Activities

Walking tour via AirBnb experience (not amazing, but it was only $12- definitely worth $12 :)

“All about Olive Oil and Wine” via AirBnb (super unique experience, you go to this hot Croatian dude’s farm and he shows you around then you have wine and a cheese/charcuterie plate. Interesting way to see a different part of Split!)

Dioclecian’s palace (if you visit here, I’d suggest trying to get a guide, we just walked around and didn’t really know what we were seeing)

Green market (farmer’s market, made me wish I had a kitchen to cook something!)

Eats

Šug (pretty good, not a standout)

Buffet Fife (traditional Croatian, super inexpensive)

Zinfandel (touristy but good)

Gelateria Emiliana (I went here at least twice, must eat!)

Drinks

Noor (very cool tiny cocktail bar)

Accommodation

Heritage Hotel Antique Split (LOVED this hotel, most helpful staff on earth and also a good breakfast)

From Hvar, Margot and I set off to Split, on our final ferry ride of the trip. I’d heard mixed things about Split, some people who had visited felt it was more of a stopover spot, while others said it was their favorite place in Croatia! While I am glad I visited Split, it doesn’t make the top of my list for spots in Croatia. It has some really interesting historical sights, a maze-like old town, and can also be a jumping off point for boat tours (having done that already in Hvar, I didn’t do that in Split).

Once again, I was greeted at the port by my hotel (having someone hold your name on a sign never gets old), for assistance carrying my bags and making my way to the hotel. I stayed at Heritage Hotel Antique Split, where the staff was SO friendly and helpful at every turn, if you ever visit Split, I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Our afternoon was low-key, with lunch at Šug, gelato (for me), and a nap. Rested and refreshed, we joined a walking tour to learn more about the history and key sights of Split.

We befriended another girl on the tour, Vana, whose family is from Croatia and was on her own for a day before they arrived. We recruited her to join us for sunset views and a bottle of wine on Marjan hill, a popular park overlooking the city.

Vana had a recommendation for a Croatian restaurant called Buffet Fife, so we headed there for dinner, where we sampled a bunch of traditional dishes, including stuffed peppers, cevapi (traditional sausage ), beef with gnocchi, and, for the youths of the group, some shots of grappa (I passed on that one).

That evening in Split was the finale of some singing competition…we weren’t able to actually go in and watch it, but stood on the outskirts and listened until a drunk old woman started dancing with us, at which point it was time to move on! We grabbed one last drink at Noor, a very cool cocktail bar in the old town. Because of COVID, everything in Croatia has to close at midnight, which suits my lifestyle just fine! We called it a night and said goodbye to our new friend Vana!

If you read my post on Korčula, you may remember that I went on a Kayaking AirBnb experience; our host Boris said that he had heard good things about a tour in Split that was called “All about Olive Oil & Wine.” So Margot and I booked it, and set off for a day on the farm! Note: we since decided that the tour should be re-named “Farm to Table” because it wasn’t really all about wine or olive oil.

We drove about 20 minutes outside of Split to a town called Klis, where our host Marin showed us his family farm. Similar to the farms in Korčula, Marin and his clan mostly just use their products for their own family and sell some at local farmer’s markets- it’s not a big industrial production. We got to eat figs picked right from the tree, a kind of pear I had never seen before, and learn a bit about making olive oil and curing meats.

Of course, no tour in Croatia would be complete without homemade cheeses, meats, olive oil, and wine…so that’s what we did next! It was all so delicious, but after this, I will need a good monthlong hiatus from anything resembling a cheese plate.

That evening, we visited the well-preserved underground of Dioclecean’s Palace. It looked cool, but the signage didn’t really do a great job explaining it, and we both agreed it would have been much more interesting with a guided tour. For me, the coolest fact about the place was that it’s where they filmed all the scenes of Khaleesi and her dragons in Game of Thrones!

After our not-tour of the palace, we had a quick but tasty dinner at a rather touristy spot called Zinfindel, and then set off for an evening stroll around town. Tonight, instead of a singing competition, there was some kind of…children’s dance festival thing happening (“Mali Split” or “Little Split” is what the sign said). Like the previous night, we couldn’t officially enter the event, but were able to find a spot to view it for a bit. While I had no idea what was going on, it seemed like fun for the local families!

The next morning was a little bit sad! It was finally time for Margot and I to part ways, with me continuing on in Croatia, and Margot headed to Berlin to work there remotely for the week. We had one last small adventure, climbing the bell tower for, YOU GUESSED IT, views!

Then we took a quick lap around the green market (farmer’s market) in search of Soparnik, a local speciality. Soparnik is kind of hard to describe, but it’s very thin layers of pastry with Swiss chard and olive oil in between. Our walking tour guide told us that you can get Soparnik in bakeries, but the only good one is sold by one woman at the green market, so we tracked her down and had a taste, yum!

Snack in hand, and hugs goodbye to Margot, I went to go pick up my rental car, about which I had MAJOR ANXIETY. I am already a nervous driver, and add on top of that being in a foreign country, and driving a stick shift; my first car was actually a manual, so I know how to drive one, but it’s something I do only about once every two years. But it was time to conquer my fears and hit the road to visit some of the inland National Parks in Croatia: Krka and Plitvice Lakes!

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