We arrived here at 13:00 after a seven hour bus trip from Sarajevo, through a pine forested canyon, beautiful towns, and over a high mountain pass; past new ski resorts and bombed out villages that have been abandoned. These villages are not Muslim, so the graveyards are filled with new crosses, and church steeples dominate the town centers.
We took a fifteen minute break every hour and a half, long enough for a smoke, coffee and bathroom break.
Just before 12:00 we were stopped at the border where they gathered up our passports and stamped us out of Bosnia. About 100 meters later we stopped again and all got off the bus. They wanted to see our faces as we were stamped into Croatia.
Now it was just a bumpy downhill run through scrubby, white rock mountains to the coast. This road looks familiar to me from five years ago, but we may have used a different road then. I can check my other passport when I get home.
UPDATE: Turns out we did go through here, but in reverse. Here is what happened that trip.
The bus station is right down at the ferry docks, which are right at the center of the Old City, so things are really easy to do.
First stop was at the ticket office for the Jadrolinija ferry to Vis.
To save yourself time, you should know there are four main docks sticking out, and at the shore end of each dock is a ticket office. You can buy tickets on any of the Jadrolinija ferry routes, and they tell you which pier you leave from.
The cost of our 2.5 hour trip out is $8 each.
We dropped our luggage at a red storage shack. For $3 each we could leave my pack and her suitcase for 24 hours. There is luggage drop off on each dock.
The "work" done, we had about three and a half hours to kill.
I had a line on a good place to eat, so I google mapped it. To get there we had to walk right through the underground gate and bazaar (basement of the old palace) into the old city.
We ate a nice lunch at the Uje Oil Bar, equal parts olive-oil shop and bistro. Next door is their tapas bar, Pikulece. I had fresh shrimps in lemon oil (fantastic) and fresh white fish in sweet onions and oil (good) while Gail had a cheese and olive plate. She really liked one cheese, and I liked the other, so we split it.
The waiter recommended a white wine that I would not have chosen, and it was a great choice.
Overall, the food was good, but more expensive than the past two weeks in Romania and Sarajevo.
We walked around the narrow streets, looking at this and that. It was semi-hot, but really humid.
It turns out that the time we had was enough to really walk every alley and then wander outside the old city walls, into another neighborhood. We walked the waterfront, but did not climb the hill to look down on the city.
We saw the famous St. Duje Cathedral, but did not climb the tower, and walked out the Golden Gate. We sat in the main square and watched, and saw the the palace of the Roman Emperor Diocletian. There is even a Sphinx!
They have something like the Parthenon, with a round ocular opening, called The Vestibule. I liked the area around the old city clock.
It turns out that our three and a half hours was good enough. But we walk fast, and look quick, and don't shop. We did relax eating and had time to just sit and people watch.
Here is a link to a short visit guide to Split. And another. And this one tells you how to climb the hill.