It is a strange thing being a tourism blogger living in a tourism country.
The perspective is different.
What tourists see as a once in a lifetime experience are everyday experiences to the local resident. I first fully appreciated the difference over three years after I started the Total Hvar website in 2011. Several years later, I was invited by Karin Mimica of Gastronaut to join her foodie media club for a three-day tour of my adopted island. It was quite a trip, and this was only the first day. My perspective of Hvar changed forever that day, and I like to think it made me a more effective travel writer, as I had seen my island through tourist eyes.
I have always had the same strange feeling about Diocletian’s Palace in Split. For years, I didn’t even know that it was a UNESCO World Heritage Site, such was the level of tourism promotion in the city a decade ago. In truth, especially in the evening in winter, I found the palace a little intimidating. There were few bars, everything was dark, and there were some parts best avoided.
The transformation in the last ten years has been a joy to watch, and today, Diocletian’s Palace is one of the coolest places to hang out on the Croatian coast.
For years, I walked around the palace going about my business, sharing those historic alleys with an ever-increasing throng of tourists learning more about this Roman Emperor’s incredible retirement home. I smiled often as I overheard a not-uncommon question at the end of a tour of Diocletian’s Palace:
“But where is the actual palace? Can we visit that now?”
Thousands of years of history which you take totally for granted as a local, for it is with you every day. It was only when I finally did my own guided walking tour of the palace that I saw the destination – like Hvar before it – through tourist eyes.
And then, last autumn, I had a rather pleasant – and very private – rendezvous with 1,700 years of history in the most unlikely of places – my hotel bedroom.
My normal Split pad was unavailable, and so I decided to check out a small hotel which had mildly fascinated me for years, but which I had never visited – Hotel Peristil. Just 12 rooms in all, the hotel is perched on one of the original outer walls of the original palace.
When I entered the room, something quite spectacular awaited. Although I had reserved a single, it seemed that I would be sharing my room after all – with an original Roman outer wall from Diocletian’s Palace, which sat majestically near a delightful side room just off the bedroom.
Here I was, just metres from every attraction in the palace, the ferry, the riva and the green market, so close to all the tourist throngs, and yet a world away.
Rather than dive into my laptop as I planned, I decided to take a break and savour the moment with a glass of wine (ok, three) sat in my temporary living room next to 1700 years of history. A very private moment of contemplation, as life in Split continued around me.
It is moments like that which – for me at least – make the greatest memories in travel.
Some time later, the bottle empty, I returned to work, but the memory of that private audience with history remains one my highlights of 2020.
You can learn more about Hotel Peristil here.
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