Split

We arrived in Split yesterday morning, and checked into our "accomodations" which consisted of someone's living room. It wasn't very private. Behind the TV were some live rounds, presumably left over from the war. I'm not sure I would want these around with kids in the house!





















Split has two main things: the beaches and Diocletian's Palace. Split was Roman emperor Diocletian's hometown, and he built this palace here around 300 AD.

































Along with the remains of the palace itself, the inner core of the city within the palace walls is also full of other buildings that have been constructed since. It's a living, breathing city in there, full of shops and houses, with laundry hanging up between buildings. Walking around, I am reminded a bit of Venice by the narrow pedestrian streets and maze-like layout. I suppose this may be because Croatia was part of the Venetian republic, and this area was influenced by their culture.









































And, this reminded me of San Marco Square in Venice.
















Here's the boardwalk.
















There's a great market next to the palace, where we bought our produce. The arugula was really spicy! I've been snacking on a bag of figs I bought here.
















It was too cold to go swimming at the beach, but we showed up for a picigin tournament in the morning. Picigin is a casual, fun game played in shallow water in Croatia. I found a picigin ball, and I'm bringing it back to the states to see if I can get some people to play! Though, the waters in California might not be calm enough. Here's how it's played. The ball (like a soft tennis ball) is hit with the hand, and it can't touch the water. It's like hackey sack. Sometimes you have to dive for the ball and make a dramatic save and a big splash. That's where the fun comes in. Show-offs make an overly dramatic dive and splash every time they get the ball. Having a tournament is a bit strange though; I'm not sure how they judge it. The game is just a casual fun thing that kids go down to the beach and play for a bit after school's out.




















So far, most of the Slovenian words I learned are exactly the same in Croatian. The language was called Serbo-Croatian, and was the official language of Yugoslavia. It was really a mix of all the slavic dialects spoken in the Balkans, officially compiled into a language that could help unify Yugoslavia. Since Croatia's split with Yugoslavia, they have tried to distance themselves and take the language back to its Croatian roots, so it was renamed Croatian. Words were artificially changed and there are new words that have been injected into the vocabulary. I'm not sure who makes these new words up.

Croatia's nice. I've heard people say it's laid-back, and like the Hawaii of Europe. I don't know if it's possible to get as chill as Hawaii, but I can see the connection. There also seems to be an Italian influence here. We'll see how the atmosphere changes on an island. The island of Korcula is where we are headed next.