Marjan Park

After breakfast, I walked to and around Split’s Marjan Peninsula, specifically, Marjan Park, which starts a few blocks west of the western boundary of the old town.

(Autocomplete insists that “Marjan” should really be “Marian.” I think I caught all of the instances. I apologize if not.)

The majority of the Marjan Peninsula is the park. And to the best of my knowledge all of the park (although not all of the broader peninsula), is a mountain.

On the way there, I walked through some lovely pedestrian streets. Before getting to the peninsula, I also found where people who have dirty fish go to launder them. Maybe I misunderstood the sign, but, if so, I don’t know what else the picture on it suggested. (See the accompanying photo.)

Hiking up Marjan Park’s Mountain 

The mountain is not at all tall by global standards, but taller than the hill I walked up to get to Hvar Fortress a few days ago. And it’s definitely high by grumpy old man standards. (I would raise my hand indicating that said grumpy old man is me, but then it would be hard to type.)

By the time I reached its summit, my Fitbit told me I already climbed up the equivalent of 64 flights of stairs. I walked around the park some more after summiting the mountain, including both up and down paths and roads.

When I returned to the foot of the mountain at the end of the morning my Fitbit told me I’d done the equivalent of 98 uphill flights of stairs. And my stomach told me it was time for lunch. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

With all of the exercise I’m getting on this trip, I’m confident that I’ll become fit enough to live into my seventies.

(Anyone who stumbles on this entry without knowing me and without reading some of my other recent posts won’t know that is a joke. I am already 70, hurtling toward 71 as I write these words. Of course, I don’t know when you are reading this. I might already be past that age by then. Or dead. It could happen sometime.)

And if historians stumble on this in an archive somewhere a few centuries hence, and then scour old government and other databases to find further information about my life, they’ll learn a couple of things about me:

1. I died at least a few decades prior. (What? You don’t think I’ll live into my hundreds? What about all of the exercise I’m getting?)
2. They wasted their time doing that research because I wasn’t a person of significance or in the least interesting. Nor, thankfully, was I, to the best of my knowledge, a person of interest to any police force. But never mind that.

The point is, betting I’ll live into my seventies is a sure thing.

In Marjan Park

Marjan Park is lovely. It has lots and lots of trees of several varieties. And a few cacti grow here and there as well.

The best view of Split’s old town, the surrounding newer parts of the city, some of the mountains behind the city, and the harbour in the park is from a terrace that I think is probably less than halfway up the mountain. 

There is also a café on the terrace for weaklings who can’t make it all the way to the top and/or down the mountain without refreshments. I’m no weakling. At least, not for a man my age. After spending some time to leisurely take in the view, I continued upward. Ever upward.

The views on the way up and at the summit don’t take in much of the old city, but they provide spectacular panoramas nonetheless. One side of the mountain offers seascapes, including the islands therein.

The other side of the mountain shows the bay on the other side of the peninsula, the mostly industrial plain behind it, and the mountains behind that. Furthermore, I saw that to the east of the end of the bay, Split sprawls toward the mountains. Unlike the old town, that section of the city includes some high-rises. I wouldn’t have known that had I not made the climb.

Because Marjan Park is well-treed, trees frame all of the vistas.

Attractions in Marjan Park

Beyond the starring features of the park, namely the trees, trails and views, Marjan Park offers a few small attractions.

A plateau below the summit holds a playground and zoo. I didn’t visit either. I didn’t visit the playground because my playground years were in a much earlier epoch.

But I didn’t visit the zoo for a completely different reason. I usually like modern zoos a lot. Their animals typically live in relatively large enclosures designed to resemble the animals’ natural habitats as much as possible. And the zoos often run breeding programs that try to defend threatened species against extinction.

I generally don’t particularly like older, smaller zoos. They tend to keep animals in small, un-sculpted pens. I usually quickly start to feel very sorry for the animals in their prison cells. And those sorts of zoos rarely have redeeming breeding programs like the ones at large, modern zoos.

It’s only a guess, but I got the feeling that the zoo in Marjan Park is one of the latter. The entrance looked quite rinky-dink and, based on its position on the small plateau, it can’t be very large. I didn’t get close enough to see if they charged for entry because I wasn’t interested even if it was free.

Elsewhere, the park also has a free botanical garden terraced into the side of a portion of the mountain. I did go into that. It’s reasonably large and has a lot of species of plants. I didn’t see any signage naming the species, so I don’t know what I saw. But, although it had few flowering plants, it was an enjoyable visit.

Lunch

As I mentioned above, by the time I descended the mountain and left the park, my stomach started agitating for lunch. I acquiesced.

I had lunch on a small, shaded restaurant patio off a quiet laneway just outside of the old town. My meal consisted of grilled squid, grilled vegetables, wine, water and an espresso. As usual, so far on this trip, it was very enjoyable.

More later.