Day 9

It’s Adam!  Today was our full day in the city of Split. We slept in slightly until around 7:30, then got up and made some coffee – figuring we would find some food down in the city. With our Airbnb being near the top of a big hill, the walk down into the city was quite easy (early in the morning when the temperature was cool). The first stop we made (and the biggest attraction in the city) was Diocletian’s Palace. This palace was built in Split for the Roman Emperor Diocletian in the late 200’s AD. The term palace is misleading because it is more like a large fortress with a small town contained inside its walls. The palace was maintained, preserved and rebuilt in portions over time, but still retains the characteristics of Roman times. To get there we walked along the ocean boardwalk until we reached the steps leading to the palace basements. We descended into the basement which is virtually intact from Roman times (and also a filming location for our favorite TV show – Game of Thrones). From there we ascended the steps out of the palace basement and into the main square of the palace. There were a number of columns still preserved in the square. Our first stop was the cathedral just next to the main square. We went inside, climbed the tower, and went down into the crypt. While on top of the tower, Jessica made a “friend” who was a solo traveler that she kindly agreed to take a pictures for. As it turned out, she would not let Jessica leave until she took the perfect picture of her. She did many different poses, and we had to wait multiple times for other tourists to wander out of her picture frame. 10-12 shots later, we were allowed to leave and we quickly headed down the tower steps and back to the square. Nowadays, all the buildings inside the palace walls are occupied mostly by restaurants, stores and small apartments/B&B's. We wandered through the narrow streets for a while until we were really getting hungry.  Luckily, the town market had just set up right outside the palace. We walked over and the first thing Jessica noticed was a stand selling Pag cheese (Pag is a region in Croatia about 70 or so miles north of Split). We had been on the lookout for this for a while since we had heard such great things about this type of cheese. Apparently, it was only sold by the kilogram, so we bought 1 kilo of cheese, but it only ended up costing around 8 dollars. From there, we walked around the market some more. I picked up a local breakfast favorite. I’m not sure what it is called but it tasted delicious. It was two pieces of thin bread (kinda similar to tortillas) with cheese and swiss chard baked inside. Jessica also got a pastry with cheese and ham. After walking around the market some more, we realized everyone was selling cherries. We decided to get a kilo of cherries as well since they were only $2.  Then we found a bench along the boardwalk and had ourselves a great breakfast! From there, we walked around the rest of the town outside the palace and saw the fish market as well as a few different neighborhoods. All the buildings had a very old, stone appearance, and many had green window shutters which seems to be a common theme in the area. Having had enough walking around, we decided to go back up to our Airbnb to rest. It was around noon at this point and was much hotter outside so the 1/2 mile walk straight up the hill to our place was much more difficult than it was coming down early in the morning. Nevertheless, we made it and were glad to have some time to relax. Our Airbnb faces the ocean and has a slanted roof in that direction with 6 windows that can be opened to let the sea breeze inside, so it was very nice after the long walk uphill. We weren't too hungry, so we just had some snacks from lunch. Trying to figure out what to do next, we remembered our Airbnb host mentioning a beach nearby, so we drove the quick 3 km to the beach and relaxed there for an a couple hours. Apparently, relaxing at the beach wasn't enough, so we came back to our place to rest some more. Since we nearly skipped lunch, we were getting hungry and decided to have a early evening dinner. We already had a place in mind from some research prior to the trip and once again walked down the hill from our place and into town. The restaurant was called Konoba Marjan and we were able to get a table out on the patio which had a nice view into town. We ordered mussels in a wine a garlic sauce as an appetizer and it was amazing! The best part was the sauce which we used to dip our bread in. For the main course, Jessica had the pasta with shrimp and truffle oil while I had the grilled shrimp. Both were great and we left very full. We didn't want to end the night early, so we walked back over to Diocletian's Palace and strolled through it as the sun was setting. We saw some performers dancing and then made our way to a nearby grocery store to stock up on snacks for tomorrow. After we walked all the way back up the hill to our place again we were absolutely exhausted and did not waste any time falling asleep!