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Published: September 16th 2007
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We arrived late on Monday evening at Split airport, and caught the local bus to Trogir, a small town 20 km west of Split where we were staying for the night. We arrived in Trogir around 11pm and were quite impressed with what we saw. There was a charming little old town that was overflowing with people eating, drinking and generally walking around. After checking in to our hotel we went out for a late supper and a bit of a wander. In the small main square we saw a juggling, fire throwing/fire eating/cocktail twirling performance by a barman behind a temporary bar - very impressive (sort of Tom Crusie and Bryan Brown from the movie Cocktail but with flaming bottles).
The following morning we had a look around the old town, and were keen to stay another night but we couldn't get any accomodation. We therefore decided to catch a bus up the coast approximately 4 hours to the port town of Zadar. The coastline was quite impressive - a winding road with lots of rocky beaches and beautiful green sea. Unfortunately we had the same problem in Zadar as in Trogir, and couldn't find any accomodation in or
close to the old town. We ended up in a room that was probably 3 or 4 kilometres out of town, and it took us 40 minutes to walk back into the centre. Zadar was a nice enough place with a lovely, and very busy, old town, although we were too far out to really enjoy it. There was supposedly a bus which ran from the bottom of the street into town but we never saw it. As we walked into town we took photographs of the main intersections so we could find our way home again, as the map we had was fairly basic to say the least.
After spending one night in Zadar we decided to head back down to Split so did the 4 hour bus trip in reverse the next day. It was again a struggle to find any accommodation in Split but finally we managed to get an apartment right in the centre of the old town in what was once the former palace of the Roman Emperor Diocletian, built around 300 AD, which has now been converted to apartments. It was a nice apartment in a great location with all the restaurants and
shops just downstairs. The owners, a couple in their 30's, picked us up from the bus station and took us to the apartment where their Mum was waiting. We weren't sure whether she came with the apartment or not as she was reluctant to leave and came the next day to pick up some things and have another chat to us and check that we had been to the places she recommended. We spent a lovely few days wandering around the Old Town area which had loads of character as well as quite a few tourists. We also walked 4 or 5 kilometres around the Marjan Pensinsula, just west of the city centre, which provided some great views back over the city and out to the islands. It was incredibly hot whilst we were there (we were told it was 40 degrees on the day we arrived) so we went to the main town beach one day. This was basically a concrete platform around a bay - hopefully we would see better beaches in other parts of Croatia.
From Split we caught a ferry to the Island of Brac and spent two weeks relaxing in the village of Sutivan
(see separate entry).
After our two week stay on Brac we caught the ferry back to Split and then caught a bus for a 5 hour trip down the coast to the beautiful resort city of Dubrovnik. The bus trip was relaxing and enjoyable although there were a couple of times when it would have been good to have the flexibility of a car to stop at some of the coastal spots along the way. We passed through a 9km stretch of Bosnia-Hercegovina on the way. This stretch of land runs through Croatia near its southern tip to allow Bosnia coast access. The buses make a stop in Bosnia basically to allow the smokers to buy cheap cigarettes.
In Dubrovnik we managed to find accomodation in a very nice hotel that was owned by a Croatian born ex-Australian (he lived in Australia for 25 years) and run by his young daughter who had moved to Croatia from the Eastern suburbs of Sydney 2 years ago. The hotel was around 3 kilometres from the old town in the Port of Gruz, which was quite a nice place to stay. Unlike the problem we had in Zadar, there were buses
every 10 minutes into town. Dubrovnik was a lovely place. The old town was very impressive and surrounded by a town wall that you could walk around. We did this and although it was quite hot it was very enjoyable. There were some tremendous views of the old town and surrounds from various parts of the wall and again lots of tourists. It is hard to imagine that it is only 15 years since Dubrovnik was under seige from Serbia during the war that ultimately brought about the end of the old Yugloslavia. Luckily the old town survived intact. We were keen to visit some of the islands off Dubrovnik but ran out of time as we had pre-booked the next leg of our journey.
On Monday 3rd September we left Croatia after a very enjoyable 3 week stay, and caught a mid afternoon flight to Venice via Rome.
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