(Mis)Adventures: Split and Hvar, Croatia

After our two days in Dubrovnik, we started our journey north along the Croatian coast. The drive is beautiful. The sea is always in view and you pass through tons of small towns and outposts set up just for relaxing and enjoying getting away. The only annoying thing about traveling to southern Croatia is that you have to pass through the small section of Bosnia that touches the sea. This means a long line for an arbitrary passport check, in which they don't even check for all passports. We arrived to Split later than we expected but with plenty of time to check in to our hostel and go wander around. We followed the directions to our hostel, the Three Turtles B&B. When we arrived, the guy informed us the hostel website only booked one bed for the first night and two for the second. He refused to do anything to help us other than let us use his internet to book another hostel. As we looked for another place, he hounded us to let him know if he could release the beds for the following night. We held out as long as we could just to annoy him because he had no sympathy for the fact we were without a place for the night. We finally found a place and continued walking another 20 minutes in the heat, pouring sweat to another place. It turned out to be a lot nicer. After settling in, we went down to the beach and had a swim to cool off before wandering through the old town. Split is a lot like the port at Athens, lots of boats and lots of people trying to find their boat to get them to an island or Italy. The main difference is there are always tons of people at the bus and train stations waiting for new arrivals to offer them accommodation. Their manner is tad skeptical and they often come off as not reputable people.

Like Dubrovnik, Split has an old town that is fortified by an old city wall. You can't climb on top and walk around but walking around the inside is nice. It's not built into a hill and so its much easier to get around. There is a main square with a large church, old Greek style columns, and a bunch of vendors and artisans selling their goods. The Greek looking ruins correspond to a colony set up in the 6th century by the Greeks called Aspálathos. This name evolved through Romanized Latin, Dalmatian language, and finally came out as Split in Slavic tongue. The old town centers around the Diocletian's Palace he had built for himself when he retired from politics. The palace has served as a town for those who stayed in the area throughout the various power struggles and changing of hands of the city of Split.

There are tons of small shops throughout the town. You can freely wander outside of the walls or through old parts of the palace that aren't used by anyone now.

We made the mistake of spotting a cheap place to eat and going and eating there. The food was kind of stale tasting and made us feel ill afterwards. We walked through the Republik Square and watched an entertaining photo session with a bride and groom. The videographer was especially entertaining with the effects he was trying to create by running in large swooping circles. After our terrible meal, we just walked along the harbor to enjoy the sunset.

On Sunday, we took a ferry out to Hvar Island. There are several famous islands around Split and the port is always busy with ferries leaving to these islands and other ports in Italy. The tickets were relatively inexpensive(23 Euros roundtrip for both of us). Hvar island is a long and thin island. It's unusual that it has such a wide open fertile plain with fresh water springs that provides for the widespread growth of olive groves, fruit orchards, and fields of lavender. The lavender is probably its more famous crop because it makes the island smell sweet and fragrant. The Ancient Greeks are responsible for settling the area and setting up the various field divisions. Sadly, we weren't able to ride out to the fields because we didn't have a car and the buses on the island are mainly for getting you to the cities. We went to the city of Hvar to see what it was about.

Hvar looked like a distant cousin of Dubrovnik and Split. It was an old stone city with fortified walls around it and a large fortress sat above it on the mountain behind the city. It looked like you could go there and wander through it but we only had 4 hours on the island so we didn't want to waste them trying to find how to get to the fortress. What we found though is that Hvar City is like a small outpost of the French Riviera type culture. There were sailboats all over the place and there were several megayachts moored in the harbor.

The streets through the town are quaint. We didn't see many tourists walking through them. I'm not sure if its because everyone just comes to Hvar to swim and be at the beach or because it was hot that day and walking around wasn't the best idea.

After walking a bit, we got hot ourselves and decided to put our feet in the water to cool off. Then we had some ice cream and wandered along the paths leading out from the city. There were a lot of hotels and activities there for enjoying the water. The island doesn't have any sand beaches so many people just take chairs out and find a place between the rocks to set up. Around 4:30, we headed back to the bus stop to catch it back to the port. This became a big problem. The buses are scheduled around the ferries but they didn't provide enough to meet the demand of people needing to leave. People were pushing and shoving to get their bags under the bus and get on it. We found some other people there and split a taxi with a family and a couple of guys who also decided the cattle car wasn't for us.