Split - Day 9

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Our final day in Hvar started much too early for a stop that was meant to be relaxing, but, it allowed us to make it to Split in time for our schedule tours. Also, fortunately for us, we apparently had one of the last ferry tickets off the island today, presumably from Ultra stragglers. After a quick breakfast, we walked along the shore to the ferry terminal while the hotel used a golf-cart to bring our bags and others’ over to the ferry terminal. With the ferry not yet arrived and thinking we had time, Stacey went and got some cappuccinos to go while James waited in-line. Unfortunately, that plan backfired and it took forever to get the Cappuccinos so we were almost the last people to board the ferry. We enjoyed the ride back and rested a little bit knowing that we had a busy, and hot, day ahead of us. Thank you Ann Haugo and Steve Pelphrey and family!

After docking at Split, we hurried over to our hotel for the evening, the Hotel Luxe, which was a few blocks away (and the scene of the previous difficulty navigating a one-way street with the rental car), to drop off our bags for the day and meet our tour guide. As were waiting for our tour guide, we crossed paths with the mother-daughter couple from Chicago that were on our boat tour of the Blue Cave. They gave us a few recommendations on what to see and do in Split and said they had taken a tour the day before and their guide, Leo, was awesome and they hoped we had him. We checked our voucher and the name of our guide was Ante. However, the guide that was actually sent was the recommended Leo – what a coincidence!

Our tour with Leo was split into two parts – a tour of Trogir and a tour of Split, we began by touring Trogir, which was approximately a 30 - 45 minute drive from the hotel which Leo spent explaining some of the history of the area. He explained that this area was the site of an important Roman city – it has an excellent port that made it important to maritime trade but was also located in a valley surrounded by tall mountains. Residents were able to farm and since there was effectively a single entrance into the valley through a mountain pass, it was well-defended from land attach via construction of a single fort near the pass. He also mentioned that the Romans developed a freshwater source near this mountain pass and conveyed it 5 or 10 miles via an aqueduct to provide freshwater to the settlement. The aqueduct still stands to this day and conveys water to the City of Split – very impressive that the aqueduct is still functioning after nearly 2,000 years of use – there’s little that’s made today that can last that long! After exiting Split, Leo pointed out a well-vegetated area that was the site of the original Roman settlement which is in the process of being excavated.

Trogir is located on a small island separated by two smaller channels (there are bridges across to both sides). He explained that Trogir was founded over 2,000 years ago by the Greeks and this makes it one of the older towns in the region. The Greeks found Trogir an excellent location as it was easy to defend because of its location on an island. Since its founding, the residents constructed a large wall around the City (island) for protection. To this day, you still enter the City through one of its gates. Our first major stop was the cathedral, which he explained the townspeople took upon themselves to construct. Because this was a small town, it took nearly 300 years to construct the cathedral’s belltower! Because of the length of time it took to construct, each of the three levels of the belltower were constructed in a different style as architectural preferences had evolved over those 300 years.

Our next step was a sort of public porch where we saw a traditional all-male acapella quarter performing some traditional songs. Their skill was impressive as each singer sung a different note to form complex melodies. After their performance, Leo pointed out some interesting parts of the porch that was some form of a public gathering place, including court hearings, in its history. On one side of the porch was a large stonework piece that displayed the Coat of Arms for each government that controlled Trogir over its history. Leo pointed out that one Coat of Arms was missing – that of the Republic of Venice. He explained that in the lead-up to World War II, Mussolini gave a speech along the lines of “wherever the Lion of the Republic of Venice hangs, this is part of Italy’s natural empire”. As Trogir was part of Yugoslavia at this time, the citizens were concerned and in the middle of the night removed all of the Republic of Venice Coat of Arms found anywhere in the City. To this day, there are still plain stone displays where this Coat of Arms used to be displayed.

We spent the next half-hour or so strolling the City, with Leo pointing out various points of interest. One such location was a monastery where the local nuns pray every day for the sailors of the world (Croatia is a very Catholic country – nearly every town we went to had at least one, if not several, active monasteries). Stacey’s biggest takeaway was how cool it was in the monastery – we were finally entering the extreme heat wave and it was the middle of the day, so we were both starting to get a little overheated. Leo also explained how most of the Dalmatian Coast became a part of the Republic of Venice. In its history, most of the Dalmatian Coast was composed of City-States – small territories with an independent government. As Venice’s power grew, some of the City-States willingly became part of the Republic while others fought back to prevent losing their sovereignty; none of the City-States north of Dubrovnik were successful though (more on why Dubrovnik is an exception in a few days). Concluding the first part of the tour, we headed back into the van to head back to Split for a tour of Diocletian’s Palace, the historical and present-day center of the City. As it was very hot at this point in the day, the drive back was fairly quiet as everybody enjoyed the AC and rested a bit.

The driver dropped us off at our hotel and we made the short walk over to Diocletian’s Palace. Leo stopped outside the southern City Gate to point out the architecture and provide some history of the Palace. The Palace was constructed nearly 1,700 years ago when Emperor Diocletian, after 20 or so years of rule, retired. This retirement was predicated on a deal he made when first came into power – in his first year he made some pretty sweeping reforms and in exchange agreed that after a certain period of time, he would step down as Emperor. He did this to the day, despite being urged to stay in power. It was difficult to hear, but we’re pretty sure Leo said Diocletian was the only Emperor to retire and the only one to die of natural causes – all of the other Emperors either died in battle or were poisoned, assassinated, or otherwise killed in the process of Roman politics. Having the luxury of a retirement to plan for, Diocletian ordered the construction of a large Palace on the Dalmatian Coast, several miles from where he grew up. The palace is massive – it’s in the shape of a square and each side is approximately 2,000 feet long with several-feet thick walls that are several stories tall, towers, and double-gates around the entire palace. Nearly 700 people (mostly servants) lived within the Palace. The Palace took approximately 10 years to construct – a mind-boggling pace for the type of construction and size of the Palace, but the tour guide noted that the 10-year construction time came at the price of 2,000 slaves – not that it took 2,000 slaves to construct, but that 2,000 died during the construction.

After retiring, Diocletian spent the next 10 year of his natural life living in the Palace. At one point he was asked to return as Emperor, but he declined and said that he liked being an old man and working in his garden. After his death, the Palace was maintained for several hundred years until approximately the end of the Roman Empire in the 5^th Century AD. At that point, Romans moved into the Palace for defense against barbarians that contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire. Over the next several centuries, the Palace was adapted into a medieval town – the townspeople built buildings inside of the walls to meet their needs and used the Palace’s cellar as a refuse dump. Looking at the southern wall of the Palace, he pointed out various components of the hodge-podge history – the old Palace walls were easy to identify, but on top of them and leaning against them were medieval buildings, with medieval residents bricking in a window of the wall where they wanted to construct a wall of their house. In the centuries since, people have continued to adapt the Palace and its buildings to their use – the Palace is the current City Center and is littered with restaurants, bars, shops, and even homes of approximately 1,000 residents. While it’s clear that there was nothing planned about how the current Center came to be, it was very impressive to see the layers of history of the Palace.

After the great history lesson, we entered the palace through the Cellar, which was recently excavated (several decades ago, so recent in terms of the 1,700 history) which was full of small souvenir and jewelry stands. It was also refreshingly cool after standing in the Mediterranean Sun for the history lesson. Leo explained that the medieval residents of the City used the cellar as their dump and people didn’t know of its existence until a few decades ago at which point archaeologists began the slow excavation of the cellar. Passing through the cellar, we entered the Peristil – the center of the palace. There were large ornate Egyptian red granite columns surrounding the Peristil that Diocletian has incorporated into this palace (Diocletian apparently spent part of his career in Egypt). There was also a black marble sphinx which were always paired to protect a building. There were at least a dozen in the Palace, although only one is in good condition and one has not been found. Leo pointed out the Temple of Jupiter which was constructed for Diocletian and Diocletian proclaimed himself the son of Jupiter (and therefore a god) – pretty big ego that Diocletian. Leo also explained that Diocletian was one of the most brutal Roman Emperors towards Christians. While the Christians didn’t question Diocletian’s governmental authority, they didn’t believe in his religious authority. Since these were somewhat one-in-the-same for the then-Pagan Roman Empire, Diocletian decided the easiest way to deal with the problem was to kill all Christians. Thousands were killed during his reign. Somewhat ironically, the Emperor that took over for Diocletian was Constantine who made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. Despite this, Christians avoided the Temple of Jupiter for Centuries. However, centuries later, the now-City of Split needed a cathedral. The Temple of Jupiter was the natural choice. So Christians entered the temple, removed Diocletian’s remains, and turned it into a cathedral. Leo described this as “typical Balkan – strike right at the heart of the beast”. Leo was very proud of this.

After a tour of the Peristil area, Leo took us around the rest of Diocletian’s Palace pointing out various things of interest – the area of the southern wall that Diocletian liked to walk along, the location of his garden (now a goth-ish nightclub called Ghetto), and the fact that Diocletian’s residence was higher than any other in the City – it was symbol to sleep above others. It also became apparent that the Palace is essentially a 3D maze and both Stacey and James worried about re-tracing their steps to find the various restaurants that Leo had recommended later. Along the way, we stopped for a quick lunch (essentially steamed spinach and phylo dough, but it was great and something green was needed) before ending the tour just outside of Diocletian’s Palace in the square of the “new-old Town” which was still old, but less so than Diocletian’s Palace – perhaps a few hundred years ago. Over its history, a wall was also constructed around this part of Town for protection. Everything within this wall (including Diocletian’s Palace) was within the UNESCO world heritage site. After parting ways with Leo, we grabbed a quick gelato to ease the heat and made our way back to the hotel to check-in. Thank you Emily & Eli for the guided tour of Split, we really enjoyed the tour! At that point it was relatively late in the afternoon, so we decided to wait out the last hour or so of heat, shower up, and then head into the City for a drink. Hotel Luxe turned out to be one of our favorite hotels – the room had a built in sound system so we played some jazz music and relaxed in the AC while the heat started to dissipate outside.

Checking out TripAdvisor for places to grab dinner, James came across a highly-recommended bar serving craft Croatian beers that was on the far side of the Old Town. Looking forward to trying something more than the Croatian equivalents of Budweiser and Coors, this was our first stop. James tried a American Pale Ale that Stacey enjoyed and commandeered, so James went to get a “Janice Hoplin IPA” that he saw on the menu. Unfortunately, for taste and awesomeness of the name, they were out so he got a Pale Ale from a brewery in Zagreb (more in the “new” part of town, well away from where we had been). The beer was well-balanced and hoppy, and definitely hit the spot after the week of euro-lagers. Wrapping up there, and being a good sport, James returned the favor and went a cool-looking wine bar that Stacey had spotted earlier in the day. Unfortunately the wine bar didn’t offer a tasting flight, so Stacey got a glass of Plavac, the local grape. Stacey decided the Plavats and Plavats Mali were her favorite type of Croatian wine, because it is the most full-bodied. Croatians all rave over the Plavac grape – it’s the “grandfather” of American Zinfandel and Croatians are very proud of this fact (especially because Italy claimed Zinfandel came from their Primitivo grape, so genetic testing was used to prove which was the true genetic origin).

After grabbing some drinks, we decided to go simple for dinner and decided upon pizza. We walked around Diocletian’s Palace and settled on a place that had a big TripAdvisor award proudly displayed and a nice outdoor patio with a pergola covered in vines. The two of us split a cheese platter (it was excellent – similar to a Parmesan) and a pizza with white sauce, mushrooms, and Dalmatian ham (which is air-dried and has a smoky taste). It was delicious, but the two of us couldn’t finish it. We decided that the other tables where each person finished the same-sized pizza individually must have had quite a bit of carob brandy beforehand. After dinner, we wandered around the Old Town for a while and made our way back to the Peristil for some outdoor music and drinks that were highly-recommended by several people. The name of the bar was Luxor and two-person acoustic band was playing, singing a lot of American folk and pop hits and what we can only assume were European folk and pop hits. The setting was magnificent – to be sitting in the middle of a 1700-year old palace, listening to music, and with a good drink. One child, about 10 years old, dancing like his life depended on it the entire night (and taking bows every time the band recognized him) also made it entertaining. Definitely one of the highlights of Split. After enjoying the music for a while, the smokers and long day had finally caught up to us and headed back to the hotel to rest up for the next day’s trip to Krka National Park.



Link to Photos:

https://picasaweb.google.com/106540574540801835369/SplitDay9?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCIzl54yxzOnSSg&feat=directlink

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Photos

Wedding Stairs
Leo told us that when people get married at Trogir, they go upstairs to sign their marriage license, and then the couple would be announced for the first time and be presented at the top of the stairs.

Missing coat of arms
Where a cappella group was singing.

Cathedral
Look at the different styles of the bell tower!