I left Rome at 6am (having woken up at 3) so I got into Split at 8am with time to kill; I couldn’t check into my Airbnb until 3pm. After taking the bus from the airport to the city center, I went and sat in a café, got some breakfast, and promptly fell asleep. I woke up sweaty, hot, and angry. I walked to go drop off my bags and then found another café, this time one with air conditioning, where I ordered not only the worst lemonade I have ever had, but one of the worst parfaits. I didn’t care, it was 7 degrees cooler inside than out. After like 4 hours, I felt like I was cool enough to venture out and walk around. The city was incredibly beautiful, everything was carved out of this creamy limestone. Roman ruins were everywhere but people seemed to be living right inside them. There was a great farmers market with tons of food, clothes, books, and even a vintage porn magazine section. When I had about two hours left until I could check in, I plopped myself at yet another café where I again fell asleep. Finally I got into my Airbnb and settled in to air conditioning turned all the way up, taking off all my clothes, and lying on the floor.

That night I slept for 14 hours and the next day I stayed in bed, writing, and working on life stuff, spending some quality time with my laptop if you will. I determined not to go outside until it cooled off– I was so sick of being hot and sweaty.

The next day was busier. I got up and dropped off my bags at a short term storage place, then tried to find church. Google maps was only partly helpful and in the end I found it because I recognized the type font. I was very late. After church I went on a walking tour of Split and learned that I was right, it was a Roman town, more specifically, a palace. A Roman Emperor had grown up there and when he decided to do what no other Roman Emperor had done and retire, he did so here. He built a massive palace with big fortifications, a big burial shrine for himself, a temple, and an extensive cool storage area underneath. When the Roman Empire fell, Slavs came in and invaded and then lived inside, where people still live today. There aren’t actually very many people now, it is mostly Airbnb’s. Croatia was at a big crossroads as far as the East and West so they were religiously complicated, invaded by the Venetians, the Germans, under the rule of Mussolini, bombed by the Allies, taken over by the Soviets and turned into Yugoslavia, and eventually turned into a tourist town.

After the tour I got on a ferry to the island of Brac and immediately got into a cold shower. I was once again so sick of being hot and sweaty and having to travel. This is really the perfect set up to get me ready to move to Scotland. I went grocery shopping, watched Paul’s farewell talk, and then wrote, watched a very disturbing, strange movie, and finally felt like it was cool enough to go to bed. I slept for 11 hours.