Day6 🇭🇷 “Croatia - Split”

Today we woke up in Ig, Slovenia at around 7:30. We had our breakfast, put everything in the car and headed for our long journey back to Croatia - this time though on the coastal side of the country. Our destination was Split, the second largest city of Croatia after the capital Zagreb, and the largest city of the Croatian coast. The journey was long, specifically 460 kilometres and about 4.50h of driving. I started the drive but Lampros had to do the last 2.30h cause I got super tired. We both fell asleep when the other person was driving so it was only fair we “split” the passenger seat (see what I did there??!). The journey was rather tiring. I forgot to mention that we crossed the borders without even stopping. This is EU for you! We got to Split after all that driving and tried to find somewhere to park so we could go and eat. We found a parking that charged 1.50€ per hour, one of the cheapest around this area and headed off to a small hidden pizza place I found after I woke up. The pizza was delicious and they were super fast getting them ready. Once we had eaten we felt a lot better and thought we would walk around Split for a bit and see the attractions. Google says that more than 900,000 tourists visit Split every year. Which was true. It was super crowded, a lot of tourist not paying attention where they’re walking, taking photos of everything, I won’t say anymore cause then you’ll accuse me of being antisocial😜. But yes, both Lampros and I can say that this type of vacation is not our cup of tea. Nevertheless, we did see Diocletian’s palace and the small alleyways around the old town which are beautiful. Diocletian is best known as the Roman emperor who established the “tetrarchy” rule of four - which meant that four other junior co-emperors (including himself for some time) were ruling the empire, two in the East and two in the west. Each co-emperor would rule a quarter of the empire. In the east ruled Likinios and Galerios and in the west Maxentios and Constantine (the one that was born in Nis of Serbia and established the διάταγμα της Ανεξιθρησκίας). Of course you can imagine that the co-ruling would not go well, and in the end, after a few battles, Constantine became the one ruling emperor of the empire. No wonder he was named Constantine the Great and also a saint for the Orthodox Church! (For those wondering, Constantine and Eleni have their Namedays together in Greek Orthodox Church, Constantine is after this emperor and Eleni was his mum - she was one of the first people who was baptised orthodox and legend says that she discovered the Holly Cross).
We didn’t stay in Split for long, we decided we would wake up early in the morning so we can (hopefully) enjoy the city when it’s more empty. We decided we would visit a shopping mall (again!) and buy our snacks from the super market that was there. After our walk around the mall, we came to our accommodation - which is a students campus! From what we’ve gathered, Split rents out the student accommodations to tourist during the summer season and lets students live here in the winter. We’re not entirely sure who gets the money from the bookings - is it the university? The city? Not sure. But still, it’s a very pleasant place to stay, has free parking and is a fun building!
We’ve had our showers, we’ve eaten our snacks and we’ll be getting some rest. Tomorrow we will hopefully have a swim too!Read more