19/09/2008
We set off to look at Diocletian's imperial palace underground cellars this morning. We did our own self guided tour and tried to avoid the many tour groups. There were quite a few Aussie groups and Bob asked one guy where they were all from and he said Perth. We kept running into an American couple who were obviously on the same tourist trail as us. They had their Rick Steves guide book -we could have 'high fived' each other with the books, but being the shy retiring types we are, just smiled instead.
We went to Diocletian's mausoleum - but because he believed he was Jovius (Jupiter Junior) the son of a god it was called Jupiter's Temple. Then the Christians came along and made it into St John's Baptistery. We decided to leave the cavalcade of tourists and retreated past a headless, pawless sphinx into a narrow alley way and found a fantastic bakery selling some very indulgent pastries, too good to resist!! We walked along the waterfront munching our pastries and admiring the view.
Time to find a laundrette, the clothes situation has become rather dire! We decided to find the laundrette first before lugging our dirty washing all over town. I managed to hurt my ankle and calf climbing up the steep hills and hobbled about. We found the Modrulj laundrette which is run by an Aussie girl who had seen an opportunity for a business and took it. She was backpacking around with her husband and found there was no where for travellers to wash there clothes and started the first laundrette in Croatia.... and doing very nicely too! Very well organised - and they did it for us, also internet facilities so I was able to catch up with my emails.
We sat by the harbour and watched the passing parade and wrote postcards, then went back and picked up our nice clean and folded washing.
We had dinner at a pizza bakery just down the road from our sobe. It was a very busy place. I was quite fascinated by the waitress who was a little old lady who flew around the place taking orders and delivering pizzas while the bar staff stood and watched. She didn't write anything down and barked the orders while taking the drinks as well. The place filled up pretty quickly. A group of 4 arrived and we indicated we would share our table. We spent an interesting evening with these 4 young Croats. One of the girls had spent 6 months in Australia so we had quite a bit to talk about.