Split- 9.15-9.17

If you ever travel from Zagreb to Split, be forewarned that you will have to take a five hour bus ride while being subjected to cheesey Europop music. Listening to your I-Pod doesn't help as no matter how loud you turn it up, the Europop still permeates your headphones which makes it that much more annoying. If you're lucky the person in front of you will sing along to all the songs, too.

Once we got to our hostel we found out they lost our booking but this worked to our advantage as we were given a cute private apartment, complete with a kitchen and private bath. We could hear a barbershop quartet sing at a local bar down the street- this was much more enjoyable than the Europop.

Split is a town that was built in and around the remains of a Roman palace. The city has small, convaluted walkways reminiscent of Venice, with a large boardwalk on the water filled with cafes.

One of the main sights is an old bell tower, aka 60m of terror, located in the Diocletian Palace. Amanda and I were on board- if we could climb the Eiffel Tower we figured this should be no problem. First you must walk up several flights of slippery, crooked stone stairs. The steps appear to have been made for a 7ft tall man yet the ceilings were so low even Amanda couldn't stand up straight the whole time. That was the easy part. Once you pass the stone stairs the real fun begins.

The rest of the ascent is made of a rickety, metal staircase clinging precariously to the inside of the tower walls. There are no real barriers between you and the large windows that you pass by so that if you were to trip sideways you would fall and die. This is made all the more scary by the frequent gusts of wind and the fact that the stairs shake with every step you take. We've never really had issues with height but we felt like Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo. The view was definitely worth it but we didn't linger at the top for too long.

On the way down, we were being curteous and stopped on a platform to let a couple coming up the stairs pass. This is the exact moment that the woman freaked out and decided to stop and sit on our little platform, thus blocking our way down. Simultaneously, 2 Spaniards who didn't quite grasp the wait-until-people-pass rule decided to join us on our little 3x3 platform which now had 6 grown adults on it. I don't know a lot about structural weight load but I have a pretty good understanding of the concept of gravity. It was a little tense. The Spaniards eventually squeezed by and the lady moved out of our way so we were able to live to tell our tale.

After resting our shaky legs, the remainder of the day was spent hunting for shoes. I have never been so disappointed in my life. We went into at least 15 shoe stores and couldn't find a single pair cute enough to buy. For now we will continue to dance in our tennis shoes.

On our last day in Split we hiked up a mountain which overlooked the city. The views were equally as good as the bell tower and was terror free.

FYI- you are not supposed to do this in Split: