We feel like we saw all the essentials yesterday, so today is a relaxed day of exploring Split.

We walk a different way out of our apartment and go down a beautiful narrow lane of light stone. It’s beautiful.

We enter Diocletian’s Palace again by the eastern gate and explore a little. We pass a cute store, and I upgrade my outfit with a new dress!  

We start to look for a lunch spot and decide that we really want to go back to the place we had dinner last night. It has a full restaurant next to the tapas place, Uje Oil Bar. Our server is nice enough, but it’s not the same without our awesome guy from last night. We order Coratian meatballs for the kids, and they’re amazing. When the kids are done eating, they get up and play in the “street” until Stefan overhears the table behind him complaining. I can’t believe people can complain about children playing lovingly. I know they aren’t quiet, but at least they’re happy!

We leave and let our kids be happy elsewhere. Lillian carries Oly for a bit; it’s hilarious. We wander around until we get to the southern gate, right on the water. It’s beautiful out here. I keep saying that about Croatia, and it’s because it is stunning.

There’s a hill to the west that we’re supposed to walk up for a magnificent view. Here we go! There are a few different ways up there. All steps. We take a nice route of wide steps that Lillian runs up with no problem. Oly requires Stefan to carry him.

At the top, there’s an old Jewish cemetery. We walk in it a bit. It seems like a very large cemetery, and without the little guys we’d explore more up here. They can only do a cemetery for so long. 

Right at the entrance to the cemetery, at the top of the steps, sits a cute cafe overlooking the bay. We have a drink to reward ourselves for the climb. Okay, it isn’t that big a climb. It has nothing on Lyon, or when we climbed the mountain in Villefranche. But we reward ourselves nonetheless. It’s a fantastic place to sit and while away an hour. Then it’s back down again, this time on steep steps near the sea.  

We walk along the water, planning to go buy ferry tickets for a trip to Hvar tomorrow, but we linger and speak with different boat tour companies along the water. There are a lot of choices for the afternoon, around 4, but we don’t have our swimsuits with us. And the others leave in the morning for the full day. We are interested, but they are very expensive. We need to think about it.

On our way home, we walk back through Diocletian’s Palace. Oly falls asleep on Stefan. We’ve realized this is his thing now; he won’t nap anywhere else!

We stop in the marketplace and buy fresh berries from the farmer himself. Love it.

Now it’s back home for swimsuits and to Bacvice beach near our apartment.

Even though it’s after 5pm, the beach is very crowded. It’s a sandy beach, and the water is very shallow for a long way out into the cove. Lillian and I go swim a little, but she and Oly really just want to make sand castles. It’s really nice.

We meet another American family, from Philadelphia, and chat with them for awhile. They’ve been all over Croatia and give us some good tips for our future destinations.

We linger at the beach as long as we can (Stefan’s been ready to go since we arrived). We make our way home, super worn out. After showers, we make gnocchi at home for dinner and let the kids watch a movie. It’s been a simple family day, exploring the outdoors here in Split.