Zigging to Zagreb

Today we split from Split and made our way to Zagreb, in the process bidding adieu to the palm tree.

Whether because of its symmetry, it’s prehistoric leaves or just its location, there’s something about palms that makes one sad to see them go.

An ode to a tree:

Over there sits a palm
My favourite type of tree
It’s not all that special
Yet it’s quite appealing to me

It’s hard to feel cold
When a palm sways over head
And life’s always fun and good
When palm leaves lie near your bed

Beside a harbour on an island
Or a city by the sea
You can’t really go wrong
With a palm, says me

But now we leave the palm behind
And meet new chestnut trees
Forgetting the sunny days of summer
And three kuna bathroom fees

Zagreb and northern countries beckon
And cold days are ahead I reckon

But at least I’ve bought a coupl’a days
Watching as a palm tree sways.

As you can see, there’s a reason I was never all that fond of poetry, except to make crude jokes or pun-filled songs. As for the bus ride itself, we lucked out and arrived at the Split bus station just as a carriage heading to Zagreb was taking passengers. Even better, the bus, although we got on blind and unsure of exactly how long the trip would take, made a beeline straight for the capital city, only stopping at a truckstop where we grabbed a tasty Dalmatian ham and cheese sandwich. (No, Dalmatian ham isn’t Fido’s rump, it’s your typical thinly sliced prusciutto smoked.) In all the trip of about 378-kilometres took just under five hours.

The trip itself led us up a Coquihalla-esque hill out of Split and through hills of rock and shrubbery. It became quickly obvious why most of the houses here, particularly the older ones, are built of rock. The further we traveled though, the more temperate the climate, and the terrain, got, with forests of hardwood trees appearing across a landscape not unlike that of the interior of B.C.

The highway was a toll road (I hear that’s gone from B.C. now), new and a lot nicer than the Coke. In fact, much of the infrastructure here is better than that of Canada, despite the fact the average person here makes something like $10,000 a year.

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Quick Trogir finger

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Trogir was the destination yesterday, bus the means of transportation. That, though, is simplifying things. A couple quick things – there are several bus companies in Croatia. We have stumbled across probably five or six so far. What this means is the buses are frequent and they are cheap, as opposed to our monopoly in B.C. To a North American, though, they seem disorganized, although that is likely more a symptom of my inability to read Croatian than anything else.

The point being, as we were waiting to board our bus back to Split, around 2:15, we thought a bus would be arriving soon. Instead we had to wait until 3:00, admittedly not a long time compared to buses in, say, Vernon. So by the time 3:00 rolled around we were itching to get on a bus. Sure the first one that came buy resembled one of those city buses that bend in the middle and looked trashy and didn’t stop at the coach platform but rather dropped off its dozens of passengers at the ence. It said Trogir-Split on the front and that was enough.

So we plopped down around $4 each for a ticket to Split and headed towards the back of the bus. While there is no delightful payoff to this story – we got home fine, as we looked out the window at the coaches arriving, we wondered what we were in for. We had payed just over $2 for the bus ticket to Trogir (less than it cost to go to the top of Kamerlengo Castle. And indeed, as the bus took off, we realized it wasn’t your average tourist bus. It took us through shifty industrial areas, directly past the airport, and down the main secondary road all the while grinding its gears and bouncing over rocks and potholes.

It wasn’t as bad as that sentence makes it sound (despite the crowded confines and lack of air conditioner). The bus did deliver us (approximately) to our destination and it gave us another look at Croatian life behind the tourist screen (although the road on which we traveled had its share of tourist accomodations.)

As for Trogir itself, its facade resembles that of Split but its interior, with twisting roads and houses built upon houses, is a lot like Dubrovnik downscaled and minus the walls. What this means to your average North American is that there’s a lot of old stuff. The centre of town is another UNESCO site, making this our fourth so far on this trip, with a couple more to come in the next few days. Yes I’m bragging.

The aforementioned castle is not as impressive as it looks in photographs, although it is pretty darn old. And the best views actually came from the bell tower of the Cathedral of St. Lawrence, in the centre of town. The cathedral itself is quite old, although about par for the course for really-aged churches and only mildly interesting. Its treasury has some similarly old churchy stuff.

Like in Dubrovnik, the best fun to be had in Trogir is simply to turn left, turn right and get lost. The winding roads take you back centuries, although because of its size and position on an island, there isn’t all that much to explore.

So we headed back to Split, where we ate on the Riva facing the ocean and climbed the bell tower of that city’s big church. And that’s about it.

Trogir from the castle.

Oranges grow on trees!

Let’s Split

Yesterday we explored Split, which boasts a UNESCO World Heritage old town (our third UNESCO site so far) and narrow little streets similar to those of Dubrovnik but with less stairs and fewer tourists. The centrepiece of Split is the 1,700 year-old Diocletian’s Palace, which was built by the old Roman emperor Diocletian as something of a retirement home. I guess he realized that being emperor wasn’t all what it was cracked out to be, particularly when one could build a massive comnplex on the Adriatic Sea and staff it with servants, soldiers and anything else one could possibly need or want or just have lying around.

Split’s waterfront resembles that of Nice, with its palm trees, lit up buildings and bustling activity. A large open space rests between the start of the buildings and the water. The space is taken up by smooth pavement, benches and plants. As Borat would say, “very niiiiiiiiiice.”

We also found the golden toe. That’s right, the big toe of a massive statue near the old town’s gates is gold coloured and apparently, if you rub it, you will receive good luck. Unfortunately we didn’t have a golden toe to rub in Dubrovnik and now are left carting around a 100 kuna (about $20) counterfeit bill. On closer inspection, the background of the bill is orangey-blue, noth the orangey-white of most real 100 kn bills. But what did I know? I think I picked it up from a lady selling bus tickets, which makes the 15-minute bus ride from Dubrovnik’s old city to the stairs below our hostel nearly as expensive as the ride from Split to Dubrovnik.

But beyond counterfeit bills, the trip is going nicely. Of particular note is the fact that both Split and Dubrovnik are concrete jungles with a very personal, and natural feel. I’ll expand upon this later.

And now an update, I managed to trade in the counterfeit bill for a good one at the national bank here. More on our trip to Trogir today later.

Split as seen from the bell tower of the St. Doimus Cathedral.

Said bell tower from the ground.

A vendor at Split’s sprawling market

The ugliest fish I’d ever seen in Split’s fish market

A huge statue of Gregory of Nin rests outside the gates of the Diocletian’s Palace. He’s the guy with the golden toe.

Finding Split

Yesterday, we boarded a bus for the four-plus hour trip from Dubrovnik to Split. We traveled briefly through Bosnia and arrived around 4 p.m. We had booked a hostel the day before but encountered a problem when I realized I had misplaced the card with the name and address of our destination. Fortunately (I thought), (I thought) I remembered the road and hostel name. You know where this is going. We did not. Within five minutes of arriving at the bus startion we had found a map and were on our way to Hostel Kristall at Popoviceva 6.

Unfortunately, we went too far and had to ask directions from some very helpful locals to find Popoviceva. Tired, we arrived at the road to find that Hostel Kristall did not exist at Popoviceva.  In fact we were beginning to realize that Hostel Kristall did not exist at all. Oh and we were each carrying 40 to 60 pounds on our back and towing more, for reasons having to do with our plan to live in Poland this winter. We went back to the internet café of one of those very helpful locals and learned that, in fact, we were looking for Hostel Nikolla at Kovocica 6.

Learning that this was our real destination, and completely unbidden, the helpful internet café lady said the hostel’s proprietoress was a friend. Before we knew it the internet lady said Nikolla would be at the café in two minutes to help us find our way. It was all a little overwhelming but it did help us navigate the maze that is the inner city of Split.

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Note: Having read several travel articles lately, I’m boycotting the term “mind-blowing,” so, instead, I’ll just say the trip from Dubrovnik to Split provided plenty of very nice views.