Trogir and Split 9-10 June

From Reijka we hired a car from our good friends at avis and zoomed down the coast towards Split. After consulting the travel notes we decided to stay in Trogir which is about 20ks to the north of Split and at the same time tick off another UNESCO site from the list. During the drive down we passed by Zadar with its airport and sea port. The coast road is well worth the drive or bus trip as it follows various types of terrain and sea scape and the islands just of the coast are always visible.



A wee blurb stolen from wikipedia (picture is mine tho!)

Trogir has a fascinating 2300 years of continuous urban tradition. Its rich culture was created under the influence of old Greeks, Romans, and Venetians. Trogir has a high concentration of palaces, churches, and towers, as well as a fortress on a small island, and in 1997 was inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage List. "The orthogonal street plan of this island settlement dates back to the Hellenistic period and it was embellished by successive rulers with many fine public and domestic buildings and fortifications. Its beautiful Romanesque churches are complemented by the outstanding Renaissance and Baroque buildings from the Venetian period", says UNESCO report.

Trogir is the best-preserved Romanesque-Gothic complex not only in the Adriatic, but in all of Central Europe. Trogir's medieval core, surrounded by walls, comprises a preserved castle and tower and a series of dwellings and palaces from the Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque periods. Trogir's grandest building is the church of St. Lawrence, whose main west portal is a masterpiece by Radovan, and the most significant work of the Romanesque-Gothic style in Croatia.

The most important sites:

• Historical city core, with about 10 churches and numeous buildings from 13th century
• The city gate (17th cent.) and city walls (15th cent.)
• The Fortress Kamerlengo (15th century)
• The Duke's Palace (13th century)
• The cathedral of St. John from the 13th century with the Portal of Master Radovan, the unique work of this great Croatian artist
• The big and small palaces Cipiko from the 15th century
• The city loggia from 15th century

The city is a fascinating place to visit. It is set on an island between two land masses and is connected by bridges. Wandering around the city is amazing for all the detail and the fact that a lot of it is still intact after so many centuries. Gargoyles of different styles look out from the roof tops and direct the rain away. The streets are all cobble stoned and the buildings overhang the streets.

Walking along you can go down any number of side steets and come across all sorts of different shops and resturants.

The town is totally set up to cater for tourism and the number of boats which park up along the pier reinforce this. It is very difficult to get accommodation in the old town however all around in the new town there are plenty of different pensions, apartments, B&B etc. We all stayed in a very nice apartment about 5mins walk from the old city.

We stayed on night in Trogir and then headed to Split to drop the car off and then go across to Brac to the awesome beach of Bol.

Split is worth a visit but only for a day or two and we chose to spend our time getting across to the Islands on the catamarans.

Dropping the car off to avis proved to be a major drama - they somehow decided that the only place to have an avis office was at the marina - not near all the other car rental offices. So after searching for a while we found the drop off and then hitched up our stuff and headed for the port to get our tickets.

So next post will be the Islands

Andrew