Our Croatian holidays and Workshops
Bed and breakfast
This includes standard or large ensuite twin/double room accommodation and a choice of full English or continental breakfast.
Optional extras:
Transfers to and from airport
Lunch
Dinner
Bicycles (returnable deposit required)
Complementary therapies
Excursions to places of interest
Trips into Porec’ and beach
Currency exchange
This holiday does not include:
Flights
Holiday insurance
CLICK HERE FOR PRICES AND AVAILABILITY
Workshops & Tours in the Hills of Istria
Istrian Cookery, Healing Relationships & Meditation, Healing with Chakra Dancing & Meditation and Gastronomic Wine Tours in Istria.
We are running 7 night workshops for 6-10 people and Wine tours for 6-16 people, which will include all courses, meals, trips and transfers from Pula airport.
Flights and insurance are not included in the holiday.
We run workshops from April to October.
Workshop List (Please select a Workshop below)
- 1. Istrian Cookery workshop
- 2. Healing Relationships and Meditation Workshop
- 3. Chakra Dancing and Meditation – a healing journey
- 4. Gastronomic Wine Tours in Istria
1. Istrian Cookery workshop
At ‘Transition’ we are offering an Istrian Cookery workshop.
In the villages of Istria, life goes on much the same as it has for generations past, food is cooked for the men and women who work the land, tasty wholesome ‘slow food’ using organic fruit, vegetables, eggs, wheat and meat grown themselves or locally. Life used to be about survival, but now it is about enjoying the best food with friends and family.
Shirley has joined with her Istrian neighbours to offer to teach you these traditional methods of cooking, which includes making pasta, gnocchi, wonderful soups and roasted meats and Istrian cakes, jams, preserves and bread the size of a top hat. We will have fun working in their Istrian kitchen and sometimes over an open fire and at the end of it enjoy the fruits of our labours and drink their wonderful organic golden white wine and ruby red wine.
In between we will visit some of the ancient towns and craft shops and enjoy food at a lovely restaurant or two. In our daily free time, we will swim in the pool and take walks or bike rides through the vineyards to other villages.
Cookery workshop Itinerary
Istrian starter
Thursday
- Transfer from Pula airport to Diklici (50 minutes).
- Lunch and free time, we all meet up at 18.00 for an introduction to the week ahead.
- Dinner at a restaurant in an ancient hill top town.
Friday
Preserves
- Talk about ingredients, free food, organic food, frozen produce and preserves.
- Bread making, we will be preparing our own bread dough for lunch and then off to visit a local cheese maker to buy the cheese to go with it. Lunch and then free time.
- Dinner will be pizza prepared from our dough with salad, choose your own toppings and cook in the stone built ‘Garden kitchen’ pizza oven in our garden, accompanied with local organic wine and fruit.
Lasagne
Saturday
- Meet our Istrian neighbours, we will have fun making pasta or gnocchi and goulash for our dinner, lunch will be a sample of their wonderful homemade prsut and accompaniments.
Sunday
- Learn to make more Istrian food and cakes and enjoy feasting in the evening on what we have cooked in their outside dinning room.
Monday
- Making jams and or preserves and soup for lunch followed by free time.
Cakes
Tuesday
- Making cakes and pastries for lunch, explore the local countryside in the afternoon with a walk to see
Wednesday
- Learn how to make Lasagne or Moussaka and a fruit tansy or chocolate mousse for dinner. Lunch will be at a local pizzeria.
Thursday
- Home with your new culinary skills and new friends.
2. Healing Relationships and Meditation Workshop
Vineyard viewed from
one of the bedrooms
Relationships are our foundation to a happy life. The most important one being the one we have with the self. When we approve and love ourselves all other relationships will be more balanced.
We will explore our primary relationships as a mirror to finding out more about ourselves, in the process we will learn how to balance and love all parts of ourselves, healing through laughter and tears. We will also work on manifesting the right relationship we have always dreamed of with our present partner or a new one. The energy of a group is a powerful medium for change.
Shirley has been a complementary therapist, since 1997, having studied Psychosynthesis, life coaching, EFT and hypnotherapy amongst others and she will gently guide you to find your own healing as appropriate in the process strengthening the will and finding your core values and creating strong healthy boundaries for a happy life, which helps you to let go of being a victim, doormat or martyr.
Healing Relationships and Meditation Workshop Itinerary
Thursday
- Arrival and lunch, we will introduce ourselves and have a leisurely walk through the surrounding vineyards. Prepare dinner and relax.
Friday
- After breakfast – meditation then, we will explore our primary relationship, how we feel about it and what mirrors we recognise.
- Lunch – free time, walk cycle, swim in the pool, sleep, read. We all help to prepare dinner, with local organic wine and music and maybe dancing too.
Saturday
- After breakfast – meditation with a partner with a view to connecting to our primary relationship’s point of view, understanding how it is for them. This is a very powerful and healing meditation.
- Lunch and free time.
- Dinner – Istrian night in a neighbours home with home produced food, wine and tour of small holding with animals and very old tools.
Sunday
- The will – whenever the will of an individual is ignored, suppressed or invalidated in a consistent and enduring way, pain and illness can arise, the hurt goes all the way to the core. We will review our own will in relationships, including meditation and drawing.
- Lunch and free time.
- We prepare a BBQ together, music, dancing, whatever occurs.
Monday
- Know yourself and manifest your future happiness with a letter to your higher self, you decide what is right for you.
- Lunch and free time.
- Visit to the ancient hill top towns of Motovun and Grosnjan where you can buy wonderful arts, crafts and jewellery, then we will eat at one of the lovely restaurants.
Tuesday
- Learn from the past – our most valuable lessons, meditation to identify your needs and appreciate them, you are unique, we will use EFT on each other.
- Lunch and free time.
- Walk or cycle through the vineyards then prepare dinner together, relax.
Wednesday
Rovinj
- Morning meditation to balance chakras.
- Day out visit Rovinj and or Porec, swim in the sea, lunch at a seaside cafe.
- Back for farewell dinner and dancing.
Thursday
- Home feeling wonderful.
3. Chakra Dancing and Meditation – a healing journey
Our emotions play a vital role in our physical health and stress is widely recognised as the main culprit for many major physical disorders. When emotions and the life force flow of energy is somehow blocked or distorted we experience emotional and physical problems.
The seven main energy centres where the life force enters the body, are called Chakras (a Sanskrit word for wheel, as the energy enters these points in the form of a whirling vortex).
When these energy points are in balance life and health are sweet.
Shirley Heyward, (Reiki master/teacher, a Reflexology, Aromatherapy, EFT and life coaching therapist since 1997, also with foundation in Psychosynthesis) is now offering a unique workshop in Chakra dancing at her retreat in Croatia.
The workshops will take the participants on a journey of discovery through mind, body and spirit, using movement and meditation to balance health, emotions and life force. With music and movement, we will explore our emotions and discover blockages in our energy field, we allow our body to respond to the music however it likes, freeing up our natural energy flows, helping to release tension.
The movement and music helps us to identify these blockages as we explore them in an environment of compassion and nurturing. You need no dance experience, the music works on a deep level helping you to let go of inhibitions and just go with the flow of whatever is right for you to release at that time.
View from Parsley
Chakra Dancing and Meditation – a healing journey Itinerary
Thursday
- Arrival and lunch, we will introduce ourselves and have a leisurely walk through the surrounding vineyards. Prepare dinner and relax.
Friday
- After breakfast – Meditation and Base chakra dancing, group discussion, the function of the base Chakra and learn EFT to release stuck emotions.
- Lunch – free time, walk cycle, swim in the pool, sleep, read. We all help to prepare dinner, with local organic wine and music and maybe dancing too.
Saturday
-
After breakfast – meditation and Sacral chakra dancing, group discussion, the function of the sacral chakra and EFT to release stuck emotions.
- Lunch and free time.
- Dinner – Istrian night in a neighbours home with home produced food, wine and tour of small holding with animals and very old tools.
Sunday
- Breakfast – meditation and Solar Plexus chakra dancing, group discussion, the function of the solar plexus chakra and EFT to release stuck emotions.
- Lunch and free time.
- We prepare a BBQ together, music, dancing, whatever occurs.
Monday
- Breakfast – meditation and Heart chakra dancing, group discussion, the function of the Heart chakra and EFT to release stuck emotions.
- Lunch and free time.
- Visit to the ancient hill top towns of Motovun and Grosnjan, where you can buy wonderful arts, crafts and jewellery, then we will eat at one of the lovely restaurants.
Tuesday
- Breakfast – meditation and Throat chakra dancing, group discussion, the function of the Throat chakra and EFT to release stuck emotions.
- Lunch and free time.
- Walk or cycle through the vineyards then prepare dinner together, relax.
Wednesday
- Breakfast – meditation and Brow and Crown chakra dancing, group discussion, the function of the Third Eye and Crown chakra.
- Visit Rovinj , swim in the sea, lunch at a seaside cafe.
- Back for farewell dinner and dancing.
Thursday
- Home feeling wonderful.
4. Gastronomic Wine Tours in Istria
Rakija Tasting
At Transition, we are offering guided wine tours of the untapped wine region of Istria.
Croatia’s wine is a well kept secret. Istrians are historically devoted to the grapevine, from the village families, producing small quantities for their own use, to the top vintners, making some of the best wines of the country.
The grape most common to Istria is Malvazija, its colour varies from straw to golden yellow, its scent primarily reminds of the lotus flower. The contents of its main components make her an average to full bodied wine, alcohol content 11.5 to 13.5% with a fresh taste complimenting the entire variety of Mediterranean cuisine.
Prsut
Teran, its counterpart red wine, a deep ruby colour has a bouquet like blackberries with a special taste easily recognised, it is compatible with heavier, more calorific dishes. Other wines produced in the region are Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, and the absolutely delicious desert wine Muscat Rose, and a yellow Muscat Otonel, all waiting to tempt your palate.
The wine’s bouquet and body is enriched by the special land structure, the red soil near the coast and the white soil covering the hinterland area, vineyards spread over approximately 15,200 acres of land, offering plenty of variety for the connoisseur.
Istrian Kanoba
A bye product of the wine, is Rakija, a strong drink distilled from the must of the initial fermentation, the raw spirit is 52% alcohol, but is commonly infused with different fruits, honey and herbs to give a wonderful variety of flavours which will also no doubt leave you wanting to try as many as possible.
As well as producing top quality wine, Istria is also a gastronomic delight, with ‘slow food’ like the long lunches and evening meals familiar to other Mediterranean countries.
In a typical week, we will guide you around the region, visiting some smaller producers to see how the ‘amateurs’ fare, then it will be the turn of the ‘quality’ vineyards, before we visit the ‘big boys’, the very top quality growers. Also sampling the gastronomic delights of Istria’s cuisine as well as our very own ‘Istrian Night’, where you will be taken back to past times with an evening of local food all grown on their small holding, eating in our Istrian neighbour’s stone dinning room with organic wine and flavoured Rakija produced on site.
Please email Nigel at shirley@retreatincroatia.co.uk for details of the Itinerary.
Accommodations is at www.retreatincroatia.co.uk
Click here to go back to Workshop listWellness and indulgence at our holiday retreat
For us, this encompasses mind, body and spirit.
We offer wonderful healing therapies which are optional extras at our holiday retreat.
- Aromatherapy massage and facials
- Reflexology
- Reiki
- EFT
- Indian Head massage
- Hypnotherapy
- Life coaching
Outdoors Activities
There is plenty on offer on your holiday in Istria a choice of excursions and activities....
In Porec there is a colourful marina with boats of all shapes and sizes offering trips around the stunning coastline, or along the Limski Canal, a large fjord with thick woodland rising up either side, and, according to local legend, a favourite haunt of pirate and adventurer in Istria, Captain Morgan.
Take a ferry from Porec to Venice , the journey takes approximately two hours, so with an early start you can easily do it in a day.
Canoeing
We plan to offer this great recreational sport on some of the calm rivers or lakes in Istria. Watch this space for more information in the future.
Sailing
We hope to offer sailing in the bay at Porec' in the future, too, so watch this space for further information!
Cycling
We offer cycling for a small charge(with a deposit against damage or loss) - the ideal way to explore the local countryside of Istria. There are cycle routes in Porec' for those who wish to travel further afield.
Excursions
Several excursions will be on offer, from Transition holiday retreat, to places of interest in Istria.
Food at your Croatian holiday retreat
We plan to grow as much organic fruit and vegetables as possible. In the meantime there are wonderful markets selling
local produce
in Porec'. To sample the food of Istria, where animals live off the land, is to step back into a time of wholesome, real eating.
We cook a varied cuisine indoors and out, baking bread and cakes and traditional pizza. Also, barbecues of meat and fish from Croatia. Yet we can be cosmopolitan - but still using organic ingredients where possible. We will cook Mediterranean, Chinese and Indian-style dishes as well. Vegetarians and vegans can be catered for, too, so please let us know before your holiday, so that our chef is prepared!
Wine from Istria, is a very good quality (uncertified organic).
Transition: The Lifestyle retreat in Croatia
Website: www.retreatincroatia.co.uk
Email: shirley@retreatincroatia.co.uk
Telephone: 00385 52 422 077
Mobile: 00385 911758763
