We left Krka National Park on the slow boat back to Skradin at 9:30 am and then walked back to our hotel. We had officially checked out of the hotel before we left for Krka earlier that morning, because checkout time was 10:00 am and we knew we wouldn’t be back before 10. So we cleared out our rooms and put all our bags and gear into the van before heading out. But we left our van in the hotel parking lot while we toured the park. We arrived back in Skradin around 10 and walked back up to the hotel to get our van and drive down the coast to Split, the second largest city in Croatia.
Split was pretty interesting. To me it felt and looked a bit like a mix between Athens and Tel Aviv, just much smaller. We went to the old town and bought some tickets to tour everything in the Diocletian’s Palace, including something we seem to do a lot on these trips, climb a clock/bell tower. The view from the bell tower was pretty, but it wasn’t really remarkable in any way. Diocletian was born near modern day Split, and grew up to become the emperor of Rome. He served as emperor for 20 years before abdicating. He built the massive palace (really more of a fortress) as a place for his retirement. We also saw the chapel and the Temple of Jupiter, which was converted into a baptistry at some point over the years.
After touring all of the items on our tickets, we were ready for lunch. We wandered through the city, down towards the promenade along the shore. We ate some lunch there and then wandered some more. We finally found a bakery that sold Leige waffles and other goodies. And, of course, we had a few rounds of gelato.
Later in the day we rented scooters and cruised down to a nice beach where we once again swam in the Adriatic Sea. The water was a great temperature, but the air temperature dropped as we edged closer to sunset. We dried off and rode our scooters to the top of the mountain where we found a giant cross and whole bunch of couples waiting to watch the sunset. The batteries were getting low on two of the scooters, so we headed back to town and dropped them off before heading out for a fancy dinner where we ate way too much, but had a really good time.
