Downtown Split is sprawling. It’s a tourist-jumping off point, where cruise ships and smaller ferry boats dock, taking travelers on day-trips and longer excursions to the many islands of the Dalmatian Coast.
I hear the expression Dalmatian Coast and it conjures images of water lapping against a land lost in time. Well, apparently the water hasn’t lapped enough.
A Croatian friend of mine takes me on a day trip to the island of Hvar, where we are literally crawling on jagged rocks to find our way into the water. “Welcome to the Dalmatian Coast,” he laughs, as I look at my hands to see if they’ve drawn blood on my rock-climb down into the water. The coast-line of Croatia is rocky, to say the least, and not sandy as I am accustomed to, and prefer. It doesn’t make for the most comfortable diving board into the Adriatic Sea, but that’s what makes this coast unique.
There is a sandy beach in the center of Split, at Balvice Beach. It sits beside a popular nightclub complex, considered one of the liveliest on the Adriatic.
In Split, be sure to visit Diocletian’s Palace. Dating from 305 AD, it is one of the best preserved Roman buildings in the world, only excavated in the past decades. You can tour the basement halls to get a feel for the grandiose design of Emperor Diocletian’s sea-side escape. And above ground, the original layout of the town as it developed through the early centuries has been preserved to form the modern core of Split, with restaurants, cafes, and bars.
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Benjamin Thomas
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