Split

A couple of things that I forgot to mention in the previous posts on Croatia, first of all – en route to Zagreb in the toilet at Warsaw airport, my backpack fell off the hook on the door, resulting in my laptop screen shattering and the laptop now only working intermittently, mostly with two cursors which makes life interesting!

The other thing was that Plitvice Lakes had (a very small) sign listing the wildlife in the park; deer, otters, boars, wolves and brown bears! Unfortunately we didn’t see any (of anything) – probably because we didn’t go hiking through the forests. Read later that there are at least 50 mammal species in the park including dormice, shrews, voles, roe deer, hedgehog, mink, marten (whatever those are), wild cats and lynx.

Anyway, we seem to be having a bit of a run of bad luck in Croatia … 2 days before our cruise from Split was due to depart, we received an email advising it had been cancelled due to insufficient numbers. This is because the UK and other countries have declared Croatia a COVID hotspot and if people holiday here, they have to quarantine for 14 days on their return. Fortunately, they offered us another cruise up north, however it means (a) a four hour road trip to start the cruise and back again at the end of the cruise and (b) we don’t get to see Dubrovnik and the islands between Split and Dubrovnik.

Then before we left the Airbnb, I was mauled by the, until recently, friendly cat. Two fangs to the arm and my finger (bloody cats!), then we stopped in at Krka National Park on the way to Split – very disappointing! First of all they recommended we take the bus up to the cave and then walk down 514 steps back to the carpark (or wait somewhere between 45 mins and 2 hours in 30 degree heat for the bus to return). Seriously, the cave was so insignificant, I’m not sure why they wasted the money building the stairs to access it! We were not happy to find the next day that our calves were screaming out in pain from the stairs.

We then had lunch at a place of dubious hygiene standards where they charged us a fortune (for Croatia anyway) and found that the waterfall that we had come to see was not only a trickle due to lack of rain but only really visible by boat or swimming in the lake. I do not recommend a visit to this part of Krka National Park (not to be confused with Krk island) 🙂

Anyway, on to Split – when we first arrived the area looked a bit dodgy and we thought … another ugly city, but then we walked one block down to the waterfront which is lined with restaurants and bars against the backdrop of Diocletian’s Palace.

On a walk around the old city the next day, we really loved how shops and restaurants have been built amongst the ruins of the Palace (parts of it still in very good condition), and markets selling everything from fresh fruit and veg to clothing and the usual touristy tat.

We really liked Split – a nice mix of old and new without being too commercialised and wasn’t crazy busy – even though it has a small population, I suspect the lack of people is due to COVID.

Diocletian’s palace is an ancient palace built for the Roman emperor Diocletian at the turn of the fourth century AD, which today forms about half the old town of Split. While it is referred to as a “palace” because of its intended use as the retirement residence of Diocletian, the term can be misleading as the structure is massive and more resembles a large fortress: about half of it was for Diocletian’s personal use, and the rest housed the military garrison.

Apparently a number of Game of Thrones scenes were filmed at the Palace: Daenerys’ throne room as Meereen ruler, and where she locked up and trained her dragons. We still haven’t been able to match the reality to the show though.

I had some more bad news while we were here … finally found a place to weigh myself (an elderly lady in the old town with an old fashioned scale with the sliding weights at the top) … apparently old scales lie just as much as the scale I had in Australia! Not happy Jan!! You’d also think that the lady would have figured out she’d get far more (happy and perhaps returning) customers if she gave them good news instead of bad! 🙂