Finding a balance

It's two nights since we were on the boat but I still feel as if I'm bobbing about in the water.  It's odd how long it takes for one's sense of balance to adjust.
We wandered round Split yesterday, discovering how wildly international its life has been. There are carvings in Catalan, French, Hebrew, and of course in Italian. For 400 years it was Venetian - not captured in war but sold outright by the King of Croatia to the most serene city for gold. Napoleon ran it for a while between 1806-13, straightening roads, modernising, improving the drains and (according to a pamphlet from the Tourist Office) introducing electricity, which must have been nothing short of a miracle at that date. We went to various museums - the Old  Town Hall to see a good collection of  20th century art by local makers, deciding not to go into the Fine Art Museum partly because the woman in the shop was so rude. We decided not to seek out the piano festival because it appeared that today would still be the finalists' heats. Then we walked through the inner suburbs to the Maritime Museum, meeting a charming lady en route who used to live in Belgium, so we resorted to the language of diplomacy and chatted in French for a while.
The Maritime Museum is not too big and very interesting, filled with reasonably or intermittently well-labelled items including a huge ancient pithoi later drilled with holes to be used as a keepsafe for fish, a fine collection of 20th c blocks (pulleys), many models, instruments, various small boats, and culminating in a detailed account of the history of torpedoes - we had on a previous trip to Croatia learned about Robert Whitehead in Rijecka, further up the coast, and how he invented, manufactured and developed these dramatic weapons ready for the great powers to seize them and proceed to blow each orher's fleets to bits, killing thousands of people in the process. The photographs and explanations from the factory in Rijecka are very good and there are various darkly beautiful torpedo cases and component there to see.
Somehow and quite inadvertently we jumped the queue for lunch at a popular cafe called Fife, which has an impressively long and interesting menu including various low dishes such as tripe, liver, veal tongue, etc - none of which were actually available. So we resorted to more usual choices which tasted ok but were a bit cold, and there was in any case a smell of drains along the seafront which slightly reduced our enjoyment.
We found a nice plaque saying Sigmund Freud stayed here in 1898, and it's tempting to speculate whether this is where he came up with the idea of the Split personality......
I made some sketches and paintings, we walked some more, and then we went to rest for a while - venturing out later for supper. It's so easy to overeat when the restaurants bring you extra dishes and tastes, and so-called appetisers are just huge.  A musical stage set up beside us attracted some delighted children when the acts arrived for the sound balance. We had the start of several numbers, a kind of sample of what would be played in full later. Not too loud, thank goodness.
For these last hours we wandered under and around Diocletian's Palace, and heard some wonderful piano playing coming from somewhere in the open-air ruins. The gate leading to the performance was locked but we stood leaning on the gritty walls listening to the glories of Bach and Liszt shimmering round the acoustic space, competing with children calling and passers-by talking too loudly. At the interval we went to enquire - who was the pianist? A tall young man who was locked out as we were, explained it was part of the Piano Loop festival - a recital by a star player called Kemal Gekić. He himself was not only a participant in the competition but a student at the Royal College in London. His girl friend was on the other side of the locked railings. He led us round to the other side of the whole building, round the beautiful Roman remains, through the courtyard filled with merry tourists and their banging street music, and into the performance area inside the Ethnographic Museum. We found seats, and sat to listen to an amazing second half of music. Gekić is a Croatian-born American classical professional, now Professor of Performance at the U of Florida. He looks a bit like Liszt with a great mane of long hair like a lion. His playing is powerful - had to be to drive out the pop music and crowd noises outside. I drew his portrait as he played.  He gave three encores to the small but enraptured audience, and later we showed him the drawing - which he signed.
We came home walking on air. It has been a magic day.
Now - Wednesday morning - is our last day. The church bells have been summoning worshippers. Other residents in this building have been clumping up and down stairs, although it's quite early. We fly home this afternoon, so we'll take our things to the left luggage office by the port bus station, walk up to the Archaeological Musem, find lunch, then head to he airport. We've crammed so much in during this visit.