From Tisno to Split

Well, as I last left you on the Article I was waiting for my friend at Zadar airport to arrive. Our plan was a Game of Thrones Tour within the Country border, at least some big ones. I will not write some kind of “spoiler alert” here since you should have seen the stuff already.
And for the few that haven’t: SHAME, SHAME, SHAME!!
(All others will be able to understand it so if you want to be able to talk with others over it: Watch it. Seriously, it’s great.”)

As intended, we headed south following the road next to the ocean until we found a spot to stay overnight. It was already dark, and the headlights of the car are not made to find camping grounds in the wilderness, so we pretty much stayed at a simple but stunning location.

Tisno
Next to us was the coastal road which had almost no traffic at all and our first coffee was basically while looking at the fisherman checking his nets and cages, which are floating under the buoys on the right side.

We made out way into Vodice which turned out to be more stressful than delighting because the van is obviously an exceptional big vehicle. Almost the same was the traffic of course. I should find out a little bit later, one day to be precise, that this may be the fact since I saw a driving instructor with his pupil not stopping at a Stop-sign. But it is that exact attitude of laid back lifestyle I love. There are parking spots with ocean view all over the Croatian coast. Big ones with mobile Toilets, marked parking spaces and cemented furniture as well as bins. Also small ones with loose rubble and nothing else. I have seen multiple spots with camper vans and such having a break or sleeping overnight which is entirely comforting.
Oh, I’m getting off topic here. There are some minor places where scenes of GoT were filmed, but due to the heavy traffic and limited parking spots, we decided to skip some and moved to Split.

On the way, we passed multiple settlements and small cities. Since the van has no AC, we took a little swim next to such a small town. Marina was the name of the quiet place. As anywhere here I am assuming that the tourism will let the location burst during summer times.

Marina

What a beauty

Soon we had to hit Split, and we had something in mind. The dragon cellar of Meereen. Heading into the city, I at least felt a little bit lost at first. Nothing to worry but heavy traffic and cluelessness with Wille, the Yellow Hellmachine who lived up to his name in this kind of traffic.

Entering the city
The city was somewhat brutal to drive through, and I had to abandon some parking spaces since I would have blocked the road due to the length of the van.
Huge need to know for Split when You are driving a car there and want to park within the city: The Parking automats accept coins or a phone call – not from a foreign Sim Card dough. I asked a few people on the street to change 10 Kuna into coins, but nobody seemed to have spare change. Finally, a good man reached into his pocket and pulled out 5 Kuna, which was enough for one hour. I offered a bill of 10 but he said no and simply gifted me the 5 Kuna, not much, but I really appreciate the friendliness. Laid back as I already mentioned.

Split
On the first picture, you see a huge city within bright sunlight, and it can make your throat dry even to think of it, but I was absolutely surprised how cool the city was. As you can see the city core has some green spaces and there are loads of trees which I found absolutely comfortable with wearing a T-Shirt and shorts.
On each and every corner history almost jumps in your face.
Roman legionnaires are waiting at the main gates for tourists to take pictures with them.

Although there is much to see in the city, and I think I would be interested to know everything about this place but, and this is a huge but, I do not fancy masses of tourists walking around like zombies behind a guy or girl with either a funny hat or something colorful on a stick. So I get in for the basics. The GoT Giftshop. A small but friendly store hidden in the narrow streets.

The Themes here are mostly Game of Thrones, Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, they even have a Dragon to sit on and take a picture. As you can imagine on the scale of the store, this was nothing to impress me since it was just a baby dragon but modeled like a grown-up one. The rest of the warehouse was full of cool stuff like dragon eggs, T-shirts with the usual stuff on it. I have to admit I did think about buying a “House Bolton – Our blades are sharp” Shirt but decided otherwise.

After an excellent coffee to go which I drank with almost three zips like someone who walked the Sahara for a day and gets his first drink. Not because I did not enjoy it, not because it was thirsty or tired, I just had bigger fish to fry and needed my hands for map and camera.

Through some narrow streets onto a huge square with loads of tourists

Passing straight through you have two options: Little stairs upwards or big stair downwards in the middle. And that’s your spot when you’re out looking for dragons.

As mentioned: Limited time and metric s**t tons of lemming-training tourists kept me from exploring the other historical buildings of the city.

The dragons dungeon

The first impression when we went down the stairs was a massive amount of traders and tourists. Souvenirs on each corner and tourists through the middle. On the other side of the city walls, shortly before getting out turn to your right. There you see a metal grid, pass through it, and there you are. For about two to four euros (22 to 42kn) you can enter the basement of the palace.
Unfortunately, the dragons have left since they heard somebody came who would be able to eat them. Well not all of them but one with a side dish of chips and maybe a salad for decoration purposes.

The place is impressive. Huge halls, small cells some places conditions were almost as if they were built yesterday. Other spots were already repaired with water dripping down the walls. I for my part was however pretty delighted to leave the city because I’m not feeling so comfortable between masses of people.

I could have told you far more about the basement and the city, but I would highly recommend visiting it at least once in a lifetime. Words can hardly express the mixture between imagining what things had happened here centuries ago, some of my most favorite actors doing their work here not this long ago and the thought that you may be missing things to see. Which is, to be honest almost always the case when visiting a city within an hour or two.

Heading south once again

It was getting late already, and we had to get out of the city to get a beautiful resting place, so we decided to head south again. We even caught some raindrops but nothing major down there.
With an absolutely stunning view, we stayed the night in a spot with Toilet, bins, tables since we found it almost perfect to let the day end there.

A little side not at the end: I am way behind in keeping you up to date even this early in the trip but you will see some locations and be like “Yeah, you can try to carve your internet out of some tree if you desired but that’s about it. So stay with me for real “off the grid” stuff.