Jamie’s Travels

Our trip to Split started with a 6.5 hour – turned 8 hour train journey. Needless to say we were a bit tired when we got in. That didn’t stop us though. Our Uber driver Ante – turned personal driver – gave us advice of where to go so we wound up on a strip of bars next to the beach. Expensive drinks and weird people was the headline of that place. Also Flora rolled her ankle and had to go home early. On the way out we saw a bouncer use excessive force to beat up some guy as well. All these things are ‘things not to tell your grandparents’ as grandpa would normally put it I recon. It’s fair to say Ante hadn’t given us the greatest advice on location for the night.

The next day a late start led to us sunning ourselves on the beach. A nice long afternoon swim. As a typical white guy from Cambridge does – I burned. Not terribly though so there’s some wins at least. We then headed to Lidl for dinner supplies. A fajita feast. After dinner, Ante took us to the old town for the first time for an explore of the bars. We all unsurprisingly crashed at about midnight and went home.

Our third day was eventful. We rose early and went on a walking tour of the city. After the others enjoyed an authentic Croatia seafood meal. I instead enjoyed some chips…

After lunch Chris, Flora and Niamh headed to the world famous ‘FroggyLand’. A collection of taxidermy frogs in comical scenes. I decided that I’d rather take advantage of the location and go to a beach – wish is also free might I add. In the evening only me, Maddie and Eva wanted to go out. I suppose FroggyLand had really taken it out of them.

For our evening we decided to head into the old town again. This time we were seeking casual calm drinking instead of the binge variety. Turns out Split, despite being known for it’s night life, isn’t actually that great for it (according to our 40 year old tour guide anyway). Casual drinking would up being much more successful. We wondered around for a while before settling on a cafe bar in the centre of the Palace. This was a rather bougie place but the key selling point made it worth it. Not only was it set on the steps of the centre square of the old town – surrounded by impressive towers and spires – but it also had live music performing. It was a very peaceful experience and one I’d recommend despite the higher cost of beer there. Which, in all fairness, is still cheaper than the Dog and Duck.

Our last morning was filled with some cleaning of the apartment and then a short wonder around the old town again. I also got to explore the under Palace. Which was pretty impressive despite being filled with stalls selling cheap goods. It was also used as the set for a few scenes in Game of Thrones. A fact that interested me but no one else it seems… We then grabbed a cup of coffee and said our goodbyes to Maddie and Eva before running for our train back to Zagreb.