Boat shows and black cats.

Day 5, Part I

Split, Croatia

After such a good night’s sleep, we went into town to see what it had to offer in the daylight. Just outside the wall, there was this small park, with a large fountain, a large statue, a lot of pigeons, a few young couples and this old woman cleaning out plastic bottles she found in a bin. The trees shaded us from the sun and the heat, which got quite intense at times.

There was a large market in town today. There were a number of stalls selling clothes in one area, some stalls selling touristy stuff like photo frames and postcards, and another lot of stalls selling fruit and vegetables in another area, one stall had a large bunch of bananas, which Rob had to take a photo of, giving it the caption ‘A Banana Split’, and I’m afraid there were many of his puns to come.

The town was much busier than the night before. But there were some tourists, too, many from the US. But being a place popular with foreigners, the people from here could understand English quite easily, as we didn't have a clue about Croatian. But as time went on, we picked up a couple of words. Republika, Hrvatska, pivo, grad. And what was also useful is that almost every country left spoke similar languages and had similar words.

Getting a pivo was always good. The local beer was good, and also cheap. It was different to German or British beer. The volume is normally higher, and the taste would be hoppier and crispier. In shops, a half litre bottle would come to around 8 Euro cents, but in bars and restaurants, the same beer in the same bottle (or equivalent in draught) would rise to a couple of Euros. But it was still cheaper than what we were used to. And as I didn’t have to drive that day, we decided to get one in a place on the Narodni Trg, or Nation Square, or People’s Square (depends on how it’s translated).

We walked on around the maze of alleys and tiny courtyards, stopped off at a bakery for some Croatian stuff. It was good, but we had no idea what it was, and the woman there couldn't help us, being a non-English speaker and that. But sitting on the wall outside of the bakery, we had the pleasure to listen to some delightful piano music coming out of a window above. I’m not sure if it was Beethoven, Mozart or Haydn, but it was interesting. A few notes were missing, and some wrong notes were played, too. But whoever was making this music; it was good if it were an orang-utan or a two year old playing it.

On the front, or the Riva, as it was called, there was some kind of boat and yacht show going on, which we just happened to miss, and they were packing up. To be honest, I was more interested in the architecture of the walls, which dominated the little benches and the palm trees that stretch the length of the waterfront. The walls were ancient, as could be told by the stones and small windows, which often had laundry lines between them.

Apparently, in my absence, a forklift drove along the front and somehow drove into a white stone bench, breaking off a large chunk in the process; however, he seemed to have just carried on his business pretending nothing had happened, in a way, the best thing to do.

We spent the day wandering around doing nothing apart from taking photos, sending postcards, admiring the view of the bay and the architecture of the walls and the buildings within them. It really was a lovely city with a lot of character. Everything about it was good, from its great location on the coast with its imposing thick walls, to uneven and old paving slabs along the streets, and I wonder how many people have walked over those stones over the centuries they’ve been there, and also, who has walked on them? Maybe a Roman Emperor at first, then other important figures over the centuries. Could Shakespeare have walked on them? After all, he did write a play set in Dalmatia. I know that the comedian/actor/writer/traveller Michael Palin was here a couple of years ago when he did a journey through Eastern Europe on his most recent series, which I thought I’d give the book a read, especially being in the same area!

After a while wandering about, we went into another recommended restaurant called The Black Cat, an appropriate name for all the cats living in the city. There were two parts of it, one was in the building across the road from we went to. It was a large marquee style structure, with plant-covered railings as windows. The furniture wasn’t garden furniture, though. The chairs were tall and wooden and the tables seemed solid, so presumably they weren’t the plastic unstable tables from B&Q, but we couldn’t tell for certain due to the white cloth covering it.

The restaurant served mostly oriental food, such as Thai and Chinese stuff and some curries. As we were sitting down, we overheard an Englishman telling his daughter about the Bermuda Triangle and the Tropics of Capricorn and Cancer and other geographical stuff, which seemed quite a lot for a girl that age, who was no older than ten. He spoke in a rather posh voice, and with his knowledge about where things were, and in a conversation with another Englishman later about airlines and flights and stuff, we established he was a pilot. He was probably a regular at the restaurant, otherwise he seemed to have got know the Englishman quite well by being on first name terms and that, as he was the owner of the place.