Croatia!

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Thursday morning after arriving in Split, we left the ship to find our apartment. We found the gate door entry at Solurat 22 quite quickly as we knew what area it was in. It's situated about a block from the water on a hillside so it has a view of the water from the garden patio. Next, we went through the Old Town including the Palace of Diocletian. We returned to the ship for our last cruise lunch, packed the last items in our bags and disembarked. The cruise ship continued on to Venice without us as we must board our next cruise in Trogir, next to Split, on Saturday morning.

On the dock, I flagged down a taxi which took Fred, Maureen and our considerable amount of luggage, to the apartment. Jill and I walked the 20 minute route along the Riva to the apartment. We met Nicola, our host, who gave us the low-down on the lovely renovated 2 bedroom/2 bath stone cottage. He showed us on a map several good places to eat, do laundry and visit. He gave us the names of a few Croatian wines that the ladies would enjoy. He also told us the weather was going to change - a "burra" was coming (a Croatian term for the wind that carries rain).

So we decided we needed to go for an ocean and walked about 500 metres to the beach for a lovely swim in the warm water with the sun shining. Fred and I then went shopping where we picked up some wine, beer and snacks. Back at the apartment, we sat out in the garden patio area and enjoyed the drinks while looking out over the water. Later we ambled along a well-lit street busy with evening strollers. We found a nice out-of-the-way place for dinner- the Maslina, recommended by Rick Steves. After dinner, we walked back along the quiet streets back to the apartment.

Friday morning we headed off to the laundromat, then cross the street to have some breakfast and coffee. While the laundry was drying, we did a quick shop next door in the grocery store for bread, cheese, meat, fruit, juice, etc. so we could have both Friday lunch and Saturday breakfast at the apartment. We dropped off the groceries and decided to climb the local hill for the view. It took us about an hour to climb up the hill and the view was fabulous!

After lunch, we split up with Fred and Maureen going to the post office and Jill and I went to look at the Palace of Diocletian. We paid to got into the palace basement to see the foundation of the palace which is remarkably well-preserved. There were many rooms with vaulted ceilings about 25 feet high in small, medium and huge sizes. It was very interesting because most of the rooms had information we could read to find out how the palace worked in ancient times. For example, one large room was dedicated just to pressing olives for making olive oil. We ran into Fred and Maureen and wandered around until we split up again with Jill going deeper into the winding streets, Fred and Maureen looking for a nice cafe in a square to sit down and have a drink, while I came back to the apartment to write this blog.

We spent the rest of the afternoon on the patio talking, drinking wine and looking at pictures. The weather slowly deteriorated until by sunset there was a terrific and thunderous storm with violent bolts of lightening and powerful thunder claps. The lights in the apartment were blinking and flashing, water was pouring off the roof filling the patio deck with running water and very strong gusts of wind swirled and blew. Wow! Really quite amazing! Jill pulled out her emergency wind-up flashlight just in case. When the weather cleared, we went to a small restaurant for a nice dinner.

We're off tomorrow for our week long bike ride and cruise along the Dalmatian coast and islands.

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Photos

Partway up the hill on Marjan Peninsula
Maureen, Gerry and Fred