Day 8: Back to the Adriatic

My aluminum guy is Croatian.  George (actually “Goiko”) was so excited for me to go to Croatia.   He actually tried to get a friend to meet us near his hometown, Sibenik, on the way from our drive from Plitvice to Split.

I called George to confirm yesterday, and the kids giggled as they overheard him talking on the phone.   He said his friend’s nickname was Hitler because he had a little Hitler moustache.  Then he said “really eh, everyone in my village calls him Hitler eh, and you should too, eh”.  We had no expectations as to how this was going to go, but it turned out George couldn’t end up connecting with Hitler so we ended up shortening our detour and speeding on to Split.

Split is the second biggest city in Croatia and a seaside city that was once the local seat for the Roman Empire.  It’s main attraction, like many places in Croatia, is the old town within the city that is located along the waterfront of the peninsular shaped metropolis.

We had heard many warnings that the traffic in Split was going to be crazy busy, but as Brian chuckled about later, they don’t understand that we are from Toronto.   Our hotel/apartment owner emailed me the location of a nearby parking lot, and with GPS we had very few delays getting into town and we were able to park about 500 meters from the hotel.

Our hotel is in the old town - it’s more of an apartment hotel.  There are a couple of rooms on each floor.  We were met by Natasha who had many nice things said about her online and in the many notes written and pasted in the “lobby”.

We ditched our bags, ran into Blair and Paul and together headed to a nearby square for lunch.  The Taylors had arrived yesterday and we were eager to meet up with them.  After lunch, we walked down to the boardwalk at the water’s edge known as the “Riva”.   We managed to meet up with Jordan, Melly and Brian - it was great seeing them.  Jordan sure seemed acclimated to her surroundings.   She ran down one of the old marble streets, right past us, when we first saw her.

The four of us decided to rent bikes and head down the coast a bit to check out a beach or two.   We found that the furthest beach on the little map suited our needs the best - it was not too busy.   The first beach near town called Bacvice seemed closer to a rave than a beach.  In fact, we soon discovered that Split was hosting a huge EDM festival (sorry grandparents you’ll have to google that one... and no it has nothing to do with Viagra) and there were over 100,000 twenty year olds in town for it.... awesome!

Our beach was called Trstenik.   The water was crystal clear, cold to touch but refreshing once you got in and the beach was what we are seeing as typical Adriatic - small, pointy pebbles and rocks leading in to a rock floor in the water.

The girls decided to sun dry while I snuck over to a bar to watch Uruguay vs France, but it wasn’t too long before they were getting fried and we rode back and returned the bikes.

We saw Kris, Steve and Sam and the rest of the crew, so we made a plan for dinner - Robin volunteered to babysit back at the Taylors while the rest of us would find a place for dinner.

We explored more of the boardwalk,   It’s pretty picturesque - a row of restaurants and shops on one side, restaurant seating in the middle and the water on the other side, with a healthy smattering of park benches, palm trees and other nice landscape features.   It’s about a kilometre long and everywhere you looked you saw people dragging wheeled suitcases around - this seemed to be a main port and transit area.  There were cruise ships and ferries docked just beyond the boardwalk. 

At dinner time, we headed into the old town, weaving in and out of alleyways.   I vowed to Beth to stop eating at restaurants with a waterfront view... they seemed to be the lower end, worse value places that all seemed to have the same menu in every town.   Abby and I had spotted a funky place some hours before, and I had checked out the google rating (4.6/5) so I veered the group there.   With just one objection out of the nine, we sat down to the best meal of the trip.   

Beth and I had the best swordfish with vegetable ragu that we’ve ever had (and I’ve had India’s and Barbados’ best swordfish!).  Others (all 9) had equally delicious meals.  The waiter was fantastic and the ambiance was eclectic but really fun.  

We managed to catch the rest of the Belgium (yay!) vs. Brazil game, then decided to call it a night.  It was great having an adult dinner (with Abby too) and reconnecting with the 4 Taylor adults.  We are looking forward to Dubrovnik!