A whirlwind couple of days
We’re down to our last night in Split before we head north on our way back to Frankfurt. We’ve spent the last two days just exploring the area and not venturing too far from our home base. Split is an amazing place and I would highly recommend it for anyone who is thinking of coming to Croatia. It’s a bit busy, as it is a seaport city, and it’s been very hot but there is so much to see and do I’m sure we could fill a few more days easily.
We spent yesterday touring off the beaten path and seeing some of the more obscure things our the city that don’t really show up on the tourist map. Most of the tourism here is centered in the old city and while there is much to see, there are plenty of other things just a short drive away.
We started by visiting the ancient Roman ruins of the town of Salona. In modern Split, it’s the suburb of Silon now but 1900 years ago it was a city of 60,000 people and the ruins are in relatively good shape. Surprisingly, the ruins are not a protected site or park so you can roam at will over the entire area. It was kind of novel but also kind of sad that the place is not roped off to keep people from messing it up.
All that really remains are the walls of old buildings including a couple of basilicas, the forum, the baths, and the amphitheater. The amphitheater was particularly interesting as it was able to hold 17,000 people in it’s prime and hosted gladiator matches up until the 3rd century AD. After that is was people vs animals, all for the amusement of the populace. But the city was leveled by a Slav invasion in the 7th century and that was that.
For the most part, Salona is roped off but it’s surrounded by houses and it looks like some of the walls used by homes came from the remains of this city. It would be nice to see this become a more formally protected site.
From there we headed up to the local fortress, a common site in many European cities, by the name of Klis Fortress. Once again, there was almost no information about it except what we found online with google. In any case, for a small fee, you can freely roam the grounds and get some great views of the city. Views that would be better, however, if it wasn’t so smoggy here. But it was worth it. Later on, we read there is actually an arms and armour museum in the castle but we saw no sign of it while we were there.
Today we figured that we had better take advantage of a beach day as it’s our last day in Split. Split isn’t really known for sandy beaches as most of those are down south but we did read that it’s quite nice to head out to some of the nearby islands to hit some beaches.
Rising early (we’ve done that way too often this trip), we caught the 8.30am ferry to the town of Stari Grad on the island of Hvar, which is a two hour trip. Once you arrive there, you hop a bus for a 20 minute ride over to Hvar Town. Most of the action takes place there and it’s known to be super busy during the height of summer. Busy it was but not too bad as it’s past the peak season now. Hvar Town was pretty damned nice and the blue waters of the Adriatic Sea definitely called to us.
We didn’t have a lot of time for the day, so we decided to hire one of the local water taxi’s for a ride to some of the smaller and quieter islands, which is quicker and way more convenient than one of the big tourist excursion boats. Plus you have the added bonus of phoning when you’re ready to be picked up.
Luka, the owner of the taxi, dropped us off at a small marina on the island of Svetog Klement, one of the larger islands loaded with remote coves and great places to hang out. From the marina, we did the short hike to a popular beach on Vinogradisce Cove to swim and tan. My taste must have been good as I ended up picking a location for the towels right next to the topless sunbathers! Sometimes that is a good thing, sometimes, not so much. I appreciate Europeans desire to let it hang out but sometimes you gotta know when to keep your clothes on, haha. And I’ve seen far more speedos than I care to think about.
Regardless, we spent a bit of time swimming and then tanning but it wasn’t long before I felt like I was roasting like a steak on a rock and we decided to hike the far side of the island. Great plan on a 30 degree day! It wasn’t too bad though and was only a few km’s so we made it over and found a better, more quiet cove with a bar nearby. Raegan went swimming again, and I went off to get beer. It was damned nice sitting on the sea with a beer in my hand on a hot day.
Once we had enough of that, we called our taxi for a pickup but they weren’t able to find us right away. I didn’t know the name of the cove and I guess the name of the beach I saw painted on a sign didn’t mean anything to Luka so it took a couple of phone calls before they located us waving from the rocks. After getting back onboard, we ripped back to Hvar Town, onto the bus, and back on the ferry for the ride back to Split.
And so ends our five days in Split. I look forward to coming here again someday with some more time to explore more areas around here. In particular, the town of Mostar in Bosnia is highly recommended but we just didn’t have time to get there.
Tomorrow we hit the road early to get to Plitvice National Park in northern Croatia before high tailing it to Austria tomorrow night. It’s going to be a long day but we’re trying to get through Slovenia before our expressway pass expires and we have to buy a new one.
