Split
Today we arrived in Split, Croatia. Split has a long history, going back to the Emperor Diocletian. Diocletian was one of the few Roman Emperors who actually lived long enough to retire. He built his palace here, near his place of birth.
Split is a very pretty town. It Is nestled between a row of mountains and the very blue Adriatic.
We didn’t schedule an organized tour today, deciding to explore on our own. We toured around Diocletian’s palace, which really is more of a fortress with houses and shops inside along many ancient narrow walkways – very pretty. We stopped at a café and bought a couple of souvenirs and mailed some post cards. We knew that Croatia did not use the Euro and we were told by the ship’s staff that the Euro was accepted everywhere. Turns out that wasn’t quite true… we ended up using the bank machine (a very easy process, it turns out – don’t tell Joanne!) once we figured out the exchange rate. We had 3 lemonades and a cappuccino for what amounted to 5 Euro… pretty cheap. We had to buy stamps and the post office only accepted local currency, too. It was fun watching Joanne attempt to buy stamps and postcard from a woman who obviously had no English whatsoever…
We came back to the ship via tender – it was pretty choppy and of course that wasn’t Joanne’s favourite part of the trip. Then we had a swim and we were off to a formal dinner (suit and tie) – very enjoyable and we used our first ‘free’ bottle of wine.
All in all an enjoyable day.
It is interesting to note that we have not once had to clear customs… not in England, Germany, Italy or Croatia. Very strange…
Tomorrow we have a ‘sea day’… so I doubt there will be a blog entry.