Split, Croatia: A Week of Stone, Sea, and Road

With Ohrid in the rearview, we landed in Split, Croatia.

The journey reversed the route that had brought us into North Macedonia a month earlier. We booked a Daytrip driver for the three-hour ride back to Skopje, climbing again through the mountain pass at Straza. The standard road-trip pause came at Mekicite od Straza, the bakery on the pass known for mekici (an unsweetened fried dough pastry, served hot and simply). Coffee, pastry, mountain air, and the modest pleasure of recognizing a road we had only recently learned.

From there, the day unfolded in airports. Priority Pass carried us through the Skopje lounge for lunch, then through Zagreb on a long layover, before the evening flight brought us into Split. A thirty-minute taxi brought us to our apartment close to midnight. Our host met us in person, cheerful and fully awake, with Croatian treats, a tour of the place, and a few jokes he was clearly pleased to deliver. After a long day of car rides, lounges, and short flights stitched together across the Balkans, that small act of hospitality felt like a real arrival.

The next morning was not cinematic. It was functional.

We walked to a neighboring bakery for breakfast, then to Stow Coffee Roasters, an excellent coffee shop just around the corner. Groceries, full unpack, router setup, Apple TV, personal photos placed around the apartment, workstations built. This is the unglamorous first act of slow travel: before a place can mean anything, it has to work.

Then came the gym search. After visiting a few options, we chose Spartan Gym, the oldest continuously operated gym in Split, set in a World War II bunker. Bare-bones, old-school, unpolished, and not pretending to be otherwise. A simple one-month membership at a fair price by Split standards. Cash only. Twenty minutes on foot each way. That was enough.

On the way home from the gym, we stopped for a late lunch at Koko-DA, a small owner-operated spot near our apartment. We first went for sandwiches, then noticed the rotisserie chickens. A few days later, we returned for dinner and ended up talking with the couple who runs the place, lifelong Split residents who were generous with beach advice and local opinion. They also offered a complimentary taste of Antique Pelinkovac, a Croatian bitter-sweet herbal liqueur made with wormwood and over forty Mediterranean herbs, aged in oak and produced since 1862.

That is how a city begins to open. Not through a list, but through repetition. The second coffee. The second visit. The small business owner who recognizes you. The route to the gym. The bakery that becomes the default. The ordinary map beneath the famous one.

By midweek, work had resumed. So had the routines: coffee, groceries, gym, household tasks, daily walks. We had already walked the Riva, Split's long seafront promenade and the social spine of the city, and climbed to the first overlook on Marjan Hill for a view of the old town below and the open Adriatic beyond. But Split is not a city that lets the ordinary stay ordinary for long. A walk to the market passes Roman walls. A casual evening stroll slips into Diocletian's Palace.

The Palace is easy to misunderstand before you arrive. The word suggests a formal museum, a ticketed building with a clear entry and exit. Split is not like that. Built around the turn of the fourth century as the retirement residence and fortified seaside compound of the Roman emperor Diocletian, the Palace covers roughly seven acres. Today, it is not sealed from the city. It is the city. You enter freely through its old gates, wander narrow lanes, eat in restaurants, hear music in the courtyards, pass apartment doors, and watch ordinary life unfold inside walls that are seventeen centuries old.

A beach bus carries you from this ancient urban core to clear Adriatic water in minutes.

Two beaches, two sides of the city

Our first discovery was Kašjuni, at the base of Marjan Hill. We took the bus from the waterfront and walked home afterward, which turned out to be the right combination. Kašjuni sits outside the immediate city, with a pebble shoreline and a protected cove that opens toward the Adriatic. The air was warm, around seventy degrees, but the water was still cold enough to make the first swim a decision. Once in, it was bracing and clean, the kind of cold-water immersion that resets the body efficiently. The beach was quiet. People moved between sun and sea in the unhurried way that belongs to spring in the Mediterranean.

Bačvice was different. Closer to the city and walkable from the Riva, it is Split's classic sandy city beach. The water stays shallow far from shore, which makes it ideal for Picigin, the local beach game created there in the early twentieth century. The object is to keep a small ball in the air and out of the water for as long as possible. Players dive, leap, slap the ball skyward, and turn ankle-deep water into something approaching public performance. It is non-competitive but entirely serious.

Kašjuni felt restorative. Bačvice felt civic. One is the beach you seek out below Marjan when you want clear water and some quiet; the other belongs to the city's social life. Together, they explain something about Split: it is not simply an old stone city beside the sea. It is a city that still uses the sea.

And by the weekend, one rental-car day gave us a faster understanding of the surrounding region than any number of Palace evenings could have provided on their own.

One road trip, three Croatias

We picked up the rental car at 8:00 AM and drove north out of Split toward Krka National Park.

The drive took about ninety minutes. By mid-morning, we had reached Skradin, the small riverside town where visitors enter Krka by boat. The park ticket includes the boat ride from Skradin into the park, a pleasant approach that turns the entrance into part of the experience. Instead of arriving directly at a parking lot and walking in, you move slowly along the river, with the landscape gathering around you.

The boat ride from Skradin into the park reminded us, visually, of a crossing we once took over Diablo Lake in Washington's North Cascades. The cause is different: Diablo's surreal turquoise comes from glacial flour suspended in the water; Krka's color belongs to a limestone river landscape shaped by travertine, waterfalls, and pools. But the quality of that color, the way it seems almost constructed until you are moving through it, was the same.

Krka is best known for its waterfalls, particularly Skradinski Buk, the broad and layered cascade that draws most first-time visitors. The park's landscape is shaped by travertine, limestone formations built up over centuries by mineral-rich water. The result is a river system that feels designed: waterfalls, pools, boardwalks, trees, reeds, and green water arranged in a natural order that is both wild and composed.

We chose the short Skradinski Buk loop rather than making a full day of the park. There is more to Krka than this section, including monasteries, fortresses, Roman traces, and upper river landscapes, but we had designed the day as a sampler of the region rather than a single-destination excursion. The goal was not to exhaust Krka. It was to understand what surrounds Split.

After the boat returned us to Skradin, we drove on to Šibenik.

Šibenik felt different from Split immediately. It is a historic Dalmatian city, but not one founded by Greeks or Romans. Its story begins with medieval Croats in the eleventh century, which gives it a distinct standing among the Adriatic towns. It is famously known as the City of Fortresses, and the title fits. The city rises from the water in stone, stairs, and defensive lines.

We climbed to St. Michael's Fortress for the view over the old town, the channel, and the islands beyond. From above, Šibenik reads as a compact stone city pressed between sea and hill. Below, the old town becomes a maze of limestone steps and narrow passages, more steps than any other city in Croatia. There are churches everywhere. Small squares appear suddenly. Alleys climb, bend, and disappear.

We did not enter the Cathedral of St. James, but even from the outside it holds attention. Built entirely of stone, without wood or mortar, it is one of the great architectural achievements of the Adriatic. Its exterior frieze contains 71 carved stone heads, portraits of townspeople rendered at the time of construction, which gives the building an unusual human presence. The faces look out from the stonework, accumulated and specific, like a census taken in limestone.

After climbing, wandering, and slowly conceding to Šibenik's stairs, we found a tucked-away coffee shop set into the rocky edge of the city near the water. It was the kind of place that only appears when you are moving at the right pace. Later, in the old town, we stumbled onto a quiet patio for a glass of wine, fresh bread, and olive oil. It was the right pause, in the right light, in a city that rewards those willing to walk uphill.

From Šibenik, we drove on to Trogir.

Trogir is smaller, flatter, and more intimate. It sits on a small island between the mainland and Čiovo, close enough to Split to function as a nearby cousin but different enough to feel like a separate world. Founded by Greek colonists in the third century BC and later shaped by Venetian-Dalmatian history, Trogir compresses more than two thousand years into a remarkably compact old town.

Where Šibenik climbs, Trogir lets you drift. Its medieval lanes are narrow but level. Its promenade is lined with yachts, palms, and slow movement. The old town is so well-preserved that it can feel theatrical, not because it is constructed for visitors, but because centuries of human scale have arrived at a form that no designer could improve upon. Locals call the particular art of unhurried Dalmatian ease fjaka, and Trogir practices it.

We wandered without a plan. Past the Cathedral of St. Lawrence, through the old lanes, along the Riva, around the edges of the island, and finally to a patio for pizza before driving back to Split.

The rental car had to be returned by 8:00 PM. We made it. Tired and satisfied.

After returning the car, we wandered back into Diocletian's Palace after dark. The old Roman core was alive with evening movement: restaurants full, stones glowing under warm light, music somewhere in the distance, people drifting through the narrow streets as if the Palace were not an ancient monument at all, but simply the center of town.

Which, of course, it is.

By the end of the day, we had walked 9.5 miles, visited a national park, climbed through Šibenik, wandered Trogir's medieval lanes, returned a rental car on time, and ended the night inside a Roman emperor's former retirement complex.

It was not a slow day. But it gave us a faster understanding of the region around the city we are slowly learning to call home.

One of the gifts of this road trip was the contrast.

Krka, Šibenik, and Trogir are close enough to visit in a single day, but they do not tell the same story. Together, they offer a small but revealing introduction to Dalmatia.

Krka is the Croatia of water, limestone, and protected landscape. Its beauty is not coastal in the usual postcard sense. It is inland, green, and river-shaped, with waterfalls formed by the slow accumulation of mineral life. It reminds you that the Croatian landscape is not only islands and beaches, but also karst, rivers, monasteries, and old roads passing through stone country.

Šibenik is the Croatia of native medieval identity. Unlike many Adriatic towns whose origins are Greek or Roman, Šibenik emerged as a Croatian city. Its fortresses, churches, stairs, and cathedral speak to a more defensive and civic history. It is beautiful, but less polished than the places that have fully organized themselves around visitor expectation. It still feels like a city with its back against the hill and its face to the sea.

Trogir is the Croatia of layered Mediterranean inheritance: Greek founding, Roman continuity, Venetian form, and modern Adriatic leisure. Its old town is so compact that history becomes almost tactile. You do not need to locate the monuments. You are already inside the evidence.

And then there is Split.

Split is different again. Its center is not simply an old town but a living Roman palace. Diocletian's retirement complex did not become a ruin standing outside ordinary life. It became the container for ordinary life. Apartments, shops, cafés, churches, courtyards, restaurants, laundry lines, and tour groups all occupy the same inherited structure.

That is what makes Split so compelling and so complicated. It is not a ruin beside the city or a museum within it. It is a living urban core, a Roman imperial compound that has been absorbed into daily habit. Ancient stone, local routine, and global tourism now compete for the same narrow lanes.

Croatia is sometimes still described as a hidden gem, but that phrase no longer works. It is a premier global destination, and Split is one of its most recognizable stages. The better question is not whether Croatia has been discovered. It has been, decisively. The question is whether a traveler can still move through it with enough patience to notice what remains local, lived-in, and specific.

Our first week suggests that the answer is yes, but it requires a different kind of attention.

You have to walk three turns away from the Riva and find a konoba (a traditional Croatian tavern, usually family-run) in the residential lanes rather than the tourist-facing squares. You have to return to the same sandwich shop. You have to take the bus to the beach and walk home. You have to see the Palace before the day fills it. You have to look up at the stonework above the shop signs. You have to understand that a place can be popular and still be worth close examination.

Our best local discovery this week was not a restaurant with a tasting menu or a view. It was Koko-DA, the small owner-operated spot near our apartment where we first stopped for a sandwich and later returned for rotisserie chicken.

That second visit mattered. The couple who runs it are lifelong Split residents, warm and easy to talk with, and the kind of people who make a neighborhood feel less temporary. They recommended beaches, talked about the city with us, and offered a taste of Antique Pelinkovac, a Croatian herbal liqueur made with wormwood and over forty Mediterranean herbs, produced since 1862. It is bitter-sweet, dark, and aromatic: herbs, oak, bitterness, and warmth. Not a casual sugary drink designed for visitors.

We also found Stow Coffee Roasters early, which is exactly the sort of practical discovery that changes a week. A good coffee shop within walking distance of home is not a luxury during a long stay. It is an anchor. It gives shape to mornings, supports work blocks, and becomes part of the mental map that turns a rented apartment into a temporary home.

The same is true of the bakery, the grocery route, and the walk to the gym. None of these are headline travel experiences. But they are the infrastructure of actual living.

On the road trip, the food story was simple: coffee tucked into the rocky edge of Šibenik, wine with bread and olive oil on an old-town patio, and pizza in Trogir at the end of a long day of walking. In a place like Dalmatia, the setting does most of the work. Nothing needed to be elaborate.

Croatia Is Not the Budget Secret Anymore

Our first impression of Split is straightforward: it is beautiful, highly desirable, and more expensive than many travelers still expect.

Croatia has fully graduated from hidden-gem status. It is less expensive than some of Europe's most costly capitals, but Split is no longer a bargain-hunter's secret. The city carries the pricing logic of a major Adriatic destination: high seasonal demand, strong global recognition, polished hospitality, cruise and island traffic, and a tourism economy that has matured quickly. Value still exists here. It has to be found more deliberately.

Shoulder season makes a real difference. May has been excellent: warm, walkable, sunny, and lively without the full pressure of high summer. The crowds are present but manageable, and the city is still operating on something close to its own terms. Location discipline matters as well. The main squares and waterfront views are tempting, but prices rise with visibility. Better value tends to live a few turns away from the obvious lanes, in the konobas and small counters tucked into the residential parts of the Palace.

To put concrete figures against those principles: the Krka entrance ticket, which includes the Skradin boat ride, runs $23 per person. The rental car for our full-day excursion, including insurance, came to $91. A bus ticket to Kašjuni Beach costs $2.35 each way. A month at Spartan Gym is $50 per person. Coffee at a good independent shop runs $3 to $4; a sandwich at Koko-DA is around $12; a burek with a yogurt drink at the bakery comes to roughly $5. Sit-down dinners in the old town run 15 to 30 euros per plate depending on whether you order pasta or fish. Our modest Airbnb for the month comes to $1,331.

Routines are the budget stabilizer for a long stay. Groceries, rotisserie chicken, local bakeries, coffee anchors, and an apartment-first work setup keep the month from becoming a restaurant-and-excursion blur. On the excursion side, a rental car earns its cost if used with intention. Our Krka, Šibenik, and Trogir day was ambitious, but it made the car feel purposeful rather than indulgent. We did not rent a car to have one. We used it to connect three places that would have been awkward to reach efficiently by bus.

Day-to-day, Split lands roughly in line with Lisbon or mid-tier Italy: comfortable, occasionally surprising, and no longer cheap in the old sense. The one area where Split still earns its value case is accommodation. A well-located monthly Airbnb here runs meaningfully less than comparable furnished stays in Barcelona, Florence, or the Puglia coast.

Croatia rewards travelers who are honest about what it is now. It is not undiscovered. It is not inexpensive in the old sense. But it remains genuinely rewarding for those who treat it as a living place rather than a backdrop.

The first day in a new place always looks more considered from the outside than it feels from the inside.

There is the travel fatigue, the irregular meals, the bags, the apartment orientation, the unfamiliar switches, the question of whether the Wi-Fi will hold, the need to buy groceries before anyone gets too hungry, and the quiet mental load of beginning again.

Every grocery run in a new country is its own small education. The layout is unfamiliar, the staples are different, and not every store carries the same things. You learn quickly what belongs in the supermarket and what belongs in the market: in Croatia, honey and olive oil are locally produced and worth seeking from vendors rather than shelves. Beyond the groceries, there are the adapters sorted by use, the European oven that operates on its own logic, the garbage bins a block away, and the simple but necessary task of memorizing your own door: which stairwell, which floor, which key, which lock.

In Split, our first full day was devoted to rebuilding function.

We unpacked fully. Set up the router. Connected the Apple TV. Placed personal photos around the apartment. Built our workstations. Found groceries. Tested the neighborhood. Visited gyms and picked one. Paid cash for a month at Spartan Gym and accepted the twenty-minute walk each way as part of the routine.

This is not incidental to slow travel. It is slow travel.

A three-day visitor can live from a suitcase and a restaurant list. A month-long stay requires systems. You need a morning coffee route, a grocery route, a training option, a place to work, a backup plan for connectivity, basic meals you can make at home, and at least one local business you are glad to return to.

That is the difference between visiting a place and beginning, however temporarily, to live there.

Next week, Stephanie's parents arrive in Split. We are looking forward to sharing the city with them, celebrating Mother's Day together, and seeing how Split changes when experienced through family rather than just our own routines.

There will be more Palace wandering, more food, more time along the Riva, and likely another layer of discovery inside this ancient city. If the weather cooperates, we may make our first island crossing, most likely to Hvar.

For now, Split has already given us more than a first impression. It has given us a local bakery, a coffee shop, a gym, a neighborhood chicken spot, two beaches, a Roman palace after dark, and one extraordinary road trip through three very different Croatias.

That is a strong beginning.

One of the small revelations of slow travel is how quickly a place divides itself between the famous and the useful.

Before arriving in Split, we knew the obvious names: Diocletian's Palace, the Riva, Marjan, the islands, the beaches. Those are real, and they matter. A place's landmarks are not superficial just because they are popular. They are often popular because they carry genuine weight.

But the useful places matter too.

The bakery. The coffee shop. The gym. The grocery route. The bus stop to the beach. The small food counter where the owners talk to you long enough to make the neighborhood feel less anonymous.

A week is not enough to understand Split. But it is enough to begin seeing the difference between moving through a city and settling into it.

This week, we did a little of both. We wandered Roman stone after dark. We swam in cold Adriatic water. We watched Picigin at Bačvice. We walked the boardwalks at Krka, climbed Šibenik, drifted through Trogir, and came home tired in the best possible way.

Croatia may no longer be hidden, but that does not make it less worthy of attention. It just means attention has to be paid more carefully.

Until next week,
S&S

Some Great Place
Living local in a global world