Split, Croatia’s second largest city, is only a hop, skip and jump from Budapest, Hungary, meaning a half-day of air-travel can get you there. We flew from Budapest to Vienna, then on to Split, via Austrian Airlines. This gave us about half-a-day in Split, time enough to get to our AirBnB and still enjoy our first views and tastes of the city during daylight hours.

Hungary, and what is now Croatia, go way back. The Kingdom of Croatia, once an autonomous kingdom within Austria-Hungary, was created in 1868 as a result of something called the Croatian-Hungarian Settlement. Later, in 1941, Hungary “owned” a few northern Croatian regions as part of its territory. Many of us, of a certain age, who recall “Yugoslavia,” watched as Croatia become an independent country in 1991. It went on to become the 28th member of the EU in 2013. Croatia has over 1,000 islands, and for comparison purposes, is about the same size as the U.S. state of West Virginia.

Having visited the walled city of Dubrovnik several years ago, we were looking for a city more spatially “open” and less inundated with tourists. We visited both cities during the month of April. By then, busloads of tourists had already overwhelmed tiny Dubrovnik, but not so much with Split. And with Split’s easy access to other islands, such as nearby Hvar, we felt more “unfettered and alive” there, borrowing a lyric or two from Joni Mitchell (from Free Man in Paris).