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Published: April 15th 2009
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And so began the part of the trip I was most looking forward to: Croatia! As we have spent such a long time here, we've split (ahahahah unintentional pun there) the blogs up into separate bits to make it more digestible for you, fine readers. Alors.
The journey to Split was another quite tricky one - we got up ridiculously early in Budapest to get the first bus at 5.15am back down the hill to the town, where we took another bus to the station. Unfortunately, the ticket system on the bus is a bit weird, you have to buy a booklet of tickets from a news stand before you get on, and James had accidentally misplaces those tickets. WIthout a news stand at the top of the hill, we had no option but to fare hop on the bus or walk down, which wasn't an option as we wouldn't make the train. Very odd, and we felt quite naughty and sure we were about to be hauled up by the plain clothes ticket officers we'd heard of and fined, but we managed to get to the station ok. From there, we got a train direct to Zagreb that took
6 hours, but when we arrived there found that the next train down the coast to Split didn't leave for another 3 hours.
We walked to the nearby botanical gardens and camped down there for the 3 hours before heading back to the station to buy some food to take with us. The train pulled up and we attempted to board, only to discover that this train needed a reservation! We sprinted to the ticket office which typically had gigantic queues, got to the front to typically come across the only strict ticket lady in our trip so far who insisted on seeing all 4 interrail passes before she printed our tickets, necessitating another urgent sprint down the platform to get the passes, then sprint back to the ticket office to show the passes, then sprint back down the platform to board the train with just minutes to spare! Only then did we discover that in Croatia, none of the trains leave on time so we needn't have worried.
This train turned out to be another one of those horrible slow ones which make us all restless, especially as we had done nothing except sit around waiting since
4 that morning. The scenery, on the other hand, was simply stunning, in my opinion the best since we left Northern China to go to Mongolia. It actually reminded me a lot of Wales, as it was very scrubby and there was drizzle haha, but lots of dry stone walls, villages, mountains (which I wasn't expecting) lakes, forests, the whole lot. Also, a highlight of the journey was Mim upending an entire cup of coffee into her crotch and spent the rest of the journey waddling looking like she'd weed herself 😊 Despite that, by the time we pulled into Split station at 9.30pm we were bored out of our minds.
We had discovered to our consternation that our thus far infallible Europe on a Shoestring lonely planet was crap for Croatia, and didn't even have a map of Split in it! I was very irritated as I actually have a Croatia lonely planet that i'd left at home thinking it would be too heavy to take them all, but there we go. So, on the train we made friends with some other people and decided to follow them to the hostel they'd chosen. On the platform, however, we
were confronted with lots of old ladies offering private accommodation for much lower prices than the hostel, so we abandoned the original plan and went with a lady to her apartment 5mins walk away. There, we were given 2 double rooms in her flat for only 8 pounds per person per night, and introduced to her twin sons who spoke good English. We stayed up chatting for a bit and had showers, but went to bed quite soon tired out from the day's travel.
The next day we got up and headed out to see what Split was like. We found exactly what we had wanted from Croatia, a lovely seaside town with beautiful old pink sandstone buildings, gelato shops and mediterranean style pavement cafes. There was a huge marina with a boat show that James' eyes lit up at, and we spent the day wandering round the Diocletians palace, a crumbling ruin that the city has been built in to without attempting to renovate. We had pizza for lunch on the sea front, and in the afternoon James and I went to the boat show. We felt very out of place, being neither rich old men nor sexy
mini-skirted show girls, but enjoyed looking at the super yachts and speed boats none the less.
By the end of the day, though, we realised that we'd pretty much seen all there was to Split, and that another day there would leave us bored. Instead, over dinner at a 'konoba' (family run restaurants) we decided to take the train 2 hours up the coast to another seaside town called Sibenik, from where we could make a day trip to one of Croatia's National Parks, Krka. So, on Sunday morning we got up early, paid our hostess and walked back to the train station to get the 7.10 train to Sibenik.
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