Splitsville

When you get off the bus in a Croatian cities the first thing you are going to see is a wall of people hawking various goods.  Most of whom are older woman trying to rent private rooms to the tourist coming into town for the first time, but you also see young woman trying to encourage people into restaurants and young men trying to sell excursions or pub crawls.  Who you don't see in the fray at all is older men, but if you keep your head up you will suddenly start to see them in the corners or sitting at tables nearby keeping an eye on everything.  The best thing you can do for yourself is grab your bag and get the heck out of there.  If you just sit there on your butt for longer than a minute you are just leaving yourself open to pickpockets and all other ne're do wells. 

The Split bus station was in the middle of the sparkling blue harbor half-way down the white paved Riva Promenade.  Following my own advice, I grabbed my bag, pulled out my map and headed away from the water to find the hostel.  After five hours on  bus, with nothing but Bosnian cookies to eat and I was starving.  I just hopped I could find the hostel quickly and then find some food.  Unfortunately the directions to the hostel, which had made perfect sense on paper, melted down at first attempt to put them in practice.  After wandering around a less then ideal neighborhood for 30 minutes I headed back to harbor to look for the tourist office, cursing poor maps and there makers to the seventh circle of Hell the whole way.  

Nearly back to the bus stop, I was distracted by a sandwich shop.  I utilized my foolproof strategy for getting food store owners who didn't speak English, pointing and smiling.  This was always surprisingly effective for, while I almost never got what I expected, I didn't starve.  

As hard as I tried, I could never make heads or tails of the Croatian language.  It always sounded like an impenetrable mishmash of Italian and Russian to me, with the soft rolling vowels of a latin tounge and the harsh consonants of a Slavic one.  After a week, all I was able to pick up was the phrase "Dobar Dan", whose use is similar to Aloha, and "Molim" meaning please.   By the by, those two, hand gestures and exceeding politeness proved generally effective in Croatia.  

After a quick pit stop at the tourist office, I was on my way again.  The new directions took me almost 90 degrees from the original directions and within my  first sight of Diocletian's Palace.  Originally built by the Roman Emperor Diocletian as a retirement home in the forth century AD, the grounds have been continually inhabited since them.  In some cases they have repurposed old walls into new structures, and in others they have just built on top of them.  Its a warren of apartments, stores, churches, narrow streets and small plazas.  I had specifically chosen to not book a hostel within its labyrinth interior because I knew I had no chance of finding it.  Goodness only knows what pizza delivery men do in there.  

I shadowed the outside wall of the palace past a large fish market until I ended up in the open space to the east of it.  There I dodged right and then left up an alley, found a small sign leading up a third, and suddenly found the best hostel in the entire world, CroParadise Green.  I can not speak warmly enough about the spot, I mean look at it. 

Photo Courtesy of CroParadise

Its got everything a girl on the road could want, large rooms, few beds,  a kitchen, and lockers. There was even a TV with cable and a movie library. Hey, standards are low when you become a backpacker and only three strangers in my room was something to celebrate.  The hostel was actually broken into two apartments in different buildings due to some strange Croatian hostel law that limited the number of beds a hostel could have to 16, so the broke the hotel's 32 beds in half.  This was quite literally the only place I was in who actually followed the law, everyone else just bribed the officials when they came for the inspections.   

When I cam into my room and dropped my stuff I met Michael, the first of many many many Australians I would meet in my travels and his new British friend Mark.   They had that Common Wealth camaraderie that I quickly learned to envy, this time exemplified by there shared love of rugby Youtube videos.  It just so happened that nearly the whole hostel had turned over the night before.  To celebrate everyone being in a new town, the lot had signed up for a pub crawl later that night and the boys asked if I wanted to come to. Having never gone on one, I happily accept and headed out for an afternoon of sight seeing before night fall. 

I also met Hannah and Sophie, two super nice girls from England.  The whole hostel ended up skyping with Hannah's mom for a few minutes.  While they don't factor to much into this story, they come in much later and deserve at least a nod now.  

My words will fail to describe the true craziness that is the palace grounds.  Nothing has been torn down in 1700 years, just reincorporated into new buildings.  Buildings are stalked on top of each other, streets end in walls and windows are poked through ancient walls.  I have no idea how they got plumbing into there.  

I headed into the architectural madness through the Eastern "Gold" Gate.  The original Palace also had the Silver, Iron and Sea gates.  Please consider the next 12 photos as the Split Dozen.

The area to the left of the gate, old, bordered up windows complete with new windows and shutters.

The old exterior walls have been incorporated into new apartments who utilise the UNESCO World Heritage Sight any way that works. 

Over each gate is an ancient and tini chapel...

Stairs to the chapel over the eastern gate

Eastern Chapel 

The small chapel over the eastern gate felt haunted.  I did not want to, nor attempt to go through that stone arch way because whatever IT was didn't want me to.  You all can laugh at me, but I have heard far to many ghost stories and watched to many Doctor Who's to ignore the feeling that the walls have grown eyes.  

One of the wider streets

Though I didn't see it myself, there is apparently a street who's name roughly translate to "One Man Wide Way".  I have no doubt it exists.

Layers and layers of humanity

An arch to the past

An unmissable feature of Split is the Palace basements.  These were the old store rooms and subterranean spaces of the palace, and the current city is literally built upon the old.  Now they are deserted and super duper creepy.

Foundations of a city

The door out

Standing in a 4th Century basement, looking forty feet up  to an 18th Century apartment complex

Standing just outside the Sea Gate, 1700 years ago I would be swimming, and the coolest person in the world because I was from the future.

Main square

Sometimes the line between ruin and a house is a fine one

Now, I can't say to much about the pub crawl due to the fact that my parents read this blog.  However I would like to warn you all about Rikija, the national liquor of Croatia.  It can be made of fermented fruite, honey, or just about anything you have laying around.  And its evil.  Pure pure evil.  Its like tequila's angrier, bitchier sister and the next morning I felt like this...