Mali Losinj: Home to High Class Hotels

The hotel can pick up guests in any city in Europe in their Beech King Air airplane. Here I am in Venice waiting to fly to Losinj.
The hotel can pick up guests in any city in Europe in their Beech King Air airplane. Here I am in Venice waiting to fly to Losinj.

I’m up early at the Hotel Bellevue, my home for the week, in Mali Losinj, in Croatia’s Kvarner region, made up of five islands in the sparkling Adriatic sea.  Yesterday was blustery and cold, as a result of bora, the north wind that’s famous in the winter for injecting a chill into early spring days.

View of some of the five islands that make up the Kvarner region of Croatia's coast.
View of some of the five islands that make up the Kvarner region of Croatia’s coast.

As we landed in the hotel’s own Beech King Air plane, the furious wind blew us sideways, but we landed safely at the small airport that is being enlarged over the next few years to accommodate small jets.

For now, it’s a short runway with a small shack that serves as our customs entry point. The hotel picks up guests from airports all over Europe; it was a thrill to see Venice’s vast lagoon below us as we soared the 31 minutes over to the island!

The hotel Bellevue is a giant square, with green in the middle, and was completely renovated and expanded in 2014.
The large outdoor terraces at the Hotel Bellvue overlook the bay.

This hotel is a gleaming white edifice–from the outside it resembles a giant office building, shaped in a square.

In 2014, two additional stories were added as more than 1000 workers spent just 7 months in a complete modernization, adding stonework from Madagascar, elegant Italian furniture, and gave the whole restaurant and lobby area a Danish sort of feeling–clean lines.

The hotel was completely renovated and modernized in 2014, adding two more floors in it's square configuration.
The hotel was completely renovated and modernized in 2014, adding two more floors in it’s square configuration.