Escape from Pretty

At last, a real city! Split has real suburbs with buildings some of which are ugly and it has cement factories on the outskirts and farmers’  markets and real department stores and concert halls.

There’s only so many posts a traveller can write about cute little towns with narrow medieval streets or beautiful Venetian era stonework. As seen below, this time in the nearby town of Trogir.

That’s not to say that Split isn’t a lovely historic location - just that it’s not _only_ a lovely historic location. But history there certainly is. Here the old is part of the living fabric of the city. Spit’s most notable Roman remain, Diocletian’s palace, is incorporated into the city itself - so that some ice cream kiosks and grocery stores boast ancient roman walls and the original arches and columns of the palace wall can be seen above restaurants and shops.

As with most of Croatia’s old towns, the original structures have been added to continuously over the millenia. It’s confusing to read the info signs on notable old buildings, because more often than not the original Roman design was altered in Byzantine times, expanded during the Baroque and partly demolished or renovated in the 19th century. So I usually just go with ”old”.

Split feels like a living Croatian city for Croatians (a local town for local people), despite the tourists. 

Split is also, in some places, distinctly whiffy. Though apparently the eau de rotten eggs on the waterfront promenade Riva is due to the natural sulfur springs that are located beneath the city and flow into the sea, not poor personal hygiene or bad plumbing.

Split also offers a rather wonderful opportunity to head for the hills. Marjan Forest park, a woody peninsula, starts just at one end of the seafront promenade. You go up hundreds of stairs, through wooded hillside, past old churches to end up at a viewpoint with quite the view of the islands outside Split.

If you soldier on towards the tip of the peninsula the crowd thins out and it feels like you have the whole forest to yourself. 

Heading out on a less used track towards the furthest away beach of Bene, I started hitting obstacles. More and more fallen trees lay across the path until the path became a bit of an agility course. However I soldiered on until I reached the beach and the extent of the havoc became apparent. 

In June, a powerful supercell storm had hit Split - and it certainly had hit Bene beach! In fact officially the beach was closed. Unofficially a few hardy hikers and I made the best of the situation and claimed the discarded and slightly mangled beach chairs and soaked in the sea.

I wondered why the clearing of the storm damage was taking so long. In Finland the trees would certainly have been removed in the three months since the storm. According a reliable source, the main reason was a shortage of skilled lumberjacks and forestry machines. Two things that Finland is certainly not short of. So here’s a tip to all unemployed lumberjacks. There’s plenty of work in Croatia!