Rewind ... Split and Trogir, Croatia

(Catching up on old blogs.  This one is from Wednesday and Thursday, 19-20 Sept)

On Wednesday, we sadly left beautiful Dubrovnik but happily left our Hotel Adriatic and headed back up the coast to Split.  After a few wrong turns in and around Split we made it to Diocletian’s Palace in downtown Split.  Diocletian was a Roman emperor from 284 to 305 A.D.   After his rule, he retired to the palace he had built in the country, along the coastline, in what is now Split, Croatia.  It wasn’t a palace in the sense of a single building but rather a small walled city with the royal residence taking up 1/2 of the space and support and military buildings occupying the other half.  What remains are partial city walls and the basement of the palace whose layout mirrors what used to be above.  Over the years the city has grown up and around the palace so now they are inseparably entangled.

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the rest of the palace city and eating gelato.

 On Thursday, we headed back into Split with the intention of catching a catamaran to Hvar Town on Hvar island at 11:30am but there was only 1 ticket left.  And even though Hvar is becoming the hot new place for celebrities and tourists alike, there is no regular ferry for day trips.  If anyone has some seed money, Amanda and I are going to start a regularly luxury ferry service to the island!  So we ended up hanging around Split until 2:30 when we took the slow boat (car ferry) to Stari Grad on the other side of Hvar Island from Hvar Town.  It took 2 hours to get to Hvar, we had ½ hour on the island, and then had to catch the return ferry or be stuck on the island for the night.  Our primary goal was to enjoy being on the water so it wasn’t all bad but it would have been nice to actually see some of the island rather than just the water.

The Green Market (Farmer's Market) in Split

 We ended the day with dinner in Trogir, the small town outside of Split where our hotel was located.  It is a UNESCO protected site and is like a mini-Dubrovnik.  It was really quite charming, especially at night, and more interesting than Split itself.