Uncommon Tourist Attractions in Split
Going to the odd places
I’ve found that I’m most interested in walking the narrow alleys and back streets of the old cities. The irregular streets and buildings set along polygonal plots at obtuse angles to each other create a constant sensation of contraction and expansion. Dubrovnik was the best but Split has a few moments too. Notably, there was an open dome of what must have been at one point an important building that is now just a pasage from one alley to another.
In Split I began to see more people of colour and fewer people stared at me. At the top of the bell tower a Chinese girl approached me and asked my name, where I was from, and why I was travelling. These have always been difficult questions for me to answer and not ones I know how to answer. I’ve never had very good answers either. She asked first my Chinese name, and when I said I didn’t speak Chinese she asked my English name. This led to the inevitable where are you from? Although she did not ask why I didn’t speak Chinese, I could see the searching in her eyes. Then she caught me off guard by asking: why do you travel alone?
From the top of the bell tower it’s possible to see all of the old town, the harbour, and the nearby mountains in framed glimpses between the stone columns. These openings are like a montage that show parts of the panorama. Why do you travel alone? That’s not something that can be easily explained in a moment.
We descended the bell tower separately and a California retiree asked if I was Japanese while I was taking a photo of the square. I wish. Later a Croatian with a heavy accent correctly assumed Chinese but when I said Canada, he asked about my heritage and was happy when I said my great grandparents were Chinese. I can never be just Canadian when I travel but I also realize that I not really Canadian either.
At 17 I switched from being the only “Chinese” in a high school of 700 to being just another asian at UBC. UBC has a joke that it’s the University of a Billion Chinese due to number of first generation Cantonese and international mainland students. Apparently in 2011, 45% of all domestic students were Chinese, Japanese, or Korean, and of international students, 44% were Chinese, Japanese, or Korean. But I was surprised to find that even among asians I did not fit in. My Asian friends would say I wasn’t actually Chinese because I’d grown up in Canada and didn’t speak the language while my white friends would only need to glance at me to say that I was Chinese by the colour of my skin. Lost in the in-between, I continued to feel like I didn’t quite belong. At the time I was anxiously waiting for the number of Canadian-born asians to swell enoughso that I’d no longer be an outlier but it seems that has yet to happen. It will probably take my generation to have married and had kids but it’s also possible that a constant stream of immigrants will keep the status quo.
I’m not a typical tourist and now I know why. Split is most famous for the blue cave which isn’t actually in Split but a 1.5hr speed boat journey away on the outer most island of Bisevo. It was discovered by a diver as a beautiful cave where light coming in from an undersea hole reflects on the limestone floor bathing the air in a blue hue. The diver suggested that the cave be accessible by boat so they blew another hole in the side with dynamite. Is it wrong that the entire tourisim is based on one aggressive act of violence that destroyed part of the land or is that a requirement for humans to travel and experience nature?
I was told that I should visit the Blue cave but it didn’t really appeal to me. The idea of spending 60 euros to take multiple boats out for a 5–15 minute ride seemed expensive and just thinking about going on a tour made me anxious. In the past I’ve gone on some great tours (Palawan, Philippines) but I didn’t really want to go on a scripted tour to a series of beaches to folic on the rocks alone.
What excites me is my own adventure. Instead of the tour I took a 2.5hr ferry from Split to Vis for the afternoon. It wasn’t even a full afternoon, just 4 hours on the island but that was more than enough to do what I wanted. It took me an hour to hike to a submarine bunker that my friend Veronika had told me about when she was doing her thesis.
On my own I was passed by quite a few jeeps and some mopeds. It only occurred to me once I was walking that I could have rented a scooter for the day but when I’d decided to come an hour walk didn’t seem like much. And it wasn’t. I was soon facing the gaping hole of the submarine base dug into the side of the hill. A sailboat was docked in it and for some inexplicable reason had decided to exhaust their generator into the tunnel. I still went in, though, to see what it was like.
I had hoped to swim at the tunnel but the weather wasn’t warm enough for me though I saw some guys diving off the fin walls. Instead I explored the point. The point had a very nice view and I found myself daydreaming as I ate my lunch. I suppose in some sense that’s my meditation.
Afterward, my idea of fun was to walk through bushes and spiderwebs to explore a military base that had been dug into the rock as a series of tunnels to find placements. As one man advised me, “don’t go in without a guide. There are kilometres and kilometres of tunnel that just go down. You’ll get lost without a guide. Don’t go in without a guide!”
So I stuck to the surface and pushed aside more bushes and spiderwebs. On the far side I stood on steep cliffs looking at the gun placements thinking that if I were to fall I would likely die, the drop was steep and the waves strong.
In Split I also took the city bus to Klis Fortress, about an hour inland. Although it is away from the coast, the fortress is located on a prominent ridge with commanding views of the landscape. The ridge is narrow and reminded me more of an island battleship than a castle.
Another self directed adventure was to the neck of a peninsula that is a park. I went for a walk and while there weren’t any spectacular views, I came across a church on the hillside with some rooms built into the cliffs. Even though it was a small thing that could be passed without noticing, this was really interesting to me.
Later I found more great places to swim. Croatia doesn’t have any sandy beaches but there are plenty of coves with still warm water to dip into. I ended the day by going to the beach. There were lots of families and quite a few groups of friends or couples. I enjoyed dipping in the water and reading on the waters edge in the late afternoon sun. When it seemed time to go, I went back to the city for dinner, snagging a good photo of the pedestrian waterfront on my way.
