Home Free in Croatia (Part II)

August 11, 2019

After a relaxing, yet exciting visit from Tom, Chris and Abby, they departed for Toronto overnight.  Now Jinhee and I are left alone on the boat and looking for a plan (yet enjoying not having one for a few days).

The last part of their visit involved some time at anchor, some time in Split and plenty of souvenir shopping for Abby.  We thank Tom and Chris for agreeing to grab a taxi from Split to Dubrovnik at 12:30am (a four hour ride by car) so that Jinhee and I didn’t have to run the boat South again during the week.   They will probably be taking us off of their Christmas list after that ride.    Their kindness means that Jinhee and I can spend a few days exploring north of Split before we run back down to Tivat.

The heat here has been exceptional over the past few days, and our time at anchor was great as we enjoyed the swimming and fresh air while anchored out.

In Split, things are the normal level of summertime crazy and so we stayed on the wall in Split harbour (Splitska, VHF channel 15) and it can be a little bumpy with a south wind and/or traffic in the marina (of which there is always traffic, it surrounds the fuel dock).

In any case, on Saturday after waiting for a couple of hours to get into ACI Marina Split where we had a reservation, we sidled up to the wall and held firm while the manager forced a 45m yacht to med moor because we were taking up wall space.   He wasn’t happy with me, but he didn’t ask me to move either.  😁   And we had power, which means air conditioning.

All of the best restaurants in Split were fully booked so we took seats in a quaint little restaurant in the centre of the tourist area that wasn’t too busy.   As any traveller knows, when you take a restaurant in a tourist area that isn’t busy, it is usually not busy for a good reason.   We enjoyed each other’s company . . .

We tried to convince Abby to go see Salona, a Roman ruin just outside of Split on her last day, but the souvenir shops were calling very, very loudly and so that was put aside.   Jinhee and I made time this morning to be (once again) surprised by a spot that was not even on our radar.

We requested an Uber and waited ‘forever’ for him to arrive, but then we ended up with an amazing driver who, with his limited English told us about the amphitheatre ruins, the ‘museum’ and a bit of history for them both.    Here’s the thing, with Uber, a computer links you up with a driver, provides the price from A to B and that’s it, but not our driver.   He suggested that we go to the museum first and then down to the Amphitheatre afterwards, but instead took us to the Amphitheatre, stopped.  Allowed us to take pictures, read some signage, then took us up to the Museum and dropped us off.   Yeah, he got a good tip in cash.

So the Museum is really just old city grounds with Roman ruins.   Another spectacular site, and the entry was the equivalent of C$4 per person.    You can’t even get a bottle of water here for that price, but this was nice.

Sorry to not provide much insight into the history here, but let’s just say it is about 3000 years old, and was finally destroyed in the 17th century by the Moors for strategic reasons.

Tonight we are sitting at anchor in a quiet (ish) bay and so I am going back to enjoying the wine, looking for falling space debris (shooting stars) and satellites in the night sky.