Split

We've sailed a few times on the Lady Olivia, and of course her owners have other guests from time to time. It's quite funny imagining how this hosting experience must be different for them with the varying personalities, and also odd thinking about 'others' being in 'our' cabin. 

After a very pleasant riverside meal to say 'thank you' on our last evening, we packed our bags and bade farewell to our friends yesterday morning to head off to Split. The bus station was thronged with young people, the bus claimed to have wifi, the journey was smooth enough - first winding along the coastal roads, then  skirting huge rich horticultural plains, and finally getting into the heat and crowds of Split. 

The journey was surprisingly tiring - five hours of looking, and swaying about.

En route we had a shifty picnic of pies stuffed with cheese and meat, formed as elongated spirals of flaky pastry, and then a nectarine each. A sign on the stairwell of the bus showed a burger with a red line through it - we weren't sure if this meant NO FOOD or was merely a patriotic attempt to deter MacDonalds. Sadly when we left the bus at Split Docks we forgot the remaining nectarines and cashew nuts in our picnic bag and left them to their fate.

It was not hard to find our apartment which to our pleasure and surprise is actually right inside Diocletian's Palace. An old door leads up a pretty and narrowing wooden staircase. The key is under the mat. The apartment is small, old-fashioned, well-appointed, clean, comfortable and brilliantly locked. It has a tiny washroom with shower, good wifi, and a free litre bottle of Merlot from Istria to welcome us. 

We wandered out int the heat. 

It really is a nice place - with shining well-worn paving, happy crowds but a sense of the real life of the city separate from tourism.  It's also a great place to find novel images of Flatman, the international hero of my new project, who adorns road signs and toilet doors.  I am enjoying describing how he is looking for love, having terrible accidents, running a lot, and trying to understand how we live in our 3D world, which is as difficult for him as quantum mechanics is for us.

We shopped for yoghurt, croissants ( which are heavier than their French cousins and stuffed with 'marmalade' aka apricot jam, or chocolate), nectarines, some milk for morning coffee. We wandered into a lovely old-fashioned art shop selling paints and papers and apparently running a cat-rescue charity, and strolled around. We chose a resto for supper because the greeter said the take cards.... That turned out to be either a lie or inaccurate - we had to scrape cash together. Our neighbours a table were three young Luxembourgian business or banking types - we had a great chat about Brexit. British businesses are queuing up to register in Luxembourg, and ever Brit they've met says (as we do) that it's a disaster. One of them was born in Bosnia, two are Portuguese. They said almost no-one in Luxembourg was born there. 

Back at the flat, we shut out the jubilant noise of the streets with our heavy windows, switched on the aircon, and slept. 

This is the last day of our holiday. I am thinking of all the other travelers who come to stay in this dear little apartment. They leave happy reviews on Airbnb (tho' that is not where we booked it). Like our cabin on the Lady Olivia, there is a stream of people who come to stay. If places have souls, and they may, they must find it funny accommodating us all. The tiny shower-room here has an almost-hidden medieval stone archway over the door. How many people have walked through it? Who were they?