A Walking City, An Empty City, and a Masterpiece

Too Short of a Time in Split

When originally creating our itinerary for this adventure, we’d found most reviews of Split saying that besides the Diocletian’s Palace (which we’d erroneously assumed was an empty fort) there wasn’t much to the city. Therefore, we’d only scheduled an evening there. As our ferry docked at the pier and the impressive fortified Old Town greeted us, we realized that there was more to this city than we’d originally thought.

Split started out as the Greek colony of Aspálathos in the 3rd or 2nd century BC. The Diocletian’s Palace was built for the Roman Emperor in 305 CE, and the city because a prominent settlement in 650 CE. It then spent a few millennium being gifted from one ruling power to the next (the Venetians, the Ottomans, the Habsburg Monarchy, part of the Illyrian Providences, the Austrians, Yugoslavia, etc., etc.) and is now the second largest city in Slovenia.

Since our ferry got in in the late afternoon, there wasn’t a lot time to see the sights, but luckily for us, this was a city that liked to stay open late. We dropped our bags at our hostel (which had expanded some to include apartments in the neighborhood for private rooms and that’s where we were deposited...an apartment to ourselves, which was nice, but cut off from the social aspect of the Hostel, which is half the reason we stay in them) and headed out to explore.

We headed into the Old City and made our way to the center where we stopped to watch a wedding procession that was leaving the Cathedral of Saint Domnius (the oldest Catholic cathedral in the world that remains in use in its original structure, without near-complete renovation at a later date). Apparently it is tradition for their to be singing as the wedding party exits and so we were transfixed by hauntingly beautiful melodies being sung and the wonderful acoustics of the walls sending the sound around. While we watched and listened, a woman approached and offered us a spot on a walking tour that was leaving in a few minutes. Wanting to learning something about the city in our short time there, we decided to purchase tickets.

The tour was lead by an older gentleman who was a professor in his previous career. He walked slow, talked low, and had the awful habit of asking you a question and then making you feel like and errant pupil when you answered (whether correctly or incorrectly). The tour though, gave us a change to wander through the old town and learn a bit more about its history. 

About half of the old city was comprised of the Diocletian’s Palace, built for Roman Emperor Diocletian’s expected retirement on May 1, 305AD (I didn’t realize Emperors could retire, I figured it was a gig until death). While the Palace today is the world’s most complete example of a Roman Palace, the original rooms and buildings have been converted into shops, restaurants, and hotels.

After the tour, Em and I wandered to the basement of the city. In the 1960s archaeologists started to excavate all of the debris that was below what once was the Diocletian’s Place and discovered that there was in essence an exact replica of the structure of the Palace underneath. Because this under-city was used as a trash pit for centuries, it was well preserved and weathered time intact (unlike the Palace above). 

The underground replica contains 80 rooms of various sizes, linked by hallways, and complete with arched ceilings. Archaeologists say that despite the detail and effort put into making this replica city, it was only used as architectural support for the Palace above ground. To me this seems far fetched, because if that was the case, why not just make random support pillars, why add all the detail? Today, the sub-city houses a art market and a museum of sorts in that you can wander the empty rooms of this underworld.

These Roads are Way Too Narrow

The next morning, Em and I had the brilliant plan of waking early and going sans luggage to snap a few photos of the waking city on our way to pick up our rental car. In typical fashion for countries that don’t rent automatic cars often, we were upgraded for free from a small crappy car, to a nice big, expensive car (the gave us an SUV with leather trim and a sun roof <— which I didn’t realize was there until I returning the vehicle). While everyone else may think this is grand, we hate it since these cars tend to cost a lot more if something happens and the roads in most of the places we rent the cars are small (one lane width for two directions), so a bigger car just means more stress. 

Trying to get back to our hostel to grab our bags turned out to be a nightmare where I’m pretty sure half my hair started to go grey. It turns out that most of the downtown area is a series of one way streets that get progressively smaller. We had to drive about three or four miles out of the center to find a main road back to the area we needed. To even get there though, required a lot of wrong turns down donkey cart lanes they called roads and some reversing back up hills at certain points when realizing that our car was way too big to fit through the gaps left between the cars parked on either side of the road. While I loved the few hours I spent walking around Split, I hated the few minutes I spent driving through it. 

Once we successfully retrieved our bags and hit the A1, things were a lot smoother. The A1 is the only major highway in Croatia, and transverses the length of the entire country. It also extends up into Slovenia. While it’s a nice road two lane road with a decent speed limit (about 85 mph) and direct shots to most cities, you pay an arm and a leg to use it. It’s a tool road and they charge a buttload to grant you the privilege of efficiency.

Having rented the car for a day, granted Em and I the ability to see some additional places that we might otherwise not have been able to visit. The first of these was the Vranjača Cave, which our aunt and uncle had visited a few month previously and told us not to miss. 

The cave is located about 40 minutes by car outside of Split. You head to the town of Dugopolje and then follow the signs up the steep and curvy road to the village of Kotlenica. Then park in the dirt lot and walk 300 meters (or venture a little further in your car on the unpaved road and walk 100 meters). 

Vranjača is comprised of two halls and was created by a river flowing through about 60,000,000 years ago. The first hall is mostly unadorned and has been known about since Neolithic times, when it was used by hunters. The second, larger, and very impressive hall was discovered by Stipe Punda in 1906, when he was crawling around looking for a pigeon. After researches spent years studying the amazing find and Grandpa Punda (the man’s grandsons still maintain the cave today) built stairs and installed electrical lights, the cave was opened to the general public in 1929. 

When you arrive, Marko, the current owner and Stipe’s grandson, gives you a short lecture on the cave and how his family discovered it on their property and has maintained it for over 100 years. Then Marko tells you “to respect him and to respect the cave” and let’s you head down the 500 steps into the earth on your own. Marko is all about allowing his guests to feel at home in the cave and get out of it what they will. The trail at the bottom is 360 meters long and you can take your time transversing it.

We enjoyed the slight cool and year around constant 60 degree cave and tried to soak up the healthy energies before thanking Marko and heading back on the road. 

Our next stop was a slight detour, but we were told it was worth it. We headed to the coast to visit Zadar. Zadar is the oldest continuously inhabited Croatian city, with evidence of human habitation going back to the Stone Age. We arrived at the waterfront in front of the fortress walls, paid our parking (to the amusement of some locals as it was a Sunday and parking was free <— it’s hard to remember the days of the week when you’re traveling) and wandered inside the Old City. 

Today, Zadar is one of Croatia’s most popular tourist destinations (I’m pretty sure it’s also on the itinerary for many cruise ships), but apparently Sundays are the wrong day to visit. I’m used to many European and South and Central American cities being culturally dead on Mondays, but I didn’t realize that entire cities shut down on Sundays. Walking through Zadar was a bit like when Em and I wandered Dubrovnik and Kotor at the crack of dawn, mostly empty; the only difference was this time is was one in the afternoon. In terms of being able to take photographs and see the wonderful architecture, this was great. In terms of taking a walking tour or seeing a museum or visiting some shops, this kind of sucked.

We found an opened pizza restaurant, feed the growling bellies, wandered a bit more, and headed out again.

We decided to take the scenic route to our hostel near the Plitvice Lakes since we had some extra time and cause the roads weren’t as bad as we’d feared (they were a single lane in either direction, but paved and wide enough to accommodate a truck, of which there were a lot).

We arrived at the Falling Lakes Hostel in Korenica, about 15 minutes from the park entrance, as the sun was setting. This hostel was on of the few hostels that we’ve found in recent years that is still a “true hostel” in that they actively encourage social interaction with other people and provide a welcoming, clean, and fun environment in which to do that. 

It turned out that the night we were there was trivia night. The hostel’s version of trivia is a little different in that each team has to design a question (for each category as they come up) and then those questions become the game questions. The catch is the questions have to be hard enough that at least one team won’t answer them correctly, and easy enough that at least one other team will answer them correctly. It was a lot of fun and a great way to end a day of driving.

So Freaking Gorgeous, Wish I Could Live Here

Plitvice Lakes National Park is the oldest, largest, and most infamous of Croatia’s eight natural parks. The park covers just shy of 300 square miles, but the main tourist area is comprised of a much smaller region. Tourism at the Lakes revolves around The Lakes. Within the park there are a series of sixteen cascading lakes arranged in a series of Upper Lakes and Lower Lakes. There are also two waterfalls (the Big Falls and the Small Falls). The waters of the lakes are phenomenal, with ever changing hues due to the ever changing mineral content, the number and type of organisms living in them, and the angle of the sun that lights them up.

To see all of the Lakes, the curators of the park have built wooden walkways and blazed dirt pathways along the banks. As a visitor, there are various marked trailed that you can follow (from a short hour “ooh pretty, snap, got my selfie now let’s go” trail to the “see everything” 8-10 hrs trek). There is also a free boat and bus that will help convey a visitor to key places within the park.

Em and I arrived before the park opened so that we could make sure we had some time inside before the large tour buses arrived and disgorged their hundreds and thousands of picture happy short term visitors.

While waiting in line to purchase tickets, we made friends with some fellow Bay Area Californians. Mike and Vicki are an enthusiastic older couple that love to travel around and meet likeminded individuals. Mike was also an avid photographer and so the four of us set out with the other fifty early morning hikers to catch the Lakes with the mist still curling on the waters and the walkways mostly uncrowned. 

Our quartet wandered across the wood planks and through this fairytale for a few hours before Mike and Vicki broke off to head to Zagreb by private car and Em and I continued for a few additional hours until time and the crowding masses chased us out. 

We headed down the road to Rastoke, a quaint little village that is known for water mills and is sometimes referred to as "the Small Lakes of Plitvice". Here exists the same natural phenomenon as at Plitvice; water from the Korana and a natural travertine barrier with large deposits of lime, coming together to form cascading lakes and waterfalls.

The design of the land and the flow of the water, allowed the residents to develop water powered mechanical mills. These mills used paddle wheels to power the grindstones to grind various different grains.

Today, a section of the town is set up as a tourist attraction where you can walk around the old village and see relics of the life of the residents back in the day. Additionally, someone decided to add weird art sculptures all over the places, so you can have fun looking around and realizing that the wooden log in front of you actually has a face or there’s a woman made out of wires lazing on the grass.

After our little respite, we hoped back on the A1 to head to Zagreb to drop our bags at our hostel and then return our car at the airport. What we learned at the airport is that if you miss the one sign to turn, you have to go on a five minute detour that takes you completely around and away from the airport before coming back again.