Today will be a combo post of my last partial day in Croatia and my first partial day in Italy.

My last day in Split was pretty darn good! The hotel I was staying at was kind enough to hold my bag for me during the day so that I could wander the town a bit more. Turns out that more was open in town this day than on my previous stroll through town.

First thing that was running at full steam was the Green Market. This is a combination of a farmers market and, as one of the folks at my hotel put it, a flee market. Lots of tourist garbage around the outer market and they are their pretty much every day but this day they also had a lot of groceries for sale. Much of the produce was the same that can be bought at your local grocery store in the States but they also had a lot of dried fruits and smoked meats. You could tell you were almost on the meats before you got to them; a real homey wood smoke to them. The dried fruits and nuts were scattered throughout. There was quite a bit of citrus fruit, go figure in the Mediterranean. There were also several regular shops that opened directly onto the market. I’ve tried to take some images of the market to show what they had just keep in mind I was shooting from the waist so they may be a bit out of focus.

After the market I headed for the lower levels of the Palace. I had seen on a previous walk that you can pay to stroll through them. Apparently they are an exact replica layout of the Palace built just to keep the palace up higher. Unfortunately, I did not realize that there were two sides to go on and only ended up walking through half of the space.

In the afternoon I hit up the Ethnography Museum and the Split History museum. Both had some very interesting exhibits and the Ethnography Museum also had terrace you could go up on for some great views of the city.

Around 4:30 PM, I went back to the hotel, grabbed my bag and headed to the dock that my ferry was resting at. The rooms on the ferry are pretty out dated. I’ve heard from some that the restaurant isn’t bad and others that it is. Not sure myself as I have either come down with a cold or allergies. So, after taking some pictures of my room, the dock and a last look at Split I went to bed. All things considered the ride wasn’t bad at all. I couldn’t feel the ship rock, the sea was very calm. The only downside was a noise that sounded like someone running their hand on a washboard all night. Found out in the morning that it was the ladder to get up to the top bunk.

In the morning I arrived in the Italian town of Ancona and after a short but expensive taxi ride to the airport I had my new car and was on my way!

My only stop of the day was to the town or Cortona; made famous to Americans in the book Under the Tuscan Sun. Turns out that they did actually film some of the movie there! One thing I noticed about the Italian historic towns versus the Croatian is how much more is preserved. There are far more historic buildings in Cortona than the average historic town that I saw in Croatia.

I did go to one museum which covers local history since the time of the Etruscans. They have an impressive array of artifacts on display and most of the descriptions are in Italian and English.

I forgot to mention that I tend to forget about holidays since, working in hotels, they don’t really exist for me the same way they do for anyone not in the service industry. I set this trip to happen during Easter, not remembering when Easter is or that Italy is a very Catholic country. Whoops! Thankfully, tourism is their main industry so it looks like everything will still be open during the holiday and I may even get to see some events that only happen once a year.

Still not sure where I will be tomorrow but it should be fun! Just hope this cold or allergies goes away soon.