Rosie and The Operator arrived in Split by ferry exactly where they left it three days earlier, direct from Hvar Island in one hours sailing time.
From the sea, watching the city getting bigger and bigger Split certainly looked like the second largest city in Croatia housing 178,000. This huge sprawling metropolis was the first city where it wasn’t obvious where the old town was on approach as it was not the first sight to greet us like the other towns.
We are staying steps away on the edge of the Old Town in a flat above a busy, bustling restaurant street. To get there we tow our bags along The Riva, an outdoor terrace promenade of palm trees, bars and restaurants that runs the length of the harbour waterfront. This place is alive and buzzing with people 24/7 and just let me say, nothing is closing for winter in this town. It is busy!
The Riva is trendy and modern, with the palm trees that line it giving a real tropical, Mediterranean feel. It is full of designer clothes wearing beautiful people drinking the most expensive cocktails in town whilst watching the wave less sea and everyone else walking past over the tops of their designer sunglasses.
The Riva is not really Rosie and The Operators style….it is a relief to get back in the narrow alleyways off the showy harbour front, Rosie loves these shady, narrow slightly grimy alleys the best.
The restaurants here spill out onto the pavements and are not as flashy, they line the narrow streets one table deep with traditional red and white table clothes and the smells and chatter coming from the lunchtime kitchens are amazing and loud. This is where the locals dine, there is no sea view and the streets are shady and a relief from the hot sun. The cost of a meal and drinks are also 20% less than on the Riva or in the middle of the Old Town. Rosie is chuffed, three of the top ten restaurants in town are on her street and all the rest are pretty much in the Top 50!
In between a couple a restaurant tables…there is a door in a high stone wall, this is the entrance to our apartment. This is a terrible photo, but, in the picture below on the right had side of the street you can see a low spot in the buildings, this is our terrace and the door is the sliver of dark you see, just below the terrace before the bend in the street.
The flat is spacious and homely, the inside lined with stone and it has a lovely small outdoor terrace above the chatter of the restaurant street. The lovely lady who we are renting it off said it was the family home where she bought up her three children, the terrace was their ‘backyard’.
Rosie and The Operator spent some amazing evenings in the alley below our apartment at various restaurants. The buzz and chatter of the people around us as we dined in the alleyway, the flicker of the candles and the meow of the cats…you were never far from a cat watching with their disconcerting stares that only a cat can manage hoping for a scrap.
The two ‘cat camps’ were funny to watch – The Cat Lovers, watching the felines with heads cocked to the side, loopy smiles on their faces uttering naaawwww, secretly secreting food under the table for them to chow.
The Cat Haters – with indignant looks on their faces and blustering exhales of shoo accompanied with stomps of their feet…..which only drove the cat back one foot for it to resume its vigil…knowing full well it was annoying the Cat Hater by its mere presence.
Rosie was neutral and quite surprised that The Operator entered the camp of the Cat Lover and was feeding them all over the show. Its a known fact Rosie dosn’t share her food with anyone…even the cute kitty cats.
At the pizza joint below our apartment we had just settled in to dinner on a long table outside one evening and just taken this photo….
….five minutes later we were joined by two guys who introduced themselves as Gary and Christov. They were in the Austrian Army and both UN Peacekeepers assigned in Sarajevo Bosnia and were the same age as us. They were on leave for the weekend and we got chatting about their job, the amazing, recovering of war torn places they had been stationed in and we quizzed them on travel in Europe as they had been everywhere! Their English was impeccable and they were really interesting guys who liked to put a bit of booze away.
We were then joined by two back packers who took the last two seats in the restaurant at our table. He was from Peru and only in his early twenties and she was a French Canadian whom the lad was quite shocked to find out was in her early thirties….they were sharing the same mixed dorm at the town back packers and had just met. Me thinks he thought he was going to get it on with the girl…Rosie could tell straight away the girl was having non of that.
Rosie and The Operator got a whole new slant on how the budget unwashed traveled and cringed at their plans to travel the world…with no plans. Yet here they were, and their travels to date were remarkable. We learnt alot! All in all it was an awesome night with our new found friends and our heads were testament to that the next day…..of which we again ran into Gary and Christov….having coffee at the same pizza place….trying to get the telephone number off the waitress from last night.
Time to clear the head with abit of fresh air said The Operator, who ventured up the hill a couple of streets back to explore the lookouts over the town from Marjan Park while Rosie did a little writing….thats what she told The Operator anyway…in actual fact Rosie had a little lie down.
The Marjan Peninsular is a beautiful huge greenbelt right on the back door of the city. It has jogging and tramping trails, vertical cliffs to climb, a multitude of churches, zoo and beautiful beach coves to visit which make it seem like you are in the middle of nowhere but just minutes from the city. The Operator was hiking up to the highest point to get a nice picture for Rosie back over the town. There are three lookouts points in the park. The lowest he conceded did have the best view back over the city. The Belltower of the Palace is the high point of the city and high hills lurk behind. Isnt it beautiful!
In the back streets there is a lot of graffiti around pertaining to Splits beloved football team, Hajduk. They are in the Croatian First Division and also the European League. The club was established in 1911 and has a supporters club called Hajduk Torcida established in 1950 which are pretty fanatical….they have a total membership of over 43,000.
Hajduk means – a type of peasant infantryman with reputations ranging from bandits to freedom fighters depending on the time, place and enemies. Rosie loves the sound of that. The supporters seem to have embraced this old philosophy and have a naughty reputation for hooliganism now and then…
UEFA punished the club once for wrong doing by not allowing any of their supporters to attend a major away game. Such were the supporters loyalty they still bought half the tickets and sold out a half empty stadium for a game they couldn’t attend so the club wouldn’t miss out on its revenue. Hajduk have also retired the number 12 jersey out of honor for their twelfth player…..The Hajduk Torcida Supporters.
They are a pretty poor football club by international standards, there total player wage spend is only 3 Million Euros compared to their greatest rival Zagreb who has a 15 million spend…..you can guess the other enormous figures the rest of Europe spends on their super stars. The City of Split actually owns 65% of the club….they people like to think they own it….which technically they do I suppose.
A waiter summed up the passion when talking to us about the club, he nonchalantly shrugged and said quite simply, ‘it is our life.’
The Old Town extends around the Palace, this beautiful square is just outside the Palace walls and was the first spot we encountered when out wandering.
The Tower on the left hand side of the picture below was built by the Venetians in the 17th century, they insisted it be higher than the Palace walls so that they could spy inside the Palace to make sure that the closely quartered people living in the palace were not misbehaving.
Tomorrow Rosie will introduce you to The Palace of Diocletian, this is what the city of Split is all about, its finest and main tourist feature, The City Built within a City, within a Palace, and Rosie had no idea that it even existed until she stepped into the town for the first time.
All will be revealed tomorrow, Rosie cant wait to show you around this amazing piece of never ending history.
