After breakfast and cleaning up, we drove to the Ina for ice, where we got yelled at for "doing it wrong." (Parking.) Back at camp we rearranged the cooler, and then walked to the bus stop. On the way to the bus stop we looked, but couldn't find where the massive fire we had seen the night before had been. We bottle-capped all the way to the bus stop, a long, hot walk.
Took the bus into Split. As soon as we got off we went into a bakery and bought a burek, which we had read about, and some kind of cheesy strudel. Then we walked up to the entrance to Diocletian's Palace where we passed through a flea market. Inside the palace there were lots of people hawking tablecloths. We walked around and made some purchases - lavender in a sachet for Mom, fig and orange jam for Ray and Jan, sour cherry jam for Ronnie.
There was a tower, so we had to climb it. There was a funny young man selling tickets - he had a stick and he kept calling himself "Sir John." He was happy to tell us it was his saint's name day - St. Ivan - and he gave us cookies. In the meantime, he would not let anyone enter the church who had too much skin exposed. On our way climbing the tower we saw a sunglasses lens on the stairs, so we picked it up to see if we could find the owner. We figured they were crying out of one eye. The views from the tower were spectacular - the harbor where our ferry had docked, the mountains behind. And swallows, always the swallows chirping and circling and cleaning the air of mosquitoes. When we got to the bottom of the tower we could see the actual sunglasses with the missing lens sitting at the bottom of the enclosure...so that was it for the lens, we tossed it in so they could spend eternity together.
We moved on to Jupiter's Temple, where there were 3 young man selling tickets. They began to banter with us. One of them was having a birthday, so cookies were offered again. One of the three had on a Bart Simpson t-shirt, so we started calling him Bart. We decided to get pictures with them, so Bart took a picture of the two of us with the two other guys. Then one of those guys took a picture of us with Bart. Just before he snapped the picture he said to Bart, who was in the middle of us, "menage a trois." This made Bart to a spit-take - he just doubled over in laughter. The picture is great. Jupiter's Temple was interesting, very small, with a cool carved marble ceiling.
We stopped and sat just outside the palace walls where there is "statua del mago ". Around us there was the constant soft high-pitched whistle of the swallows.
We walked through another market, where we purchased a cantaloupe and two figs. We stopped at the bakery where we had bought our burek and bought a loaf of bread.
We took the bus back to camp, and this time Suzanne spied what she thought might be a shortcut back to camp, through a little path. As we were walking the path we noticed that the towering trees on either side of us were fig trees. We managed to get some figs but they were already a little bit too dried up.
At camp we changed into our bathing suits, grabbed the "Billy Joel" (bottle of red for Suzanne, bottle of white for Jane,) our chairs, books, towels and wineglasses. We put our chairs in front of a nice RV trailer. The owners, Belgians, were at their table with their own wine bottle and glasses in front of of their RV, and we toasted them. The woman was setting up a camera with a timer to take a picture of the two of them. Suzanne offered to take the picture, but they said no, they were trying out the timer feature. A few minutes later the woman came down to the beach to show us the picture she took with the timer. She was pretty pleased with herself! Then she offered to take pictures of us. She was very sweet. They became known as "Our Belgians."
We took a dip in the water, and had to wade WAY out just to be in water up to our waists. Came back to knee deep and sat. The water was warm, but there was a layer of cold water on the top. The bottom was rocky and clear, clear green.
Back at the campsite we had some new tenters moving in - a group of Hungarian MAJOR hotties - real Stop, Drop and Roll material. We got into a conversation with one of them (the Head Hottie) and he had been born in the U.S. He immediately wanted to know if we had ever been to Fire Island. Suzanne thought this was a big clue as to their, uh, interests. They set up three tents and took off, presumably to a bar or club.
[ dinner? ]
We went to bed and during the night Suzanne woke up because it sounded like rain. It wasn't rain, it was leaves dropping on the tent. The wind was wild! Our chairs had blown over and our clothes had blown off the clothesline. Suzanne got up to save the chairs and tie down some stuff and immediately noticed that 2 of the 3 tents put up by the Hungarians were GONE, and they weren't back yet. They were in for quite a surprise. They got in in the wee hours and were pretty drunk and very surprised. In the morning we found one was in his tent and the other 2 had slept in the car.
Later we found out that the wind was known as a "Bora" wind.
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