Saturday, October 27th, 2007
We heard our friends leaving upstairs around 7am, but we fell back asleep until 11:00am. Traveling with Mrs. B tuckered us out, and we were looking forward to some downtime, catching up on our website (which we know… is 20 days behind!), and planning out our day in Split. We made our way out the door by lunch time, and split (no pun intended) a breaded chicken sandwich at the “Sandwich Bar.” Our first stop was Diocletian’s Palace, a world heritage site built over 1,000 years ago. Interestingly enough, the place looked as old and decrepit (which made it even eerier) as it probably did in the 10th century. Now a days, they hold events in the basement walls, which gave Dermot and Katie the serious creeps about having their wedding there. After enough ‘pre’ Halloween scares, we went to the bus/train/ferry area to be further harassed by women asking to rent us their rooms and to plan the rest of our stay in Croatia.
We picked up groceries to compliment our hand carried Italian wine, and we decided to see if there were any tickets left for the Romeo and Juliet ballet. Just our luck, the fourth tier had availability, and with our $6 tickets, we returned home to enjoy our meal before the show.
While this was Dermot’s first ballet, Katie was nervous that it would suck and he would not want to see anymore ballets…. But to Katie’s dismay, the ballet was incredible (even from the nosebleeds) and she wants to import these wonderful dancers to NYC Broadway. After a gelato to celebrate our inexpensive, yet lovely evening, we headed back to our apartment.
On Sunday, we didn’t realize many things. While we were attempting to catch the 7:00am ferry to Hvar, Katie noticed the discrepancy with her clocks, and she decided to go with Dermot’s Irish cell phone (really Uncle Mick’s) which read 7:00am. Needless to say, we were not catching the 7:00am ferry, so we packed up and headed down to see what next boat was available. We left our $$ for the apartment and dropped the keys in the mailbox, as we strolled through town, surprised at how quiet it was for 8:30am on a Sunday.
After we bought our 9:00am ferry tickets, we realized that Sunday schedules are different. And there is only one ferry back at 17:30. Oops. Before we knew it, it was 8:55am, and we had to run to catch our 9:00am ferry. Only to find that it was in the wrong dock, but not at all rushing to leave, and it was already 9:05am. Confused, we went to the ticket counter to find that Croatia partakes in day light savings time, and we were an hour early….
With our newly found 45 minutes, we confirmed our accommodations in Zagreb for the night at Vera’s hostel in Ravnice (the Ravnice Youth Hostel… I know, we are ‘stretching it’ on the youth part…). She was very sweet and said she would leave us sheets, gave us the entrance code and she would leave our key for us, since we would not get in until after 1:00am.
We caught our 1.75 hour ferry to Starigrad, where we met a bus for a 25 minute ride into Hvar town. In Hvar, the tourist office was closed on Mondays, so we decided to wander around the dock’s on the water’s edge. We ended up at a church, where the last mass of the day was letting out and then turned around and walked all the way to the other end of town where there was a once famous resort in Hvar. The resort was closed and undergoing reservations. Getting hungry we searched for Manegos resturant (recommeded in our research). When we finally arrived, it ended up being closed . . . this seemed to be an unfortunate trend. We grabbed lunch at a different restaurant nearby, which was very good. Refueled, we hiked up the large hill to the fortress in Hvar. The fortress provided picturesque views and was well preserved. All went well until we decided to checkout the prisons in the fortress. Dermot lead the way down the wet, narrow and winding stairs. About 4 steps into the journey, he slipped and fell down the remainder of the stairs. Luckily there were no broken bones, just some nasty bruises and a cut elbow. After some rudimentary first aid in the fortress bathroom, we returned back to town to catch our bus back to the ferry. On the ferry ride back to Split, we sprinted to the bus station and just barely made the bus to Zagreb. On the bus we listened to our iPods and rested after our busy day.
After our 5 hour bus journey, we arrived in Zagreb at around midnight. We waited for the tram to the hostel where we were staying that night. At around 2 a.m., we finally put our bags down for the night and went to our bed.