The Birth of the Card of Unbeatability

After a very long day of traveling the day before, I woke up with the sun. In fact, I woke up before the sun. Upon awakening, I noticed two things. One, my companions were still fast asleep, and two, the steady rhythm of rain was very apparent outside of our window. I decided to shower and lay in my bed until my companions woke up. A couple of hours later, all three of us were awake and ready to hit the streets of Split. The rain had abated momentarily, so we decided to go to a large park we had seen on the map. We made a pit stop at a bakery just down the street and around the corner where Claire and I discovered a wonderful pastry that was about a foot long and filled with a sugary and chopped nut concoction. It was absolutely delicious!

By the time we got to the park, the rain had returned, but it was only drizzling. We started walking along the path in a nicely wooded area next to the shore and oddly enough didn't notice that it had subsequently started pouring. We somehow deluded ourselves into thinking that despite the heavier and heavier rainfall, it was still only a measly drizzle. I finally came back to reality when the thigh of my pants were sticking to me. Within a minute my entire pants were soaking. With every step I took I could feel the added weight of the water. We quickly abandoned our efforts to walk all the way through the park to the lighthouse on the other side and took refuge under the overhang of a small building home to some vending machines. We stood there for several minutes, checked the map, and then realized we would just have to walk back in the downpour. Left with no other option, for we had no idea how long the rain would last, we left our shelter and made our way back to our hostel, pant legs sticking, shoes squelching, and coats dripping.

Back in our hostel we immediately stripped out of our wet clothes and threw on dry clothes. We then hung all of our clothes up to dry on the balcony outside our room (don't worry, it was covered, just in case you were thinking we put our clothes to dry outside in the rain). After a while of sitting in our hostel, we noticed the rain had once again eased up. We threw on our soaking shoes onto bare feet and ran down the street to a convenience store to get beer. On an impulse I threw in a thick Croatian newspaper to ball up and stick in my shoes.

Later that day after newspaper had soaked up some of the water in our shoes and we had spent as much time as we could in our room, we again put on our damp shoes (mine soulless because that was the wettest part) and went to explore Split a little bit. We ended up in Diocletian's Palace, the world's most complete and preserved ruins of a Roman palace. Built at the turn of the fourth century AD as Diocletian's place of retirement, it was abandoned by the Romans and then reinhabitated by residents fleeing barbarians in the seventh century. The palace has been occupied ever since, and is now home to shops, cafés, and museums. The architecture of the palace was spectacular and made me forget I was in Croatia. Instead, I felt transported to Italy.

After wandering around the palace, we set our sights for finding the beach. We made it to the shore, but found, instead of sandy beaches, cement pool sides. I have since then named them peaches because they are a cross between a pool and a beach. I was disappointed that there weren't actual sand beaches, or at least none that we found. We wandered around the deserted structures ordinarily teeming with life and activity in summer, but were deserted due to the weather and season. Then, the rain began again, and refusing to get more clothes soaking wet, we headed back to the hostel, but not before we each made a point to stand at the edge of a peach and touch the Adriatic Sea.

We spent a relaxing evening hiding from the rain. We ventured out only to grab pizza at a pizza joint down the street. There were pizzerias everywhere! You couldn't walk down a single street and not see some sort of sign advertising pizza. I ended up spending the evening attempting to finish my Prague blog and look up ferry times for the next day. I had the idea to try to take a ferry to one of the coastal islands the next day. It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out the ferry schedule. The one I got from the ferry ticket office was in Croatian, so that made life a bit more difficult. Luckily, I was able to find one in English online. While I made use of the hostels free internet, I listened in on Claire and Franky making up a game with Belot cards they had found in the hostel's kitchen. It was the most ridiculous thing to listen to. It was absolutely hilarious. They invited me to play, but frankly it was funnier just to sit and watch. They ended up creating a game like war, but with bizarre rules, like the six of Christmas balls (a.k.a. the card of unbeatability) would trump any card except for flowers. And, the player who played the six of Christmas balls would have to say "Jo Keleti jo," (with enthusiasm) before collecting the cards they had just won or the other person would get to take the cards. Like I said, hilarious!