If I’m honest, I have to admit that we found not all that much we wanted to do in Split.  Which was great, since “not all that much” was precisely what we were pretty keen to do for a few days.  After I’d spent a busy couple of days running around Rome, I was a little touristed out.  And that wasn’t helped by the overnight ferry that got us from Italy to Croatia.

(Well, actually, the ferry was fine.  It was the “our religion apparently doesn’t require us to be considerate of other people” group of bothersome Christians on a god tour that wasn’t.  Apparently the way to make their deity happy involved making everyone else in the vicinity unhappy, conducting an hour-long chant-filled and rosary-beaded church service among the congregation of passengers in their seats.  Starting at 10.30pm.  While others (me) tried in vain to sleep (or even just think) in the midst of the chanters and choristers.  Thought of the day:  if annoying the hell out of everyone around you is truly what pleases your god, then your god might just be a bit of a prick.)

Anyhow, Split was a destination in which we gladly parked our arses doing little but enjoying cafés and cakes and various forms of minced meat.  I have fond memories of an excellent fast food trailer near our accommodation, at which I hungrily devoured ten ćevapčići followed by a delicious hamburger featuring a large slab of bacon slapped on top of a succulent feast of burger meat.  It was gut-rumblingly good.  And the café across the road was good enough – their coffees and cakes, and their comfortable sunshine and (to us, at least) laughably fantastic prices – that we graced it with our presence at least once every day until we moved on to Dubrovnik.

So while we did explore the town, climb to the lookout on the hill on near the point, meander among the market stalls, climb the bell tower, eat our fair share (and more) of various typically local grilled meat products, and stroll the beaches, we didn’t ferry out to the islands.  We didn’t snorkel.  We didn’t sail.  We didn’t boldly go, nor partake in any of the other no doubt fantastic experiences this particular part of the Croatian coast has to offer.  We relaxed.  (I guess I’ll just have to come back and sail around the islands some other time!)

I suppose it could be argued that our first stop in Croatia was boring, then – moreso than, say, that of the two English guys who left our hostel dorm the day after we arrived.  The ones who left looking very seedy indeed, leaving in their wake enough empty two litre bottles of no-doubt-exquisite-quality bargain-basement-priced local beer, enough discarded food wrappers and enough empty packs of paracetamol to give a pretty good idea of how they’d spent their week.  Apparently Split can be quite the party town.  But for us it wasn’t, and we were happy with our choice, and glad to enjoy a lazy introduction to the Balkans.  We achieved everything we wanted to.  Including figuring out what the hell we might consider doing for the next few weeks, exploring what my Year 7 geography class taught me to locate on a map as the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.  And having done that figuring and considering, we left with a pretty good feeling that we were going to enjoy the exploring.  A lot.

[Sorry, no pictures on this post since my camera was indisposed.  Pictures will return once I catch up to Zagreb in a couple of posts time, I promise!]