“Wow, so you’re just—taking them with you,” Charlie says, surprised.
“Well, we tried to leave them, but they never got the hang of driving to the store on their own,” I answer.
“Seriously, though,” Megan says. “That’s cool. I mean, you didn’t let kids stop you from traveling. You’re just taking them with you instead of waiting till they’re out of the house.”
I think for a minute. “Yes. True. But . . . they’re honestly one of the main reasons we are traveling now. We want to show them the world while they’re young. The earlier they see the world, the more normal it is for them. And the younger they start traveling, the better travelers they become.”
“Man, that’s the truth,” Stephanie says from the seat in front of me.
“That’s supercool,” Charlie says. “Man, what I would have given to get to do this when I was younger. What an education, you know?”
“Yep,” I say. “I know.”
Charlie leans over to look at Tate. “Appreciate this, okay?” he says to her. “Not many kids get to do this at your age.” Tate gives a shy smile and nods.
The bus pulls into the station and we board the next train. It’s older, with more rattles, and it herky-jerkies down the tracks. It’s nearly empty, so we spread out to sleep across seats. I dream of New Zealand, mint tea, and Turkish delight.
We arrive in Split under a dark sky, black waves licking a dock right outside the train station. It smells like fish and saltwater, coffee and ice cream. Fishing boats wave from their parking spots along the concrete barrier. It’s a few blocks’ walk to our apartment in the historic part of the city, and the kids are a mess of exhaustion. I pick up Finn and his backpack; Kyle picks up Reed.
Our guesthouse host, Marin, has given instructions for us to meet him “at the palace entrance. You’ll see it.” We trudge past closed cafés and ice cream shops facing the water, then out of nowhere, a white marble walkway under a stone-hewn arch. It leads down a marble path, worn smooth from eons of footsteps and gleaming white from streetlights. A young man leans against the wall, scrolling his phone.
“Marin?” Kyle asks.
Marin looks up and smiles. “Yes, that’s me. Looks like you found the palace,” he says, and takes Reed’s and Finn’s backpacks to carry. We follow him farther down the marble walking path.
“You really live in a palace?” I ask.
“Did,” he says. “I used to. This apartment is where I grew up. I now live not far from here.”
“So, what do you mean, though?” I say. “This is really a palace then?”
“Yep,” Marin says, “It’s Diocletian’s palace. It’s pretty old. A while ago, they divided it up into lots of apartments, and this is where I grew up.”
By “pretty old,” Marin means 300 CE.
We stop at a narrow wooden door next to a closed restaurant, and he unlocks it with a skeleton key, ducks as he enters, and motions us to follow suit. A twentysomething Croat, Marin fits the type I see lingering around the marble palace grounds: broad-shouldered, olive-skinned, tall. Taller than Kyle, who is over six feet.
Spiral stairs thread a narrow staircase, stone steps are six inches too high to pass modern building code; a three-foot gap between the stairs and the handrail threaten the most careful of sober adults without awkward backpacks and sleepy children. Finn can’t reach the handrail, and we have three flights to climb. I move him to the wall side of the staircase and tell him to keep his shoulder touching the wall as he climbs. When we reach the third floor, I look down and my stomach drops. The minuscule landing pad hosts another tiny door. Marin unlocks it with a second skeleton key and ducks inside his apartment.
Beijing is the only guesthouse smaller than this one. Our slice of Diocletian’s palace is a kitchen-dining-room combo fit for two adults, a bathroom and standing shower just past the kitchen sink, and two small bedrooms down a tapering hall. The best thing about the place, aside from its history and location, is the price. For thirty dollars a night, this is just fine. I’m glad Ryan and Stephanie’s family have found their own apartment here.
The size of our place doesn’t matter much, because in Croatia, we’ll mostly be outside. This land is glorious.
Split is like Southern California with ancient buildings and cheaper prices. The sky here is cobalt and cloudless; the sea air left its humidity farther south. People here are young and beautiful. We drink cappuccinos at tables along the waterfront while the kids eat ice cream, and I feel like a slipshod American tourist. The palace is chock-full of trendy clothing shops, and we buy Finn a new jacket (his was stolen outside a train station in Zagreb) and me some new jeans. Ryan and Kyle tag team with Stephanie and me, trading kid time with work time, and we’re surprised that most cafés have fast, free Wi-Fi, unlike the more Western countries we’ve traveled through, like Australia and France. The kids’ playground is archaic alleyways and derelict columns. They run across open marble plazas and slide until their feet give way.
I text a friend back in Austin to tell her I felt like I keep seeing her husband in a crowd, with all the men resembling his brawny build and coloring. “I’ve always thought of him as part Eastern European,” she says, “What with his body type and his penchant for beer and philosophy.” Kyle says on day three in Croatia, “Of all the nationalities we’ve been around, these are the sort of men I wouldn’t want to run into in a dark alley.” The women keep their hair long and wear stilettos with their jeans. Nearly everyone speaks English.
After the hallowed museum-like cities of Venice, Assisi, and Rome, and because we’re living in a veritable archaeological site, we pine for a bit of God’s country. The kids are clamoring to get dirty and we are surrounded by marble and deep ocean harbor. For our last full day in Split, we rent a car and drive two hours away to waterfalls named Krka, picnic lunch packed in the trunk.