kk Taylor

Split, Croatia - Senior Travel Adventures with Karen (kk)

You all know Karen ‘kk’ Taylor. Her Mind + Body classes calm and inspire us. For one month, kk has been touring Europe with her friend Dian, and we get to follow along. As kk says, ‘I am ready to have fun.’ This senior travel adventure is just that; we can share her experiences and keep our minds open and active. Follow kk’s warrior poses as we ‘get in our steps’ and lean into the experience. Getting our steps in is easy when the inspiring sights are just ahead.

I will post Dian’s commentary and kk’s photos as they arrive. Come back often to check in with her.

Villages Instructor Karen 'kk' Taylor and Dian Turner, Traveling Partner

Written by Dian Turner, my travel partner, who you will see in some of the pictures.

From the moment we walked off the plane, we were in shock. The drastic difference between the bustling, dirty, crowded city of Rome we had just left …to an empty, brand new, clean airport in Split…was mind-boggling. We have really enjoyed the past few days by the ocean in this little city of 200,000. The entire country of Croatia has less than 4 Million people…and most live in the capital city of Zagreb…but this small seaside town is just the perfect size to cozy up & be comfortable. History shows Croatia has existed like a soccer ball..tossed between countries for over 2000 years. I’ll try to highlight a few things we saw and experienced.

Diocletian's Palace…an ancient palace built for the Roman Emperor Diocletian at the end of the third century AD, (YELP… 1800 years ago…go figure!). Today the palace grounds form about half of the old town section. They call it a palace but it reminds me of a fortress. It’s massive. Half of it was used as the Emperor’s residence and rest was for military personnel. It took 10,000 slaves 10 years to build it. Today over 3,000 people still live in SMALL apartments inside the walls.

Food and wine tasting …local foods we sampled were octopus stew, fresh oysters, cuttlefish black ink risotto, lots of different cheeses, prosciutto, lots of olives and bread, anchovies in olive oil, gnocchi, and OF COURSE, lots of pizza, pasta and wine. Everytime they drink wine they bump glasses and say “Živjeli” (pronounced Gee v Lee ) and it means “cheers” or “To Life”. We were fortunate to visit a very t

iny family owned winery, Perisin, a short distance out of town located in a small fishing village on the coast. The son, Ivan, age 26, was basically a one man show …sadly due to his Father recently being diagnosed with leukemia. The good news is there’s only 12 wine producers in this region (all much older than Ivan, so they all help each other during busy harvest times. They produce only 1,000 cases of wine annually (12,000 bottles) so it is all kept for local consumption…that’s the BEST! It was actually my one of my top 10 favorite wine tastings and visits of all time. Very personal, just the 3 of us, and not only was Ivan extremely knowledgeable, he also had a great sense of humor (or maybe funny partly due to the excellent wine he produces). Obviously, we bought several bottles of wine. Just saying!

Krka National Park- AMAZING waterfalls! This is the oldest and largest national park in Croatia. It has seven waterfalls and is located about an hour out of split Our lunch while visiting the park consisted of fries, gelato, and of course, local red wine. Any on the way back to Split we were privileged to see the road thru the mountains that Napoleon built. How cool is that?