Split ("Splato" for Italians)

Split is the second largest city in Croatia, and it has a beautiful Old Town part, which was originally built as the retirement palace for Roman Emperor Diocletian. So it is very cool! There are beautiful cobblestone walkways, and a small Sphinx imported from Egypt sometime in the 500s.

We visited a very old cathedral, with treasures including the heads (skulls) of saints preserved in silver busts (they have a circular glass hole at the top so you can see the skull inside). They also have an underground crypt ("krypto" for Croatians) where you can light a candle (I lit one for world peace; it seemed appropriate). The goodies from the crypt seemed to have been excavated to upstairs with the rest of the treasures (super old bibles, and tons of fancy funny-looking bishop-type hats). But the acoustics down there were crazy due to the sonty structure and the domes room. Toshi pointed out that the dome is more structurally sound than a flat ceiling would have been for an underground crypt. what a smarty-pants.

Our first night in Split, we ate an incredible fish dinner (shrimp, clams, mussles, calamari, octopus, and 2 kinds of fish: the fish came with heads, tails, and eyeballs on! the waitor actually dissected them at the table and pulled out the bones, etc). We polished off a lovely bottle of red wine from the island Hvar (which we didn't have a chance to visit). I learned that I do like calamari (I was always afraid to try it before).

Also they have enormous shrimp here that you eat like lobster. So I was dreaming about getting more of those shrimp (called "scampi," which I always thought was just a way to prepare shrimp) the whole next day and almost caused a fight with Toshi due to the intensity of the longing for scampi... but we avoided that with a quick trip for some ice cream ("sladoled" in Croatian).

In the afternoon we took a ferry to the nearby island of Brač, which was fun and took only about 45 minutes on the fast boat. The views were splendid, and as you can imagine, Toshi took plenty of photos!

On island Brač, we visited a beach where we sat in reclining chairs and dipped our toes in the water. I bought a new dress with polka dots and it was so nice to wear something new (and something clean!).

After the beach, we searched out a seaside restaurant serving... you guessed it... scampi! And I had a whole plate of them, happily munching away, while Toshi sampled local grilled meats (he liked all but one of them, some kind of fatty sausage). The sun started setting over dinner and finished setting as we took our romantic ferry ride back to Split. It was really one of the most spectacular sunsets we have seen (and boy do we love a good sunset!).