I am writing this almost ten years after this journey, and sadly have lost names of many of the places we visited along the Croatian coast. We spent time in the two major cities: Split (home of Diocletian’s massive palace) and Dubrovnik, a massively fortified city. Dubrovnik is enormously popular with tourists and, should you plan a trip to this part of the world, it might be smart to spend less time in Dubrovnik. Dubrovnik was still scarred by the civil war. We climbed (via ski gondola) to the summit of the mountain above Dubrovnik from which the city was relentlessly shelled only a couple generations ago.
Sibenik was a fascinating city on the steep shores of the Adriatic (also, I think, the world’s first city to have electric streetlights). Cavtat was a beautiful small city just south of Dubrovnik. In this charming small town we found a funeral chapel designed by the Croatian sculptor Mestrovic, whose work we saw from Zagreb to Split and many places in between.
Nin and Trogir were among the small cities and coastal villages we visited. My favorite by far was Zadar, a city with an impossible amount of charm per square meter. The seafront boasted an organ played by the tides and waves. Zadar was ancient, a delightful mix of Byzantine, Latin, Croatian….
