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Published: October 24th 2007
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After leaving Dubrovnik, we made the five hour bus trip north up to Split where we would spend our last four days before we headed back to the realities of life.
Our first task was obviously to find our accomodation for the days ahead. Once again we managed to secure a really clean, comfortable and central place right near the main harbour front and just down from the fish markets.
I must admit I was a bit worried about what to expect from Split - to date all I had seen was when we breezed through the 'everyday' parts of Split on the bus trip down to Dubrovnik early in the week - like Sibenik the suburbs of the city didn't do too much to entice a level of excitment to explore. But I was pleasantly surprised to find the key parts of the town along the harbour and around the Old Town where very picturesque and a buzz.
After dropping off our bags we did the mandatory exploring around the town - giving us an overview of what the place offered and what we may wish to return to and explore in more depth.
Our hope
leading up to this part of our trip was to spend a day exploring Split and the remaining days visiting the islands on day trips. Turns out however that with the roll over of the month (to October) Croatia goes from peak to off-peak tourist season and everything is made that much harder to explore and get around - including day trips to the islands. So basically we were limited in regard to where we could make it to for a day trip.
So with our plans somewhat up in the air, we decided to spend the rest of the Friday and Saturday exploring Split itself and then we would head out to the island of Brac on the Sunday.
Turns out we had planned well with regard to not booking our ferry trip for the Saturday as the weather was not very kind to us - as we woke to rain. Yet this was not too deter us too much - we took the opportunity to explore the Old Town - which in fact was the Palace of Diocletian. The palace itself is pretty much a walled city featuring many roman ruins and residences. It was quite
a maze in there - and while we didn't necessarily get lost in there, we always had trouble finidng those little restaurants again when we wanted to locate them.
Given the weather was somewhat poor - we decided to track down an establishment that was showing the Rugby quarter final between England and Australia - after quite an effort we found a little pub to settle into to watch the game (with German commentary). But the less said about this game the better.
A little side note - but a funny story - during the night a shop alarm system started going off close to our hostel. Now keep in mind this was at about 1am in the morning - by 3am I think many other people including us where very sick of the noise and obviously noone was coming to turn it off. So some local decide to take it upon themselves to go outside, muffle the noise with a towel or something, and then proceeded to take to the alarm with a baseball bat or similar. After a few funny noises from the alarm as it died, finally we had piece and quiet. Had a good
laugh as we listened to someone beat the alarm to death - but we were very grateful.
We woke early Sunday with the intention of heading down to jump on the ferry - yet once again we opened the window and the weather was not too kind to us. While it wasn't pouring rain - it did fail to excite us into wanting to head out to the islands for some sun and exploring. We decided we would try for Monday (our last full day in Croatia) as our chance to get out to one of the islands.
So with Sunday somewhat unplanned, we took a stroll around the town to find most of the businesses etc remain shut ona Sunday. So it was time for a bit of exercise and a walk. We took a walk up and around Marjan Peninsula - a wooded headland with paths leading high up and with great views. Was nice to get out into nature for awhile.
We woke Monday to a beautiful day BUT only to find out it was a public holiday and most things were closed. Our hope was we would find at least one ferry service
open. The one we planned to take was actually shut, but thankfully we located one that would take us out to the island of Brac. After a nice ferry trip over we decided that our last day (afternoon actally by the time we got out there) would be spent doing nothing more than lying in the sun and swimming. We had such a relaxing day and well worth the wait.
Well that about wraps up our trip around Croatia - Tuesday was a trip back to London and a bit of a shock to our system as we left temperatures of about 28 degrees in Croatia to arrive to 10 degrees and pouring rain in London. Oh joy.
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Benny H
non-member comment
Where's the meat??????
Adam, U promised me pics of you chowing down on some sort of large animal being cooked on a spit by the roadside. I feel a little let down. Benizzle.