Day 15. Wednesday 15 April.

A little anecdote from yesterday. We had looked into a ‘dress’ shop two days ago, admiring a vibrant red dress. It had gone, replaced by a coat (the weather had changed). The shop keeper was having a smoke and a coffee opposite with a mate – recognised us, got up, sank back into her chair…

Alarms set for an early ferry ride to Split – which meant, as usual, that neither of us slept much! We need to accept paying a much higher price for travelling later in the mornings rather than having sleepless nights waiting for alarms might be worth it. But then we’d have less time at destination….

Ferry ride was calm and on arrival D’s first task (logistics star) was to check out the bus station for our ongoing trip on Friday, (ferry to Split then bus to Šibenik). All sorted.

First visit was to the Dominican Church and Monastery of St. Catherine of Alexandria. Some interesting modern renditions of the Stations of the Cross.

Split old town is basically the Diocletian Palace, a mix of ancient and very, very ancient STONE: walls, columns, arches, cornices, architraves, some impressive statues, …mostly on fairly flat ground.

Highlights were the Vestibule and the ceiling in the Baptistry (originally the temple to Pluto). We got free entry here when T said, ‘we don’t have a ticket…& it’s his (D’s) birthday’.

 We inevitably encountered tour groups, but there was no real crush, although you certainly didn’t get in their way! The Yellow walking tour lady in the Peristyle (interior courtyard) was trying hard to get customers, seemingly unsuccessfully.

The mix of eateries & bars  is interesting: you can have coffee but no food, pastries but no coffee…We settled on a sweet custard pastry from a bakery after a coffee (finally,  getting  brown sugar), then later for lunch it was a couple of tasty filled rolls. Within the narrow alleyways, fashion, shoe & souvenir shops were open. And a first: a FISH MARKET!

And a couple of oddities…

And two more…

The Art Gallery had a couple of eye-catching exhibitions, but the Little gallery of Split City Museum had a free display of the works of two artists, Karin Grenc and Ana Marija Botteri, titled Ecce Homo, which focused on the pain of Christ and the common man. The young man attending this exhibition confessed to knowing nothing about art; he was a ‘student just minding the shop.’ We suggested that he make up a story about the artworks: the pain of Christ, the common man & then he added, ‘& the two artists’.

The Art Gallery…

Little gallery of Split City Museum

We abandoned the idea of a hop on & off bus, returning early to the port for a relaxing before the 1600 ferry home – notwithstanding that the directions given with our ticket sent us to the wrong wharf, which we fortunately twigged to.

Another tiring day – well over 12k steps again, and lots of those were up and down steps!

Dinner preparation of a Mediterranean style seafood pasta dish had started the previous night. Delicious.