Split

From Plitvice Lakes we drove to Split, a large-ish city on the coast of Croatia and spent two days there. (And I must comment on the drive into Split, which we timed for smack in the middle of rush hour. It was crazy, and the street signage, as we discovered is the case for much of where we traveled, was nonexistent or extremely unhelpful. Nephi seemed to really have no idea where we were, and was just kind of driving by instinct in the middle of aggressive city traffic until suddenly we arrived, after maybe driving the wrong way up a one way street? we weren't sure, at the exact right parking lot behind our apartment building that had a perfect parking spot open. It was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen and I still have no idea how he did it.)

Split is a major cruise ship stop and had that feel around the main attraction, the ruins of Diocletian's palace. Diocletian was a Roman emperor and by all accounts a real jerk, especially to Christians. He retired in Split and had a whole complex built to accommodate him. The first morning we went to see the palace ruins, which were very impressive. At noon there was a kind of hokey and short recreation of Diocletian and his wife coming out to greet the people.

There was a large bell tower that gave great views of the town.

Everyone went up but me, and the boys said it was a good thing because I might have been a bit nervous, with nothing much keeping anyone from falling off in any direction.

There was a beautiful little atrium and some clappa singers sang a few songs there. It sounded beautiful.

Since Diocletian had been so horrible to Christians, they took great pleasure in eventually repurposing his palace complex for Christian uses, like a baptistry and a chapel. We stopped by to see the treasury, which felt like a small and kind of boring museum, until the ticket taker was charmed by our four boys and couldn't help herself and hopped up out of her chair and gave us a really great impromptu and free tour that made everything seem interesting and significant. The mausoleum, underneath the chapel, has a statue of St. Lucia, who was martyred under Diocletian and had her eyes gouged out. She's the patron saint of the blind. Her statue has some eyeballs on a plate.

The boys thought it was fun to look dead in the mausoleum alcoves.

Joseph took this cool photo of John the Baptist in the baptistry, formerly a temple of Jupiter.

The complex is enormous and really has impressive ruins throughout the whole downtown area of Split.

The next day we went to Krka National Park. I had the idea this would be a quiet, undiscovered sort of place, but it was not; it was also very crowded. Croatia in general is not a quiet, undiscovered place, in our experience. There were more Croatians here, though, and less tourists. The waterfalls were big, and swimming was allowed in one area.

And that was the end of our time in Split. We did get to spend a bit more time than we intended the next morning when we couldn't find one of the apartment keys to turn back in and drove ourselves a bit crazy turning things inside out. We finally left without finding it, although the owner found it later in the washing machine, where I had looked twice (!).