It's time to Split

It's a good thing we got our rest in Budapest because we had 2 long days of travel afterwards. Ashok found a cheap flight to Split from Bratislava so despite our previous bad experience we got on the train and headed back there. Something to be said about second chances (or really low expectations) because we actually had a good time. As soon as we got to the old town, we saw a group of Slovakian women dressed in traditional costumes sitting around. It turned out to be quite a scene when Ashok asked to take their picture as a crowd gathered to see the “Photographer from New York” take pictures.

They were so nice and started to take out pictures of their family and gave us their backgrounds. Their ancestors settled in northern Serbia 250 years ago (the queen at the time was giving incentives for people to go there), but they haven't forgotten their roots and still consider themselves Slovaks and were in Bratislava to visit their homeland.

Most of Bratislava is very new and there are lots of construction around. The old part of Bratislava is fairly small and sits on the other side of the Danube. Think pretty old buildings with cobblestoned alleys, but the town is basically a tourist spot as all the store fronts are either cafes, souvenir, or various clothing and craft shops. We hiked up to the palace (most of it is being reconstructed) and were rewarded with a view of the old and the new part of Bratislava. Ideally we would have spent a full day in Bratislava but 3 hours were enough to give us a sense for the place.

After the usual tasks upon arrival in a new country (get money, buy SIM card for our cell phone, figure out how to get to the hotel, etc.), we finally arrived in the town of Split at 10pm. We soon realized why the airfare deal was only good for today - it's the 250 year anniversary celebration of the Diocletian Palace (world heritage site and main tourist attraction of Split). We missed most of the celebration but were still able to catch some of the festive atmosphere, and even saw an outdoor club in front of a really old facade where people were dancing to Latin music. This is when salsa and all those ballroom dances looks so much cooler than regular people dancing. We found out the next day that the old facade is THE Diocletian palace which made it that much cooler.

Here's a view of the waterfront in Split the next morning:

The next day was another long travel day. We woke up really early to have some time to walk around Split before lunch, then on to the bus for a 6 hour ride to Dubrovnik for our cruise. At least it was a very scenic ride since the road hugged the coast. The coast is separated from inland by these scraggly rocky mountains which provide a dramatic backdrop to the blue waters.

AND we accidentally went to Bosnia! How does one “accidentally” go to another country? Well, smack in the middle of the Croatian coast is a small town called Neum that belongs to Bosnia so to get to the southern part of Croatia you have to go through Bosnia. Luckily no additional Visa required for Ashok... we were worried for a minute. Neum is the only access Bosnia has to the coast and it has managed to hold on to this spot throughout time... they REALLY wanted to have their own beach. We were told by Stejpan (our travel agent who decided to go on the same cruise as us... wonder how much he's making off of our trip!) that Croatia is building a bridge so they can bypass the border control. They are also building a highway inland so in the future the trip from Split to Dubrovnik would take less than 2 hours (but no view).

It was nice to finally get to the boat but we couldn't rest just yet. They tried to pull a bait and switch on us and was trying to give us a cabin below deck when we clearly specified a cabin above deck (even confirmed it that morning). We stood our ground, and it was good that Stejpan was there to work it out with the Captain. One thing we have learned is not to be too nice when it comes to travel arrangements otherwise it's easy to get taken advantage of.... I mean we were nice about it, just firm about what we want. I'm sure it helped that we had only paid 30% of the fee. In the end it all worked out and the captain even bought us a beer. Glad the 2 days of travel are finally over!