Split Personality
It is fun staying right inside the Diocletian’s Palace. It feels like a step back in time to venture out the front door onto ancient paving stones, shiny with age. Nearly 1,700 years after Diocletian’s palace was built, it still stands and is now inhabited by trendy cafés and restaurants, groovy shops and of course, a steady stream of tourists. It’s crazy to this a whole neighbourhood has sprung out of the grounds of this once palatial abode.
After sharing the breakfast room with a bunch of loud football fans, here for the big game last night between HNK Hajduk Split and AFC Ajax, we had a family meeting about how to tackle our day. I am a sucker for a walking tour so that was my preference but Sam had found a brochure in the hotel lobby, where you could scan a QR code, plug in your headphones and have a self-directed guided tour with a commentary. It was free so we figured we had nothing to lose. Gathered together in the shadow of the bell tower, fingers poised on the play button, we counted to 3 and launched our tour. The Palace was teeming with people, multiple tour groups vying for space and yelling to be heard above the din. Our AI generated female tour guide sounded like Barbie and said: ‘e dot g dot’ for ‘example’. She was not easy to listen to and I, for one, couldn’t concentrate on a word she said. Ross would’ve been happy to press on but the rest of us, not so keen.
Toby, our resident speedy Googler, and self-confessed fun-fact-lover, let his fingers do the walking, picking a random object we could see and giving us an expert on-the-spot commentary. Much better than Barbie! We appointed him our (slightly reluctant) tour guide and he did an awesome job filling us in on the ins and outs of the Palace. ‘Touring With Toby’ was born.
Split’s Old Town is built within the remains of the summer holiday house of Roman Emperor Diocletian (the guy with no first name - kind of like Madonna). This power-hungry tyrant ruled the Roman Empire for 21 years before deciding he'd had quite enough of the job and retired to his modest pad here on the Dalmatian coast. The massive, fortified palace, complete with granite columns imported from Egypt, sphinxes and grand courtyards, also has sweeping views of the Adriatic Sea. Not bad at all.
Diocletian, who was deluded enough to think he was divine, demanded his subjects worship him solely. For this reason he had a particular dislike of the Christian church, which obviously refused to bow a knee to him. In 303, along with his cruel sidekick Galerius. he initiated an edict to exterminate Christians. Mass killings took place with people burned alive, boiled over open flames along with other unspeakable cruelties. Scriptures were thrown into bonfires and the churches were destroyed. Not a great time to be a Christian that’s for sure.
After Diocletian died, the Christian church rose up to turn the tables, converting the very impressive, perfectly octagonal mausoleum he was buried in, into a cathedral that still remains today. (They got knocked down but they got up again, you’re never gonna keep them down 🎶)
Dio’s remains were swapped out for the bones and ashes of the many martyrs he’d killed, with most traces of his reign obliterated. Take that.
The massive bell tower, attached to the Cathedral formerly known as a mausoleum, is hard to miss. Rising 57m above the palace (and covered in some whacky statues of cows), it was just begging to be climbed. We paid the fee for the privilege and commenced the soaring ascent up the exceptionally tall stone steps that -just saying - aren’t easy for the vertically challenged. Some sections didn’t even have railings. An American guy behind me exclaimed ‘Holy Cow!!’ - a sentiment I shared exactly. (I wondered if that weird cow statue outside might, in fact, be the Holy Cow - patron saint of super steep stairs?)
The panoramic views from the top of the tower were magnificent, stretching beyond the palace to the sea and mountains all around, making the hairy climb worth the effort.
Ross took one for the team, dropping our dirty clothes at the laundromat while Toby, from ‘Touring With Toby’, took the rest of us to a fantastic cafe for lunch. The coffee was perfect and the food sensational, including Molly’s avo toast Split-style, pairing eggs, piped avo, beetroot hommous, blueberries, tomatoes, onion and grapes. She raved about it.
A little film crew from Split University were conducting a survey to see if tourists could recognise Croatian words and decipher their meaning. They grabbed Toby and Sam to come before the camera and try their luck. Not surprisingly, they did amazingly well! Next Ross and I jumped in for a go and, not surprisingly, we were pretty hopeless.
Our next stop on our tour with Toby was to be Kasjuni Beach, just an 8 minute bus ride from the old town. Tobes downloaded the app and navigated successfully to the bus stop but the timetable was dodgy and we ended up having a longer wait than expected. A guy with a tuk-tuk approached us to offer us a ride. ‘Going to the beach?’ (The towels must have been a giveaway).
‘I give you ride - €5 each’. It was tempting but a bit more expensive than the bus so we declined, telling him the bus was due to arrive any minute. ‘No’, he said, ‘bus not leave for 20 minutes’. Just after that the bus turned up and Ross gave him a little ‘see you were wrong’ look, right before the bus driver disembarked his bus and informed us he’d be leaving in 20 minutes. Doh! We’d burned our tuk-tuk bridges now.
Pretty little Kasjuni Beach with its clear blue water and gravelly white stones was down a hill from the main road and lined with palm trees. The bay curved around beneath a mountain, the far end reportedly a nudist hang out. Molly, who never misses an opportunity to whip out her binoculars, confirmed the reports were true. Ross and the boys had a chilly dip as the sun came out to warm us up. Our bus fare had included 60 minutes of travel & Molly’s conspiracy theory that the bus coming every 90 minutes was not just unfortunate timing, did hold some weight.
Smoothies and juices were in order after the beach and we met a legend of a guy, Antonio, who had just opened his brand-spanking new juice bar in town. His son was a huge Bluey fan and has started speaking English with an Aussie accent!
Touring With Toby organised a wine-tasting at a swanky establishment called ‘artičoka’ but when we arrived it looked a bit exclusive. We popped up to the rooftop restaurant instead, were seated, given menus and water before realising there was nothing vego on the menu for Molly. We just had a drink and some bread with an awkward goodbye and headed back into the palace for a fun dinner at Parasol, a hip and happening little bar/restaurant with a trendy retro vibe and a DJ spinning funk and soul which sounded great but made conversation a little tricky. A very fun night!
