We spent a quiet morning at the hotel. We woke up late, and although we had not done the near-obligatory walk on the top of the Dubrovnik city walls, John was not feeling in the mood to deal with heat and crowds, and by the time we were ready to leave for town, it was pretty certain we would be dealing with both of those things. So we lounged around our room with its lovely view of the Lokrum island forest preserve, and after packing up we we lounged around the pool with its lovely view of Dubrovnik. I know that I may have missed a certain amount of history on this leg of the trip, but we also have to be aware that we cannot do things quite as non-stop as we once did.
Around three o’clock we left the Gran Villa Argentina to go to the port to catch the ferry to Split, our next stop. It is not entirely easy to get between these two places. As part of the settlement of the Homeland War, Bosnia was given a stretch of coastline just north of Dubrovnik. The exact nature of the rights of the Croatians to travel across it has never been clarified. Most days there are no border controls, but occasionally there are long delays to check passports and car insurance. For this reason, most of the guidebooks recommend taking the sea route even though it is not all that quick. There is strangely no air service between the two cities.
We had a very chatty Uber driver who normally guided tours for cruise ship passengers, but happened to not be working that day. We enjoyed talking with him, and learned that sometimes there are as many as 7 cruises ships in town at one time! There were three or four today, and that made up fairly happy with our decision to not deal with the crowds on the city walls.
We found our boat without difficulty. We had to wait for about 15 minutes before they started to board us. I talked with an Englishman who had been living in Australia for most of his life and his Swedish wife. He wanted to talk about Donald Trump, but I could not think of anything I wanted to say on that subject other than wishing that the Democrats had nominated a person other than Hillary Clinton.
The ferry was remarkably not that crowded. Apparently the one that leaves a half hour later is usually packed. Unfortunately, there was a woman with two young children on board, and these two, Luca and Laura, were in the full force of the “terrible twos.” (I rather doubted that they were named after the Luke and Laura of General Hospital fame, but you never know….) After a few minutes of listening to the children screaming, passengers slowly moved from the most desirable seats in the front of the boat to the less scenic, but quieter, accommodations in the rear.
They ferry operators did not allow any passengers on deck while the ship was moving, and I did not bother trying to take photographs through thick sheets of plexiglass. The scenery was quite stunning, however. I wish I did have some pictures. However, I was able to put together a map of our journey thanks to Google Earth and Skitch.
It took about four and a half hours to get to Split. John and I read and napped — the latter when Luca and Laura were taking a break from tantrums — for the entire way.
In Split we discovered that there was no good taxi access to our hotel, and everybody advised us to walk the half mile or so from the port to the old walled city. We have in retrospect overpacked for this trip, and neither of us enjoyed schlepping the bags through crowded city streets. Split is the second largest city in Croatia, and it is very much a real city with real city congestion on its streets and sidewalks. When John found out that our accommodations, a small hotel in the old walled city was on the second floor with no elevator, well, I thought “unforgiven" might be more than just a Clint Eastwood movie. But we managed to get him and all our bags to the room.
We are staying at a place called the Hotel Palace Augubio. Despite the grand name, it only has four rooms and we learned that we are the only guests tonight. I have never had a hotel, even a small one, completely to myself. The rooms are small, but absolutely spotless. The air-conditioner works, but I wish it were a trifle stronger.
We then went out to explore and get some dinner. We are just steps from the former palace of the Emperor Diocletian. Split had its first heyday in the late Roman period, the time when there were two Caesars, one east and one west, and two Augustuses, again split between the two halves of the empire. Diocletian was in many ways an usual emperor. He was Dalmatian, not Italian, and he came from a very modest "working-class” background, not the aristocracy. He was infamous for his persecution of Christians, the most severe in the first three centuries of the faith. He was famous for being the first emperor to abdicate, and he retired to Split and built a palace here to spend his last years. The remains of that palace are still quite visible in the center of town.
Not surprisingly, given Diocletian’s persecution of the church, the cathedral was build almost on top of his palace, as if to make a point of who had really won the battle between empire and faith.
We walked around enjoying the warm evening.
We had a cheap but quite filling dinner at an outdoor cafe on one of the squares. We continued to wander about for a bit, and then headed back to our own "palace."
