Hello, Croatia!

Distance: 65.5 miles (105 km!)
Difficulty: Medium Hard
Sites: Split, Primosten, Dalmatian Coast

From Split to Krka

A little piece of advice: be very careful when you say, “I’ll have what he is having.”

After touring the beautiful city of Split, I was making my way toward Krka National Park. Sometime just after noon, I saw a restaurant filled with blue collar guys – a sure sign of good hardy food, cheap.

The guy didn’t appear to have a menu. I looking over to the man in overalls next to me, he appeared to be eating gnocchi, so I said: “I’ll have what he’s having.”

I perused my map for a while trying to determine where I was and how long it was to Krka. The restaurateur came over and placed my coke and food in front of me.

Crap, it’s tripe.

Originally, my plan had been to spend the day seeing Split and then making it 25 or 30km up the road to the campsite at Trogir. That plan had been based on seeing Split in 5 hours. Well, I did it in four – and I had started at 7:30 am. Thus with a Split decision, I chose to ride all the way to Krka.

There are three ways to get from Split to Sibenik. The first is an Autobahn, so that was out. The second is the main coast road. While the third is a minor road that outside of Trogir meets up with the main one. I chose the third, only to never find it and I had to ride all the way to Trogir on a road that was clearly not meant for a 15 mph cyclist to be on.

From Split to Krka

Once in Trogir, however, it turns into a beautiful coast road that allows you to see every Dalmatian Island along the way. One specific cool spot is the town of Primotsen that packs itself onto an entire small peninsula.

After 90 km or so, I made my way into the town of Sibenik. It is an old 17th Century Fortress town, a UNESCO site and the hometown of Drazen Petrovic – maybe the best basketball player in the world in 1992 not from the United States or Nigeria.

After Sibenik I rode up, up and up into the Croatian hills to my campsite, a delicious dinner and a couple of Croatian beers. Metric Century number 4 completed on bikespedition-2009.

Tino Pai!

Jesse…