from the first night started going to the baby dance, the morning games on the beach, participated in the football and bocce tournaments...they were never bored. They would spend a couple of hours with us, then be off to play with other kids, then back...the whole village felt very safe, so we were comfortable letting them walk around on their own, even at night. One thing to note is that the customers were almost all Italian families, and all the activities were in Italian only as well. Our children speak the language so this was of course fine for us...I am sure if yours don't speak it they could still have fun, but it's something to be aware of. We had only a few small issues, the safe didn't work at first, then one day air conditioning that suddenly stopped working. Things that can happen, no big deal, and both were solved within a few hours. One thing that could be better is the wifi connection. Sometimes it was not possible to connect at all, and every time you had to go an annoying login process. It would be great if this could be improved, so that you get a password that you set once and then you always connect automatically. This is particularly important if you don't have an Italian phone to avoid roaming. Overall we spent two fantastic weeks here and even if we usually never return to the same place for holidays, for the first time we are considering going back again next year. A big thanks to Elisa, Rosa and Claudia and the rest of the team for making this a special holiday for our children!