A hearty breakfast
For hard riding, mountains loom
Along the coast here...
First off, happy birthday, Gordon Stratford! It is 10/10/10, and therefore the birthday of Evan's dad. :)
We woke up in beds! We had set an alarm to ensure that we didn't sleep past 9 (since checkout time here at Hostell Nikolla is 10), and we woke up at, um, 9. So that was a good move. We packed our handful of things and moved into the common area of the hostel, which is covered by some wooden lattices that have vines interwoven. What kind of vines? Kiwi.
Anyway, we sat down to breakfast of scrambled eggs, which was something unusual for us. In general, we're far too lazy to get the stove out in the morning for a hot breakfast, so we usually make due with the tomato bocadillos and yogurt/müsli route. So we bummed around the kitchen, where we met an Australian couple doing a much larger trip than ours. They told us about their adventures all across the Continent, through trains, planes, and automobiles, and we told them about our plans. We're not likely to meet again, based on our respective plans, but we swapped contact info, anyway, in case that they should ever come to SF or we should ever go to Melbourne.
Before we headed out, we decided we owed it to ourselves to visit the substructures of Diocletian's palace, since yesterday we didn't arrive until just before closing. It was neat to go through; they have a fair number of signs around talking about the history of the place, and an old German man even stopped us in one room to give us a story about some of the piping. Apparently, the emperor Diocletian had rheumatism, and he had heating and saunas installed to help mitigate the discomfort related to this. The palace also had semi-modern plumbing and sewage disposal systems. It was neat, and for 10HRK definitely worth it.
The ride from Split was strange, due mostly to the housing developments. We haven't seen back-to-back housing for a long time (since Italy, I guess), so seeing it for 20km outside Split was rather odd. Beyond that, though, we wound into the mountains where it was too steep to build, and anything off the roadside was again wild or shaded by olive trees.
Our ride didn't last so long. We went about 70km to Makarska, which claims to be part of a riviera. The area was really lovely, but not quite like the French Riviera, for instance. :) We found a really great spot to camp just outside of Točepi--a stony beach away from town and protected from the mountain wind by a grove of pines. We cooked our dinner and watched the moon come up, then we finished watching "The Birds" (totally silly, but worth watching if you're into campy or old-school horror), and now it's time to go to sleep. The white noise from the sea is so peaceful...