Split, Croatia

On this day, we had two destinations as they were somewhat close to each other. First was Split, where we spent several hours, and then on to Trogir.

First site was the sunken boat from the storm several days earlier. They had the water area roped off, but it was very broken. The story we heard was a ferry (which lands just to the left of this picture) was impacted by the wind and ran into this boat, causing it to sink. This boat was rafted to a boat, that was rafted to a boat, etc. We don't know if the other boats were also damaged, but just didn't sink. The ferry's were huge.

Our first adventure was a guided tour of old town and it was one of the best we had. There are four gates to the walled city, one on each side, just like the one in this picture. They were huge and the architecture was very similar to other places we had seen. But one thing was unusal about this. All of the area in the picture was at street level and the dwellings were built on top. Originally, this area was the city garbage dump and sewer/drainage system. It took many, many years to clean it up so they could make it accessible again. There are still about 1000 residents in old town today.

Here are examples of architecture styles, as there were several influences during this time period.

I was fascinated with this black granite sphinx, sitting on top of a cript. It is 3500 years old and is the most well preserved. It is an androsphinx because it has a lion's body, but a human head. Notice it has hands instead of the paws of a lion. Folklore legend was to avoid direct eye contact with the sphinx because they were evil and could harm you.

At another gate, we had to pass the Roman Guards, and had a little fun with it. Be careful, you can be one of them, and in the blink of an eye, you are the enemy.

Our last stop was the food market where we had to remind Keith what blueberries were. For one of our meals, he thought olives were blueberries and the girls had great fun giving him a hard time.

This was such a fun tour. We really enjoyed it, and found a few more things we had to bring home.