Church bells. Oh my goodness, the church bells. 6am was welcomed with a loud DONG this morning from the cathedral next door. I rolled over and started unconsciously counting the amount of times the bells rung. There didn't really seem to be any pattern and after the 100th ding-dong (the correct name, I'm sure), I gave up. I knew I wouldn't be going back to sleep anytime soon so rather than wait for my 7:45am alarm, I decided to quietly get up and get ready while my roomie somehow slept through it all.
At 6:30 I snuck out the door and headed towards the water. I went for a stroll along the sea wall and stopped and sat on a bench and took some photos and blogged. I also did a significant amount of people watching, because it turns out a lot of people still out from the night before are around at this time of the morning. Some were passed out on benches, some staggering to their hotels, others just hanging out in the main square speaking very loudly for the early hour. It was kind of nuts.
After a while I started back and on the way stopped to take a photo of the insane yachts in the harbour. The biggest one, the Inception, had a really cute crew man standing at the back and he started laughing at me for taking pictures. Just a little embarrassing.
I found a cafe and sat there and had a latte while reading the news. Then it was time to head back and make my breakfast and pack up before meeting the group at 8:45 to catch the ferry out.
The ferry ride was only an hour long and I slept for most of it.
We arrived in Split around 10:30 and took taxis to our hotel from the port. Our rooms weren't ready yet though so we dropped off our luggage and headed out straight away. We walked back to where the ferry dropped us off and had some lunch quickly before meeting up with a tour guide at 1:30 to take us through the Diocletian Palace.
The palace was pretty neat. Lots of history...but it was so incredibly hot out that we were all having a hard time concentrating and being interested. The lady was extremely knowledgeable though and I felt bad.
The tour ended at 3 and I could hear tennis on a television nearby. I found the source and discovered that the Wimbledon final (Djokovic vs. Feder) was only 5 minutes in. A group of us went off to find a better viewing spot and plopped ourselves in front of the screen at this bar/cafe/ice cream shop for the next 4 hours. It was a good time.
By the time the match ended, it was 7:30ish so we headed to find a dinner spot. We went back into the palace and found this nice little place in one of the many courtyards. I had a tasty chicken, rice and veggie kind of stir fry and a caprese salad.
We had a long walk back to our hotel in the dark after dinner so we grabbed some icecream and started on our journey. We still had to collect our bags from the storage room and check in! It was a long, but awesome day.
Diocletian Palace:
Flowers!:
Bell Tower:
Roman Warriors at the Golden Gate:
Night time palace views:
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