Chapter 4 - DAY 10 - Split to Dubrovnik

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SALONA ROMAN RUINS
We started our day with a visit to the Roman ruins in Split; they are a short drive from Split at Salona Township. It was a bit of a surprise going to see Roman ruins in Croatia, but in its day the Romans had a vast empire. The ruins aren’t as visited as many and we were free to walk around and in between them. There are ruins from the first and second century’s plus the remains of an ancient aqueduct. They are recognised as some of the best preserved Roman ruins in existence and were well worth the visit.

DIOCLETIAN PALACE - SPLIT
From there it was back to Split to visit the Diocletian Palace. The Palace is the central feature of the Split Old Town which is located around the harbour area. Diocletian was a Roman Emperor (245AD-313AD) who built his retirement Palace in Split. As an aside he was the only Roman Emperor to ever retire from office (all the others lost their lives in various ways while they were on the throne). The original Palace was divided into quarters with central roads running north-south and east-west. It was made form white stone from the island of Brac – the same stone that was used in the construction of the White House.

It is a really interesting place to visit because it is very much still a living breathing part of the city. There are apartments, retail shops, churches, restaurants within its walls. Once again having a local guide to show us around meant that we got a good understanding of the history and how the Palace became what it is today.

BOSNIA
We also had time to get lunch and prepare ourselves for the trip down to Dubrovnik, although Dubrovnik is in Croatia to get there we needed to go through Bosnia (visiting Bosnia isn’t something we thought we would be doing!). It’s a very complicated thing but Bosnia is basically a landlocked country as part of one of the agreements they were give a 10km strip of land from their national boundary to the sea to give then coastal access. This means that the north and south of Croatia are cut off from each other. The Bosnians make it quite difficult for Croatians travel through the corridor, to the extent they are looking at building a bridge to take them around it (out to an off shore island and then back to the mainland I think).

At our lunch stop everyone was looking in the little supermarket for Bosnian souvenirs (everyone wanted something to say they had been there!) but there were only Croatian ones – except for one mug which was being used to hold some pens and pencils tucked away at the back of a shelf. I managed to find the mug and add it to my collection. I’ve got a mug from every country we’ve visited, not the most practical of mementos for packing etc but will look good all lined up on a shelf when we get home

DALMATIAN COAST - BEACH RESORT
The drive for the most part took us down the Dalmatian Coast and the views were amazing, deep blue sea contrasting with white rocks, a few small beaches but mostly a rocky dramatic coastline. Small communities of white houses with terracotta roofs clustered around little harbours.

Just before Bosnia we travelled through a delta that was vast area fully covered with Mandarin orchards, it was unexpected and quite a change of scenery.

Tonight we are staying at the Radison Blue – a beachfront resort about 20 minutes out of Dubrovnik. It wasn’t our originally scheduled Hotel for the trip and unfortunately when we arrived they had put some of us in shared rooms. In our case we had a 2 bedroom apartment which had one big double bedroom and one small single. In the small room they had put a single bed and a camp bed side by side which meant the door couldn’t even be closed.

We had all paid a lot of money for the trip and the arrangements were unacceptable, in the end the couple we were going to be sharing with and 3 others were moved to another Hotel. Our first problem on an Insight tour, I know some of the others who shared 2 bedroom (double bedrooms) units with other couples weren’t that happy either, but most of the group are really positive so don’t think it will effect things moving forward too much.

We had dinner at the Resort with Don and Sue from Brisbane who are big Broncos fans, they also got through to the NRL semis.

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Photos

Roman Ruins
Very intereting, here is one example of what we saw

Diocletian Palace Split
A view from inside the Palace area

Bosnian Border
Not suposed to take photos at the border but managed to get this one.

Dalmatian Coast
A beautiful coastline drive