Croatia

We arrived in Split and docked and were off the ship and through customs shortly after 8:00. We couldn’t get into our AirBnB to drop off our luggage until 10:30 (and couldn’t formally settle in until several hours after that, as the cleaning lady needed to do her thing following the previous guests’ departure), so we had a leisurely breakfast before walking to the flat and dropping our luggage. We returned to the promenade by the water and took a long walk to and through part of Marian Park, after which we grabbed lunch and then looped back to the flat to unpack and get settled in....

We caught a 9:30 boat to Trogir this morning—an hourlong ride on a pretty typical people ferry—and explored the town on foot. This included the Cathedral of St. Lawrence, as well as climbing the bell tower at the cathedral. That was our, well, heck, who knows how many towers we’ve climbed at this point in the trip? This one was like many of the others, a combination of narrow-but-regular-and-flat steps mixed in with runs that were almost hilariously steep, uneven, and cramped—more like irregular glorified ladders than stairs....

We had agreed that, as our last day of the trip (not counting the long haul back to Columbus), today should be a “chill” day. And it was! We still managed to walk over 20,000 steps each, but it was very easy walking. We started off by grabbing strudel at the little shop right next to our flat and then going in search of coffee, which we found outside the palace, but, nonetheless, being a place that was largely frequented by locals (older gentleman who all knew each other and were taking their time passing around a little tin of watches and bracelets and appraising them and trying them on)....

This was just a long travel day. Our flight from Croatia didn’t leave until 12:50, so we had plenty of time to get up, shower, pack, grab some breakfast, and head to the airport plenty early. Both of our connections were scheduled to be pretty reasonable—long enough to have a little cushion in them, but not so long as to have us sitting in the airport for hours. As it turned out, we were delayed getting out of Croatia and then had a long walk to our gate in Amsterdam....