Our trip south from Gospic was somewhat comical. We headed out after lunch on Monday, taking the brand new expressway south, through the mountains (including a 6km long tunnel) to the seaside town of Sibenik. We arrived in the early evening, and spent an hour or so trying to locate a hotel. When we finally found the hotel, we realized that we’d left our passports at the hotel in Gospic.

So it was back out on the expressway, and north to Gospic at 130 km/h (the speed limit), where we ended up spending another night at the Hotel Ana.

Tuesday morning, we were back on the road early, bypassed Sibenik, and arrived in Split at 11:00 a.m., in time to return our rental car before the noon deadline.

As a result, we got to travel the new expressway, 6km tunnel and all, not once but three times.

Split is a large seaside city. The airport is to the north of the city, and it was there that we had to drop our car off, taking a cab down to the port where we would catch the ferry to Italy later in the day.

It was raining by the time we got downtown, but we still got a good opportunity to walk about the old city, and up the hill into a more residential area, with narrow cobblestoned streets and interesting architecture.

At the top of the hill, Dad suddenly recognized a staircase from our trip in 1972: it was the staircase to the Split Zoo. We walk up the (many, many) stairs, and at the top we found a barely-operating zoo, which had obviously suffered from the war, and from neglect. Animals appears to be getting fed, and the staff looked to be doing as much as they could, but the place was in very bad repair.

From the zoo it was a quick run downhill to an Internet cafe to deal with a server issue, a quick dinner, and then to the port to check in to our room on the overnight ferry to Italy.

Through all this, I took lots of photos as usual.