8-20-19 - Split - The early bird gets the good wine but not the paddle boarding
/Day 65. Leanne Here.
The early bird doesn’t bake in the sun or go paddle boarding.
We are up early for John’s planned day to explore Split. We want to beat the crowds and the heat so John’s researched the tip that you need to be in lines and through the main items in Diocletian’s Palace well before noon. We get to the Palace, built in 304 A.D. for the retiring Roman emperor Diocletian. It is as palatial as one might expect a Roman Emperor might erect for himself. Just a modest little beach cottage just wouldn’t do I suppose, even way back in 300 A.D.
The original blueprint is still intact today and the Palace is actually home to 3,000 Split residents who live in a car-less, quaint, limestone filled streets filled with restaurants, stores, and souvenir shops lining the thin alleys. Underground is where the best Roman intact architecture can be found as the basement floors mirror what the ground floor would have looked like back in 300 A.D. We all enjoy a stroll in the Split City Museum which is built in the palace’s basement. You can see the sewage lines that the Roman’s developed. Yes, people come to look at the late Roman period sewage lines. It’s a thing.
Diocletian built a mausoleum in the Palace for him to be buried in all his glory that he would be adored by many in the afterlife. Diocletian was the Roman Emperor just before Constantine (who legalized Christianity) so he persecuted many Christians built in the mausoleum that Diocletian built for himself to be adored by many in the afterlife. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the Palace was abandoned and remained so until the Croatians moved into the Palace in the 700s. Croatia is a very Catholic country and apparently one with a sense of ironic humor as they converted his mausoleum into a Catholic Cathedral. The Cathedral now has the distinction of being the world’s oldest Catholic Cathedral that is still practicing and did not go any major renovations from its original construction in the 700s. Diocletian must still be turning in his mausoleum and groaning in the afterlife.
We tour the Treasury which contained priceless artifacts from the early churches, the Cyrpt, the Temple, and the Bell Tower (60 meters high). We climb the hundreds of stairs up to the top of bell tower to get some great aerial shots of Split.
Its super hot ~ circa 90+ degrees F - so we decide to head back to our flat by the sea — its air conditioned with (finally) great WiFi and nearby pizza delivery. What else could teens want? A few decide to head to the nearby beach.
To be sweet, John decided to plan out a date night for his parents. He’s picked out a wine and cheese bar for us for 4:30 p.m followed by Croatian wine tasting and a 7:30 p.m. standup paddle boarding Lesson. We said “Is there anyway to switch the order?”
John said he couldn’t switch it. We end up enjoying the wine tasting and deem because the wine tasting was so effective, we would have to postpone paddle boarding for another time. Our waiter at the wine bar is so knowledgeable and passionate about Croatian wine, cheese and meats that we thought it would be simply too rude to leave mid-flight! How would we even tell him paddle boarding over wine?
By this time, we’re buds. About after the third glass, we ask the him (he is about our age) what is was like growing up when Croatia it was part of Yugoslavia. He said it was socialist with one party and government but he had a passport and was free to travel. He said it was better than communist countries but it was not as good as western countries. He shares with us that his life in Croatia since the early 1990s isn’t that much different - its better, but not greatly so but adds that he absolutely loves Split (and has no desire to Split for another city) where he has lived his whole life. We like to ask these questions just to see how people react and respond.
He tells us we were lucky we got there early enough for him to even offer us a 12-glass wine tasting. After glass 12, we told him he was better than paddle boarding and he looks happy but a little bit confused at the comparison.
All in all, the early bird gets the good wine, but not the paddle boarding.
