10 bits of America I'm forever thankful are in my cultural DNA

Next year marks two decades since I moved to England. Since then, I've become a British subject, married a native and sunk my roots deep. But I haven't lost the accent. And at least once a fortnight, some well-meaning Brit with dreams of life across the pond asks me: "don't you miss it?"

Usually, the answer is: "my friends and family, yes. The rest, not really." But the classically American holidays of Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July always leave me a little homesick. So as friends and family on that distant continent wake up to prep their turkeys, I'm thinking about the things I do miss.

The cynics amongst you will quickly note that each of these has a dark side. Others will point out that after 20 years of expat life my memories have been gilded; America's not like that any more. Maybe not, but I bet it's still more like that than other places. On this day of national reflection on our blessings, I'm lay out ten reasons why I am forever thankful that I grew up in the USA.

1. Optimism
I took it for granted that everyone believed that if you worked hard enough, you could achieve anything you want. Then I left the USA and discovered that in many parts of the world reality has either beaten that optimism out of people, or society never let it grow in the first place. The American belief that all things are possible is character-defining.

2. Can-do attitude
One of my early lessons in British management. A more senior leader in our London office pulled me aside and advised: "when you give an order, Americans will get to work. Brits will pick it to pieces, question your authority, complain about all the reasons you're doing it wrong, then ... after you've listened to them moan enough ... get to work. They'll both get to the same place in the end, it's just a different process." I keenly missed can-do attitude in the 15+ years I worked for British companies. Back under American management again ... even though I mostly work with Brits ... I notice and appreciate the shift in corporate culture.

3. Customer service
When I first moved here, this may be the thing I missed most. Service was surly, or incompetent, or haughty, or non-existent. But it was rarely cheerful, delivered with a smile and concluded with "have a nice day." Thankfully, the gulf on this one has narrowed significantly.

4. Road trips
It was 22 hours from St. Louis to our annual summer vacation spot in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, Florida. Seems a long way. But those hours on the open highway, in close proximity to my parents, stopping at roadside diners and pestering for stops to see Rock City and Ruby Falls were precious. European friends tended to travel short distances or get on planes. They missed the magic.

5.  Patriotism
Flag-waving, cheerful, unadulterated pride in your country and its principles. A whole holiday devoted to it. And below that, the deep passion for being a Missourian (or a Virginian, Texan, Californian...) and a St. Louisan. I relish that deep sense of belonging that ties me to one particular version of "home" wherever I go, and the fact that in America I don't have to be embarrassed to feel that way. I still have an optimistic belief that the crazy experiment in liberal democracy that the founding fathers kicked off in 1776 is worth fighting for.

6. Baseball
I've come to appreciate cricket. I'll even admit that it's much more strategic. But I still love my home game. MLB.com brings it closer, but not a summer goes by that I don't think wistfully of hot, sticky nights in Busch Stadium.

7. Space
Walk-in closets. Two-car garages (in which you can fit the cars and all your other junk). Enough room between tables in restaurants not to be overheard. Enough personal space that nobody feels the need to press against you in a queue. The vast, cozy sprawl of suburbia, where we could ride our bikes for miles and roam the woods in complete safety. I've always suspected that a big land breeds big ambitions and big desires.

8. A hunger for history
Don't laugh. Europeans often denigrate Americans for their lack of history. But it's precisely this lack that makes them appreciate it more. Consider the American obsession with the British royal family and costume drama. Many Europeans couldn't tell you about their families before their grandparents; many Americans can take every branch back to the immigrant boats. My love of the past is what first brought me to London. The rest is ... history.

9. Alumni networks
These exist in different forms in Europe. (Certainly some form of the "old boys' club" must go back to pre-history.) But there's nothing quite like the American university alumni organisation. Ties back to Northwestern have eased my entry into every new city I've moved into, helped me find jobs, introduced me to some of my best friends and generally provided a steady backbeat to my life.

10. Thanksgiving
A holiday that's simply about coming together to give thanks for all you have. No religious affiliations to exclude anyone. No gifts to add pressure and expense. Just a time to be grateful. And humble ... in light of all of the blessings we have.

While these elements may not be unique to the land of my birth, they are highly characteristic of it. At least of the American of my memories, c. 1964 - 1999. Each is part of my cultural DN. This is the stuff inside of me that is still proudly American, despite a second passport and residence elsewhere. Thank God for that. Now, bring on the pumpkin pie.

Croatia: The Restaurant Roundup

Dubrovnik: The Taj Mahal, Forty-Four
Split: Bokeria

Will you eat well in Croatia? Yes. Is it a foodie destination? I'm skeptical.

This is contradicting the much-missed American food journalist Anthony Bourdain who, on a visit here in 2012, exclaimed "Croatia is the next big thing!" Perhaps, based on endorsements like that and on rising tourist numbers, they're just trying a bit too hard. Because while we found plenty of beautiful restaurants, revelled  in excellent service and ate well, I still can't tell you what on the food front makes Croatia unique. Nor did I see much evidence of the passion for seasonal eating and local produce that usually characterises great local cuisine.

Take, for example, the pomegranate. We saw them growing everywhere and it was obviously harvest time; tables in Split's market were groaning with them. I thought either the kernels or the syrup would  feature strongly but we never saw a mention on menus. Same for the exquisite cabbages (Diocletian, after all, famously retired here to grow them) and the huge numbers of oranges for sale on roadside stands between Dubrovnik and Split. We heard many boasts about the world-leading qualities of Ston oysters and the unique flavour of its sea salt, but didn't encounter either in restaurants. Given Dalmatia's historic role keeping trade open between the Islamic east and the Christian west, I thought we might find heavily spiced fusion dishes like those that turn up in Lebanon or Sicily. Nope. And considering the preponderance of big, bold zinfandels on the wine lists, I expected more spicy lamb dishes or rich beef stews, but most restaurants defaulted to local seafood and lighter dishes (most of which risked being overwhelmed by the fruity reds.)

Every restaurant we entered, with one exception, featured a menu that could have been designed by an international culinary consultant asked to create a generic Mediterranean experience to please all diners. All the meals we had were delicious. They just weren't distinctive.

The one exception wasn't Croatian at all, but Bosnian. You'll assume it's a curry house when you see its name, but the Taj Mahal draws from traditions much closer. Bosnia is only about an hour from Dubrovnik and, with the exception of a tiny piece of coastline, is mostly inland and mountainous. The Taj Mahal delivers all the exoticism of mountain dwellers existing between empires to the centre of old Dubrovnik. Here are the strongly-flavoured, smoky meats that paired perfectly with giant Zinfandels. Sensing our openness to new things, our waiter laid on a combination menu so we could try a little bit of everything. Bamija (a veal stew simmered with okra, tomatoes and garlic) fought with the house special (veal and turkey with mushrooms and cheese, baked in a pastry case) for dish of the evening. The sweets are familiar in description but distinctive in taste. Numerous people on Trip Advisor claimed their baklava was the best ever. It managed to preserve the honey, nuts and layered pasty of the familiar dish but somehow deliver it as something far lighter, more delicate and not so overpoweringly sweet; certainly worth ofthe superlatives. Half an apple, baked until soft then stuffed with a fine mince of walnuts, chocolate and honey was another winner.

Servers wear loose trousers and short, open-front waistcoats giving them a look somewhere between I Dream of Jeannie and Lord Byron's famous Albanian costume. The music is vaguely Arabic, but also reminds you of a Southern Italian tarantella or Spanish flamenco. The walls are covered with colourful Moorish tiles. It's all delightfully exotic yet comfortingly cosy, particularly on the sodden night from which we sought shelter. Even better, it was about half the cost of the meal the night before.

Forty-Four delivered our most expensive meal of the trip, and the one that felt closest to that design-
by-food-consultant concept. Which might not be too far off the mark, given that the place is owned by a professional athlete. Bojan Bogdanovic is a local boy made good in America's NBA, currently playing small forward for the Indiana Pacers. He wears No. 44, thus the restaurant's name. The place is blessedly free of sporting memorabilia, but in the premium priced-menu of steaks, lobster and fine wines it follows the template of sporting stars' restaurants around the world.

On Halloween night we were the only ones in the place, so maitre d' Goran (photo, top) made us the centre of his existence. And he delivered a memorable experience. We started with a platter of local seafoods ... most notably slightly pickled fish roe, otherwise a straightforward array ... with fresh breads dipped in local olive oil. While the menu felt generically Mediterranean, the producers of all the olive oils and wines seemed to be either Goran's cousins or neighbours. Croatia, he reminded us, is a small place.

The accompanying white Pošip wine came from Grgić, perhaps Croatia's most internationally famous winery. Croatian-American maker Mike Grgić shot to fame when his Napa Valley Chardonnay beat the French in the blind tasting now known as the Judgement of Paris in 1973. He went on to notable success in the States and in 1996 decided to return to the "old country" to invest in wines there with his daughter. His endorsement has been a shot in the arm for the wine industry across Croatia. Naturally, we had to try their Plavac Mali with the main course. This big, fruity descendant of Zinfandel probably overpowered the seafood that came next, but was delicious.

Or was the lobster, plucked from its tank and prepared just for us, overwhelmed by the sweet tomatoes, cognac or truffle that accompanied it in the home-made pasta? The dish, finished table-side by Goran, was an indulgent mix of pricey ingredients. Delicious but, truth be told, the delicacy of the lobster was wasted. The prawns that filled out the dish's protein profile and would have made more sense as the sole fishy ingredient. (Wild boar, which we were told roamed the wooded hills but never appeared on any menus, would have been even better.)

Without dessert, the two courses and two bottles of wine cost us £100 each, by far our worst value-for-money meal of the trip. I suspect this is a place crafted to appeal to the growing influx of wealthy visitors, especially the super-yacht passengers that tie up here every summer. It's clearly popular, pulling down five stars on Trip Advisor. We enjoyed it, but this wasn't the authenticity I look for.

Bokeria in Split came closer, and had the rare distinction of enticing us into a return visit. On short trips we like to try as many places as possible, but the meal, experience and price were such a good combination on our first visit we decided to make our farewell dinner a sure thing by returning here.

You can certainly make the generic Mediterranean, designed-by-consultant accusation here as well. You could pick Bokeria up and drop it easily in London, New York or Rome. There was nothing particularly Croatian about it. The name is a give-away; it's inspired by the famous market in Barcelona.

But it was good. Great, in fact. The kind of modern bistro with a rotating menu and exceptional service you dream about finding in your local neighbourhood. Given the enormous number of locals enjoying themselves here, they appreciate their luck. (This was the biggest difference between Dubrovnik and Split. In the former, all the restaurants seemed to exist solely for the tourist trade. In Split, we were appreciating places that succeeded or failed based on repeat local trade.) Our waiter insisted that this was the place that had transformed Split's whole food scene. Before its opening in 2014, everything was heavy and uninspiring; now, everyone else is chasing Bokeria's star. That may be another example of Croatian elasticity of truth, but it's great to see staff so enthusiastic about the place they work.

Over the course of our two visits we managed to sample a gazpacho everyone proclaimed was amongst the best we'd ever had, beef carpaccio, a heritage tomato salad and burrata that was a work of art on the plate. Our favourite mains were a thick, hand-rolled pasta with a creamy mushroom and truffle sauce that could be the definition of comfort food, a much healthier swordfish on a roasted red pepper sauce and a classic gourmet burger. Delicious desserts included a cake and ice cream dome rich with pistachios and a moreish chocolate eclair. The most Croatian thing about Bokeria is an extensive wine list that covers all the growing regions of the country. The waiters know their stuff, giving good advice and offering tastes to get us to the right choices.

Perhaps what's truly Croatian is an extreme elasticity to deliver what sells. We saw that characteristic in every tour guide, hotel and shop. Why not in restaurants, too? Croatia may not send you on an exotic journey of culinary discovery, but it will please your palate. And if trends change in years to come, I rather suspect that Croatian menus will change with them.

Seductive Split brings history alive

Dubrovnik interested me, but Split seduced me.

If Venice and Florence had a secret love child, then abandoned it to grow up in the ruins of ancient Rome, you'd get Split. It's gorgeous and haunting. Compact. Beautiful and mysterious. A place where the margins between the present and the distant past seem very slim indeed.

This magical time-shifting is most obvious in the peristyle, a rectangular public space at the heart of the old palace that forms the historic town centre. (I hadn't fully appreciated the reality until I got here. I knew the palace of Diocletian was in Split; I didn't grasp that the old town was actually in the palace.) In the peristyle, the Emperor Diocletian's visitors would have found a magnificent garden surrounded by a colonnade of towering columns of various colours, assembled to show the rich variety of empire. The greatest glories of the palace connected here. To the right, the temple of Jupiter (whose incarnation Diocletian claimed to be on Earth). To the left, the magnificent octagonal mausoleum that would someday take his earthly body. Straight ahead, a round vestibule where Diocletian would receive visitors, draped in imperial purple and haloed by light that came in from windows aligned to the sunrise and sunset, then bounced off gold-leaf covered walls.

It's a little less showy these days, but all those elements survive. The peristyle is now a rectangular piazza known as Split's living room. The garden is long gone, now paved with white stone buffed to a mirror-like sheen by centuries of foot traffic. The mausoleum now stands, but as what must be one of the world's smallest cathedrals. The vestibule is an echoing ruin, now often occupied by musicians entertaining tourists and flogging CDs. Buildings have completely filled in the West side of the peristyle's colonnade, dominated by a bar and restaurant called Luxor. Their cushions cover the stone steps. While most visitors followed their guides through here, stopping, snapping photos, then moving on, we settled here at least once a day for cold beer and hot people watching. As dusk falls and the tour groups disappear, it's a magical place to while away the hours.

Tours aren't a bad idea, however. Beautiful as the old town is, it can be hard to piece its story together from your own observation. Informative guidebooks are remarkably absent. You can by a copy of Diocletian's palace modelled in white chocolate, but good luck finding one of those books that superimposes a coloured acetate onto a modern photo to give you a picture of then and now. There are a handful of plaques up on buildings, but nobody has bothered with a city trail that allows you to navigate around the old town's lanes understanding how they started. We hired history teacher Dino Ivancic to make it real for us. (Approx. £95 for two hours.)

Dino is either a remarkably good judge of character or an acquired taste to be approached with caution. I'm going to guess it's the former; he figured we already had a good understanding of basic history, were comfortable with wry wit and a bit of ribald humour. The resulting tour was half serious explanation, half history-based stand-up routine channelling Monty Python and Blackadder. So I didn't get quite the level of Roman history and architecture I would have liked (probably to the relief of my friends) but we were richly amused.

After a short walk out to the harbour to get a look at the full span of the palace walls, we plunged into its most remarkable feature. The basement. Yes, really. In order to level a sloping site, and put Diocletian's private apartments safely above sea level, the architects built an impressive sub-structure of lofty arched and domed rooms that matched the pattern of the palace above. The "barbarians" who moved in after the fall of empire couldn't figure out the underfloor heating, and thought the subterranean spaces would be more useful as cesspits. Their shocking mis-use of the space led to its preservation; the rooms weren't dug out by archeologists until the late 20th century, providing new understanding of the palace above and lots of museum-worthy artefacts that had been entombed in the mire.

All visitors get some exposure to these cellars as they walk from the main harbour-side entrance up to the peristyle. Craftspeople have set their stalls up here to form a picturesque shopping mall on the main tourist route. But for a small fee you can ramble though the whole atmospheric complex. Game of Thrones fans will get an extra thrill discovering the sets where Daenerys incarcerated her dragons and Barristan Selmy met his death.

Back up top, guides like Dino help you to decipher what the place looked like in the 3rd century and how it would have functioned in Diocletian's time. For example, standing us at the Iron (Western) gate today the path narrows quickly into a lane between shops. He pointed out the telltale marks in walls that reveal the width of the original road; the decumanus, where ten soldiers could walk abreast. Dino showed us how more modern centuries layered onto the Roman world, borrowing walls and integrating bits of ancient sculpture into their decor. He also exposed us to the historic Jewish quarter, not much mentioned in official guides. Similar to stories we heard in Dubrovnik, the people of Split didn't care much about religious differences as long as everyone made a good profit. This was a point of refuge for Jews getting kicked out of Spain at the time of the Inquisition, and Split boasts one of Europe's oldest continuously operating synagogues.

After leaving Dino we looped back to go inside the cathedral and the temple of Jupiter (joint admission ticket). Both are magnificent buildings. I found the cathedral both amusing and fascinating for its layering of the pagan and Christian. The frieze around the top, thankfully far too lofty for iconoclastic early Christians to do damage, has a shockingly profane theme of putti enjoying earthly delights of drinking and hunting. No doubt exactly what Diocletian planned to be doing in the afterlife. Successive generations have added a magnificent pulpit (very medieval Tuscan in style); pointy gothic side altars, a wildly opulent baroque altar that's a masterpiece of marble inlay work and a rather distracting choir. Despite all of this, it's still a resolutely Roman interior.

The temple of Jupiter, now the Baptistry, has seen less tampering. Other than a baptismal font cobbled together from gorgeous early Christian altar panels (almost Viking in their sinuous abstraction) and a hideous modern sculpture of John the Baptist, the space has been left bare. All the better to appreciate one of the most magnificent ceilings still intact from the ancient world. It's a coffered barrel vault, each coffer with a different decorative element at its centre and glorious foliage around its edges, held up by a ridiculously ornate, multi-levelled cornice. (Photo above) It was so magnificent I paid to see it twice.

For a separate fee you can clamber up the bell tower outside the cathedral. If its lines look a bit sleek, despite its Romanesque design, you're right to spot an aberration. It's one of the most modern things inside the place walls, being a 1908 reconstruction of an earlier tower that came down in an earthquake. I thought about this a lot as I made the vertigo-inducing climb. Pierced by stories of arched windows and entirely empty inside, the tower is ascended by metal stairs bolted to the interior walls. With nothing between the stair treads. Climbing feels like you're hovering in mid air. Descending is even worse. And I don't have an issue with heights. The view from the top is worth it. Be brave.

Streets immediately outside the palace walls are a pleasing melange of Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque and Neo-Classical. Many old palaces have a decidedly Venetian feel about them, with twisted columns and fanciful pointed windows. There's even an enormous piazza loosely based on St. Marks, with one side open to take in sea views. (Locals tend to drink here rather than in the peristyle). Other bits feel like you're deep in Tuscany (particularly the decidedly un-Italian sounding Narodni Trg square). There's a magnificent fruit and veg market out the Eastern gate and a fish market out the West; both will make foodies wish they had a kitchen.

Despite the antiquity, Split feels like a vibrant, modern town. Squares and restaurants are full of locals. Children play ball in the streets. There are trendy wine bars with rooftop gardens. We found restaurants we'd welcome, and repeatedly visit, if they existed in London. (Of that, more in my next story.) The shopping scene goes far beyond the expected tourist items; Split is packed with boutiques with locally designed clothes, dramatic jewellery and stand-out accessories. Most were a bit too high fashion for my style, but window shopping was a joy and we all agreed that the women of Split were some of the most fashionable of any city we'd ever visited. People watching was a catwalk show with good architecture.

There's no doubt this is a living city, not a stage set for tourists. That was obvious when we got out of town for our wine tour at Kovac. From Anton's vineyards we could see the sprawl of a very big, very busy place. "All the creative industries are here," our tour guide Andrea told me. "Government and the law are in Zagreb. Dubrovnik lives on tourists. We make things."

It's also a jumping off point for additional exploration. We gazed enviously at the day trips we wouldn't have time to take. Excursions inland to a national park famed for waterfalls. Jaunts to islands with exquisite beaches and picturesque towns. Winery tours (we'd done one, but there were more to be sampled.) The Medieval town of Mostar, just over the border in Bosnia, with its legendary bridge. Even Dubrovnik was accessible from here. The more I learned of Split, the more I marvelled that Dubrovnik is the go-to destination for most visitors to Croatia. This is the place I'd want to come back to, and use as a base for a longer holiday.

One of my great heroes felt the same way. If we dropped back two centuries ... still fairly modern for Split ... we'd find it a star on an extended Grand Tour trail thanks to now-legendary architect Robert Adam. In 1764 he'd printed a lavishly illustrated guide to the Ruins of the Palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro in Dalmatia. The first few pages are packed with the names of the aristocrats who subscribed to fund its production, topped with the king and queen. Thanks to a digitisation project at the University of Wisconsin, you can follow the preceding link to look at the whole thing online. Exquisite drawings go into obsessive detail showing architectural features that are, for the most part, still there and on regular view. He includes more "modern" fortifications and neo-classical buildings as well. Though scholarship has moved our understanding on since Adam's time (he believed the Mausoleum was the Temple of Jupiter, and the Temple of Jupiter one to Aesculapius) the  power and the beauty of the architecture hasn't changed.

And it will all look very familiar. Because this was one of the source books Adam used in his designs for the grand buildings of London and aristocratic country houses across Britain. Which were then copied across the world in government buildings, museums and grand residences. The creative spark we found in Split has travelled the world; most people just aren't aware of it. I'd encourage anyone who enjoys history and architecture to spend time here. They'll fall in love.

Oysters and Zinfandel top our Croatian culinary experiences

After five days of serious research into the topic, I still couldn't tell you what's distinctive about Croatian cuisine. The locals don't help much.

"It's very Mediterranean."

"We like a lot of fish. And vegetables. But if you like meat ... we have meat, too."

We sampled a procession of beautiful food and wine throughout the country. But if you served it to us in a blind tasting back in London, the restaurant serving it could have been Spanish, Provencal or Italian. Palate pleasing, for sure, but not differentiated. We found two exceptions: oysters and red wine. (Not, of course, consumed together!)

The Croatians take their bivalves very seriously. Their coastline is a perfect breeding ground for this category of seafood. There's no sign of industrial pollution. Fresh water comes cascading down limestone mountains to meet the crystal-clear Adriatic, screened from too much disturbance (and many predators) by a long chain of islands. Most of the coastline functions as a giant tidal lagoon. As filter-feeders, bivalves like oysters, clams and mussels reflect the taste of the water they live in; the terroir of the sea. This unique Croatian waterscape produces bivalves that are subtler, more nuanced and complex than usual, particularly in the case of the famous Mali Ston oysters.

The coastal geology is perfect for grapes as well. Steep slopes with a limestone bedrock, not too much rain and thin, free-draining, not-too-rich soil are exactly what vines like to drive their roots deep and suck the best out of the Earth. Regular sea breezes keep the threat of mildew low. Though 68% of Croatia's overall wine production is white, most of that comes from the continental heartland. The Dalmatian coast's most dependable white wine is Pošip, a remarkably flexible grape that can remind you of anything from a rich Chardonnay to a light Pinot Grigio depending on what the maker does with it, but is generally closest to a mid-market Sauvignon Blanc. But mostly, this part of Croatia is all about big, bold, fruity reds. Early in this century, scientists tracing grape vine DNA determined that this region is the birthplace of Zinfandel. That, and its descendant Plavac Mali, will keep wine lovers very happy throughout their visit.

Both the oysters and the wines come in very limited quantities and are so famous that they sell out before their producers ever need to think about export markets. If you want to taste these uniquely Croatian delights, you'll have to get on a plane. And, naturally, the closer you can get to the source, the better.

THE GREEN LAGOON
Our day in Ston was, no doubt, radically affected by going out of season. The number of restaurants, shops and excursion boats makes it clear that in summer this place is heaving with tourists. On 2 November we had it almost to ourselves. We felt like explorers stumbling upon some lost city enchanted in time.

Because of a strategic position for both transport and agriculture, Ston has been occupied
continuously since the classical period. It acquired its present, remarkably romantic appearance in the 14th century due to a period of intense civil war. Residents protected themselves with a circuit of walls more than four miles long, encompassing the towns of Ston and Mali (little) Ston, harbours, fortresses and acres of agricultural land stretching up a lofty hill. The walls are a remarkable sight ... in some ways far more impressive than Dubrovnik's because of their isolation. The locals claim Ston's is the longest wall in the world after the Great Wall of China. Not even close ... but that doesn't take away from their majesty.

(It's worth a quick aside here to explain that the Croatian tourism industry has an almost Trumpian flexibility with facts. You'll hear a lot of big claims, like that Wall of Ston boast, that you'll want to take with a grain of salt. Such as the idea that Trsteno is the world's oldest botanical garden ... many other's make that claim ... and the assertion by everyone in Split that the US White House was built with Croatian limestone. White House historian William Seale has proven that the stone came, far more logically, from a quarry in Virginia. And while he acknowledges that there's a possibility that some Croatian stone might have found its way into interior renovations in the 20th century, he's been unable to find any records that validate it.)

Mali Ston, on one corner of those rambling walls, is now just a cluster of ancient stone buildings ... almost all restaurants ... sitting next to a tiny harbour with a few old-style wooden boats. Beyond is an emerald-green lagoon of startling clarity, framed by the mountainous coastline and tiny islands, and dotted with buoys marking lanes of oyster cultivation. We set off on the good ship Bogutovac, a traditional wooden craft plying these waters since 1954, for a cruise around the beds. While she normally takes up to 50 passengers, we had her, her captain and first mate all to ourselves. The last had worked the oyster beds of New Orleans until Hurricane Katrina destroyed the industry and sent him home, so not only was his English excellent but he could talk about the differences in taste, harvesting and cooking between Europe and the USA.

I have no doubt that the standard, high-season tour is good value for money. A boat ride, a little talk, a shot of local liquor, 3 oysters and a glass of white wine in an hour. For our €30 each, we not only had the boat to ourselves but took a lengthy pause at a floating harvesting station in the bay, where we could climb aboard to take an up-close look at every aspect of oyster production as the first mate talked us through the steps. Our slow return saw the four of us seated in the prow of the boat feasting on a full plate of six oysters each, all of which had been hanging off a rope in the lagoon just 15 minutes before. Beverages were all we cared to drink, with shots of traditional plum rakia or myrtle liquor on the way out (I think these shots were as close as I got to anything that was truly Croatian) and Pošip on the return journey. The sun was shining, the world was almost silent and we felt like queens as we made our slow, stately return. None of us checked the time but I suspect their usual hour's excursion turned into two.

Obviously, we tipped generously. If you want to follow in our footsteps, go here.

ANOTHER SUNSET, ANOTHER VINEYARD
Our evening at the Kovac Winery was only slightly less private and just as magical. While winemaker and owner Anton will host up to 18 tourists on any evening, on this off-season Saturday night there was only one other guest. As some strange trick of cosmic fate, we soon discovered that her father had graduated from Northwestern (our generation, but none of us knew him), so she slotted into the girls' trip like family. Fortunately, she shared our delight in both learning about wine, and drinking it in memorable places.

Kovac is about half an hour outside of Split in Kaštel Sućurac, on the bay on the North side of the Split peninsula. Thankfully, given both for the hassle of transport and because of the generous amounts of wine involved, the evening's £70 fee includes pick up and return to Split's Golden Gate. (In this case Anton driving one car and the terrifically informative Andrea in another.) In older times Anton's home town was known as Putalj, and that's the name Anton puts on his labels. Given that he says his family has been making wine here for 1,000 years, it's a logical throwback.

The tour starts in the vineyard itself, where Anton is well aware of the majesty of his view. He's constructed a pavilion at the top of his slopes, from which serried rows of grape vines and olives descend to the town below. Beyond that is the bay of Kaštel and beyond that the peninsula on which Split sits. (Though Diocletian's palace, on its far side, is out of view.) The slopes face South and slightly West, setting you up for a gorgeous sunset. At this time of year it was a long, lingering one. We sat in the pavilion watching shadows lengthen and the limestone peaks to our left start to glow in pinks and golds. We helped ourselves to bottles of rosé and nibbled from plates of local cheese as Anton spun tales of the local industry: the history dating back before Roman times, the range of little-known local grape varieties, the boon of the Zinfandel discovery, the challenges of keeping the industry going through the disasters of phylloxera and communism.

Ironically, it's capitalism that's causing Anton his biggest problems at the moment. He sells everything he can make. Keen to expand, he regularly makes offers on adjoining parcels of land (often owned by cousins). But in a post-communist reaction against taxation, Croatia has decided not to levy property taxes. The result: people have no incentive to sell family lands. But few have the money it takes to create new wineries. So most of the slopes around Anton are picturesque, but lay fallow.

As we waited for sunset we grabbed our glasses and wandered the rows of vines, now blazing autumnal red and yellow in the dying light.

Once the sun had dipped below the horizon we headed back to the cars, then drove down to Anton's house and small but perfectly-formed winery. Here he did the usual wine tour overview of the production process and, uniquely, gave us a taste straight out of the vats of 6-week-old zinfandel that had just finished fermenting. Drinking too much of this would knock your head off, but it was an interesting contrast to the finished, aged Zinfandel and Plavac Mali we were comparing. Those related wines were so close I think even professionals would have a tough time judging if their difference came from the grape or from the makers' vinification. We thought the Zinfandel was smoother, richer and fruitier, but the Plavac Mali had more complexity and a sharper tannic edge that would work better with rich foods. At £18 each we bought all we could carry home on the plane. (Sadly, given that I was travelling light, I could only manage a bottle of each and one of Anton's freshly-pressed extra virgin olive oil.)

Business done, we retired to Anton's tasting room to drink far more than was wise, though enough to make the per-person price of the evening excellent value for money. He even opened a bottle of his prized 2014 Zinfandel, sadly no longer for sale.

That's another oft-validated lesson from years of girls' trips: the more intelligent interest you show in someone's wine, the more likely they are to break out the special stuff. The same general rule works across all of tourism. You might not always be able to pull off the magic of a private tour, but the more interested you are in your hosts ... and the more personal a connection you can make ... the more special your day is likely to become.

If you want to book your own evening with Anton, you can do it here

There's more to Dubrovnik than Game of Thrones, but it's a great prism for seeing the city's history

One of the great joys of small group travel is the affordability of a dedicated guide. Funding a day of exclusive attention when travelling as a couple, or on your own, rarely makes financial sense. When you're splitting fees by four, it becomes logical.

While still a bit more expensive than standard group tours you can pick up on Trip Advisor, a little more money spent by our foursome on a dedicated guide inevitably returns enormous benefits. We get excursions crafted to our interests, form great relationships with our guides and have the flexibility to go off piste, whether in topic or locations. And we inevitably walk away with top tips for bars, restaurants and shopping. I'm convinced that our increasing use of private guides is one of the reasons that our annual girls' trips seem to get better every year.

It's probably impossible to tour Dubrovnik these days without talking about Game of Thrones. Croatia's not just a filming location; the show has spawned a whole new industry here. Shops bristle with themed items, costumed mannequins put characters on the street and dedicated boutiques will snap your photo on a full-size copy of the iron throne if you buy something. With three of the four of us being devoted fans of the fantasy epic, a dedicated tour was a must. But how to choose from the more than 25 options on Trip Advisor? Fortunately, one of us had past experience and hooked us up with Magnus Regis, a small company of locals who are all qualified guides, only do private tours and add professional backgrounds in history and archaeology to their passion for GOT.

Dubrovnik's walled centre is one of those places, like Venice and Bruges, that was once hugely prosperous but then forgotten by history.  There's little in your immediate view more modern than the 17th century. The most glorious buildings have the pointed windows and sinuous stone carving of those high Gothic merchant empires who linked East and West. Centuries of traffic have polished the white limestone streets to a brilliant shine like marble. The city insists that all signage must be worked into glass panels on uniform lanterns that hang above all the doorways, giving a pleasing uniformity to the streets.

No wonder directors love the place as a film set; It takes very little to conjure up another world. In addition to GOT, Dubrovnik has been the location for a soon-to-be-released version of Robin Hood, was the casino city of Canto Bight in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, hosts the currently-running Templar drama Knightfall and stood in for Venice in David Tennant's version of Casanova.  The Croats are also very canny business people. They scooped GOT off Malta at the end of Season 1, undercutting Maltese pricing, offering cheap and enthusiastic extras and massive additional support to the production team. They played the long game. They believed they didn't need to make money off the shoots themselves. The cash would come from the tourism that followed. They were right.

HALLOWED SPOTS AND HOT HISTORY
We started in the old town with Magnus Regis owner and founder Tom Matana. At the heart of the tour is a simple but effective strategy: you walk around, your guide gets you to a particular point, then holds up the appropriate page from a book of laminated scene shots from the show that are taken from the exact spot at which you're standing. He reminds you which season the action took place in, what's going on, and often gives you some insight into the movie magic that finished the transformation from modern Croatia to fantasy Westeros.

Good news for the GOT uninitiated: the last bit is fascinating even for people who have never seen the show. Look at how carefully this shot was framed to cut out the Christian imagery above the building's doors. (Even if there had been saints in Westeros, it's doubtful there'd be one above the door of Littlefinger's brothel.) Check out the artful addition of ivy and potted plants to cover those modern drainpipes and power lines. Look carefully here to see how the same guy appears in this scene multiple times; they filmed it with a much smaller group and duplicated it to form a crowd. Yes, those are the stairs Cersei descended in her walk of shame, but this is how they used giant green screens to block out the Jesuit church and university building at the top, and replace them with a painted version of the great sept.

Also good for non-viewers, the GOT sets are a prism through which you can explore all of this city's history, and because it's a private tour your guide can give you as much or as little as you're interested in. Standing on the old town's western heights (the walled centre is essentially a v-shaped cleft with the main business district on the flat bottom and steep, stair-stepped residential streets rising on either side) you can see by colour which tile roofs were replaced after bombing in the Bosnian war, and how terrifyingly close the ridge is from which the Serbs were attacking the town. Almost 300 Croatians died and more than 50% of the buildings in the old town were damaged (including the burning of seven Baroque palaces) and yet many visitors ... particularly non-Europeans under 35 ... are so totally unaware of the history that they think HBO paid for all those red roofs to give Kings' Landing a more uniform look. I was delighted to see so little evidence of conflict just 23 years after the end of a horrific war, particularly in a population far more interested in making a prosperous future than in re-hashing the offenses of the past. But as America descends into increasing factionalism, I couldn't help hearing Tom's stories about young tourists' ignorance and remembering that phrase about those who don't know history being doomed to repeat it. But I digress...

You'll learn why the broad, straight main street of the Stradun is so uniform: it had been the moat of an earlier, smaller version of the walled town, then was filled in and built on when the town expanded. The soft substructure made everything above it collapse in the calamitous earthquake of 1667, after which the town fathers mandated that everything be replaced to a master plan. Christopher Wren and London, eat your heart out. The number of showy churches and monasteries seems out of proportion to the place; we learned that the merchants of Dubrovnik were always flying close to the edge of Papal tolerance as they put friendly, business-enhancing relationships over religious disputes with their Islamic neighbours. Thus the church kept installing officials to keep an eye on them. The Croat's claim to have invented the cravat ... and through that, the necktie ... as tokens lovers tied around each others' necks before one went away to war. There's a museum here on the topic and shops selling gorgeous modern interpretations. Given the town's roots in trade, it's probably not

surprising that it also boasts one of the world's oldest continuously-operating pharmacies, from which you can still buy luxurious creams made with local roses and herbs.

And, of course, you'll also see the entire route of Cersei's walk of shame, the location of numerous street scenes and the exquisite little harbour that turns up in poignant moments of arrival and departure. We skipped the Red Keep (aka Lovrijenac Fort) because, this being the worst weather day of our trip, we were all soaked to the skin and the rain-slicked ascent looked dangerous. Time to switch to part two of the tour, which featured a handoff to driver/guide Neno and the comforts of a warm, dry car to explore some sets on the outskirts.

BEYOND THE WALLS
If you're only visiting Dubrovnik, it's possible that you'll never leave the walled old town except for airport transfers. This would be a mistake. The GOT extended tour is an excellent way to get a taste of the broader countryside.

Your first stop is the Trsteno Arboretum, 12 miles Northwest up the coast. The drive gives you a chance to appreciate Dubrovnik's impressive commercial and cruise ports, wisely screened by a line of hills from the old town, and a dramatic modern suspension bridge from which you can bungee jump if you're keen on adventure sports.

But the real attraction is the coastline itself. While the views from the walled town are fantastic, it's only by driving for a while that you appreciate just how expansive and beautiful the string of islands lying off the coast is. You don't get anywhere fast; this coastline could have been a piece of aluminium foil crumpled in a giant's hand, so deep and irregular are its bays. Rounding each gives different views of small villages and rocky hills covered with grape vines, olives, pomegranate trees and bougainvillea. You don't have to go many miles from Dubrovnik for the country to feel sparsely populated.

The Trsteno Arboretum was the country estate of a wealthy merchant family from Dubrovnik's glory days. In the middle 16th century, as a passion for exploring swept around Europe, the family's garden-mad patriarch asked his sea captains to return from trading missions with plants and seeds. Instead of the usual ballast, they filled their holds with topsoil from rich destinations so the boss could improve the poor base of his garden. Thus, despite years of neglect under the communists and a couple of disastrous fires, the garden is packed by an unusual number of exotic plants, from Asian bamboo to South American agaves. The place sprawls down a steep hill, with an aqueduct bringing water through an impressive fountain at the top, what's left of a summer palace in the middle and a private dock along the rocky shore below. A seasoned British garden and country house explorer is likely to be a bit underwhelmed; original planned beds and borders have lapsed into a benign neglect and the house is a mouldering ruin after the double hit of communist rule and war damage. Presumably the laid-back attitude to maintenance and conservation was an attraction for HBO, who were even allowed to gouge out part of the cliff face along the coast road to get their supply trucks in.

The production team certainly got their money's worth. An area not much bigger than a square mile shows up as the Tyrell family seat of High Garden, the gardens of the royal palace in King's Landing, some harbour scenes and even as the majestic seaside promontory on which Bron taught Jamie to fight again after losing his hand. (The latter was a perfect example of why you need a guide. Even standing 50 yards from the spot, you'd never discover it on your own as it meant climbing up a weed-pocked flight of steps, cutting through a yard of decaying boating equipment and slipping through a break in a wall and down some steps cut into the sea-side boulders to discover this dramatic scene.) Most memorable to many viewers will be the gazebo and another patio, both hanging over the sea, with remarkable views. Diana Rigg, who dominated most of the scenes filmed here, certainly pulled one of the better assignments by doing a lot of her shoots here. I didn't remember just how much nefarious plotting took place in the calming surrounds of gardens until we wandered Trsteno. It's no doubt a riff of the theme of beautiful-on-the-outside-rotten-within that shows up so often in GOT.

UP ON THE ROOF
Our penultimate stop required a return to Dubrovnik and the ascent of a series of hairpin turns cut into limestone cliffs to reach a high promontory that stretches above the old town. These are the heights from which the Serbs bombarded town, and the Croats tried to stop them ... with a few hundred yards of no man's land on the ridge between. It's one of the few places you'll still see war damage, as little has been rebuilt up here and the pockmarked land between is still rubble overgrown with weeds. We walked out to the edge of the cliff for an extraordinary view; it's as if you're hovering over the walled town and its bay like a gliding falcon. On a sunny day this would be one of the world's great picnic spots, but on our visit it was dangerously windy and lashing with rain. We beat a quick retreat.

Part of the ridge is covered by a long, straight bit of road bordered by a formal allée of trees. It's an oddly aristocratic touch to a fairly desolate area. Running beside it is a long, now-ruined complex of Napoleonic stables (different century, different invaders).  This area provided the backdrop for lots of travel scenes and meetings outside of Kings' Landing, including that touching moment when Brienne of Tarth and Podrick set off on their quest to help the Stark girls.

The final site was another proof point as to why a guide is essential. At the end of a long string of hotels and holiday villas along Dubrovnik's Eastern Bay, inaccessible except from a footpath behind a shuttered church, is a derelict hotel. The Belvedere was, for a just six years, the poster child for Yugoslavia's attempt to be an outward-facing, attractive, commercially savvy face of communism. The five-star luxury resort was an early casualty of the war and has been a hulking ruin since 1991, now overgrown with plants and its crumbling walls covered with graffiti. Part of the hotel's luxurious set up was a series of terraced patios flowing down the hill to a round arena hanging above the water of the Adriatic, with a clear view of the walled town across the bay. It must have been remarkable in its day.

And it was indeed remarkable as the setting for the trial by combat between Oberyn Martell and the Mountain. This is the place least likely to interest someone who hasn't seen the series. But for those of us who had, it wasn't hard to let your imagination return you to the majesty and the horror of that moment.

How long the arena will be on the GOT tour is an interesting question. The old Belvedere complex is now owned by a Russian oligarch who wants to tear the whole thing down and build a palace of opulence to match Dubai's bid for seven-star luxury. The problem: Croatian law demands public access to the seashore. Until the oligarch can assure his guests of complete privacy, he won't break ground. So the old Belvedere continues to crumble, and with a knowledgeable guide you can sneak  in to see one of GOT's most iconic film sets.

Note: You can also customise your full day trip with a boat ride to Lokrum Island, doppelgänger for the city of Qarth and reputed to be a place with excellent beaches for summer swimming. As it was a sodden day in November, we passed on this option.

N.U. Girls Trip No. 17: The lure of the undiscovered in Croatia

In a world of Bucket List-fuelled tourism, where ever more people are crowding in to the same hot spots to tick off their "must sees", Croatia appears regularly as an alternative for the savvy traveller.

It has historic towns with the architectural appeal of more famous Mediterranean cities. A string of more than 1000 islands scattered off its 2,500-mile coastline makes this bit of the Adriatic resemble the Virgin Islands, while inland there are dramatic limestone peaks that make the landscape a dead ringer for Provence. Local seafood, olive oil, figs, citrus, wine, meat and mountain herbs come together in food markets and dishes reminiscent of Barcelona or Sicily. In fact, Croatia is a bit like the whole Mediterranean in miniature. No wonder film makers take advantage of it so regularly as a stand-in for other locations. With the exception of Dubrovnik hotels, prices here are cheaper than the Med's usual hot spots, while personal guides and luxury experiences are particularly good value for money. Add a population so committed to tourism as a dominant part of their economy that they’re relentlessly service-oriented and ... if under 50 ... almost universally proficient at English and you have a winning combination.

Of course, by the time we got around to agreeing on Croatia as a destination for a Northwestern Girls’ trip, it was hardly a fresh discovery. The jet set has been infiltrating boutique hotels and yacht harbours, while a fleet of cruise ships brings in the mass market. Regular herds of Chinese and Korean group tours validated the much-written-about rise of East-to-West travel. In addition, serving as a regular filming location for Game of Thrones has created a whole new sub-genre in tourism as fans from around the world flock to see the "real" Kings’ Landing, Qarth and Meereen. 

Dubrovnik, better known a decade ago for the drubbing it took during the Bosnian war of the '90s, now runs a real risk of becoming like Venice; a tourists' amusement park devoid of real life. Very sensitive to the possibility of killing the goose that’s laying their golden eggs, local government is starting to limit cruise ships and considering cracking down on air B&B-style apartment rentals that are stripping the walled city centre of regular residents. Tour guides and waiters regaled us with stories of how horrible the summer season had become, but by our 31 October arrival we were rambling around often-quiet urban spaces with plenty of room in bars and restaurants and a fair chance of taking photos free of people.

While it would have been nice to sail through those islands and beaches in the balmy, light-drenched days of summer, I think we made the right choice. At least for an initial introduction to the country. Temperatures hovered in the mid-20s (mid- to high-70s F) with a fair amount of sunshine. We only suffered one day of rain; though we did suffer. Most sightseeing and dining is open air, long views are part of the appeal and the polished limestone streets of the old cities become hazardous when wet and pocked with deep puddles. As long as you anticipate the possible need for rain gear, I'd recommend our timing and this four-and-a-half day itinerary as an excellent introduction to the country.

START IN DUBROVNIK

We arrived around lunch time and had a driver take us from airport to old town. With four of us splitting the bill, it was by far the cheapest and most direct route and meant we were handed direct from informative guide to hotel manager who was waiting at the gate to take some of our luggage and walk us in to the pedestrianised city. The old town is mostly on a grid pattern so once you get your bearings it's not that hard to figure out, but the very narrow, architecturally consistent lanes and steep inclines make an initial guide very useful.

We stayed at the St. Joseph's hotel, a luxurious collection of six rooms in a 500-year old house. The Croatian owners are a brother-and-sister team, also British nationals with a base in London, so they're well used to English speaking guests. There are no communal spaces, which can be a bit frustrating if you're travelling with a group and want to spend some indoor R&R time together, but fortunately we were in the only two rooms on the top floor so we could keep our doors open and use the space like a two-room apartment. A lavish continental breakfast with a spread of bakery goods, fruit and home-blended smoothies, served with remarkably good coffee, comes to you in your room when you're ready. The location is perfect, in the middle of everything and no more than five minutes from top wine bars, the city walls, the harbour and a range of fabulous restaurants. There's always someone on the door to arrange whatever you need.

It's worth emphasising that Dubrovnik is no bargain. Queen rooms at the St. Joseph, even in this off season period, were £310 per night, a fairly consistent price for well-rated small hotels inside the city walls. Prices drop when you go beyond, of course, but then you're giving up atmosphere and adding transport hassles. You'll walk a lot in Dubrovnik, and do a leg-punishing number of steps. Stumbling to a nearby hotel when you hit the exhaustion point is wonderful. We splurged but kept our visit to two nights. If I returned I'd probably consider one of the rental apartments that seem to make up a big percentage of the old town. 

On our first afternoon we wandered around the walled city and did some shopping. Dubrovnik is packed with small, independent boutiques and is particularly known for its jewellery (especially silver filigree work and red coral) and its silks (the cravat originally comes from Croatia). We spent most of the next day on a Game of Thrones tour and on our last morning walked the walls. The towering medieval comprise a complete circuit of battlements and towers, all with astonishing views and all in excellent condition ... no doubt helped by the approx. £18 per person each tourist pays for access. We took an hour getting two-thirds of the way around from the Pile Gate to the Ploce Gate at a fairly brisk pace on this one-way (anti-clockwise) route, but you could easily spend a whole day up here since many of the towers are conveniently occupied by cafes and pop-up booths of local craftspeople.

ENJOY THE TRANSFER

There is, surprisingly, no direct and easy train route to Split, the other tourist blockbuster along the coast. During the summer season the best way to cover the 158 miles between Dubrovnik and Split is by ferry up the coast. By road, it takes about four hours, mostly because the first half of the drive is by a winding but spectacularly beautiful coast road that ... reminiscent of a past girls' trip to Iceland ... spends a lot of time going around big, deep bays.

We decided to make a day of the journey and, on the recommendation of our hotel in Split, hired a combined driver/and guide, the stalwart and exceptionally kind Boris, to take us. We stopped on the way at Ston, a beautiful small town famous for its walls (the Croats claim they are the longest continuous stretch after the great wall of China), its salt and its oysters. More more on this, see my coming article on food and wine experiences.

We also asked Boris to stop in Bosnia, which one must traverse for about 10 minutes due to old border debates. None of us had ever been to Bosnia before, and we didn't want to miss the opportunity to add a country to our travel collection. But we have a rule that to count as a real visit, you must stop somewhere to have at least one drink. Boris was both amused and a bit skeptical, but as he was at our command for the day he honoured our wishes, stopping at what he apologetically said was about the best he could do on the short stretch of coast.

Neither Dubrovnik nor Split show much evidence of the communism that once prevailed in Yugoslavia. Both feel affluent and modern. Not so for Neum, Bosnia, a string of ugly '70s- and '80s- era concrete block buildings that clearly stem from that time when communists were trying to convince the rest of the world that they could do fashion and holidays, as well as five-year plans. They couldn't.

They also don't seem to be able to do wine, despite the fact that the Croatian stuff on either side of
them is glorious. We should, of course, be grateful that we got any at all, Bosnia being a primarily Muslim country. But Neum is heavily populated by Roman Catholic Croats and the restaurant was a major stopping-off point, so white wine was available. With a beer-bottle top. And a label that looked like someone had designed it on an early Macintosh. It was thin, acidic and dirt cheap. Ironically, if you ignored the brutal architecture and the nasty wine (which, admittedly, got better by the second glass) you could drink in a vista of water, mountains and islands on par with the best seascapes in the world. Someone would charge you €10 on the Italian Riviera just to sit here.

After the Bosnian interlude the coast road returns to Croatia and dips into an enormous, fertile agricultural plain. Local farmers' booths line the road selling strings of oranges and garlic, and pyramids of precisely-piled vegetables in a scene that reminded me of Florida's US1 when I was a kid. Beyond that, you pick up a major highway and soon come into the outskirts of Split.

WHAT DID THE ROMANS EVER DO FOR US?
It's obvious from its furthest suburbs that Split is a very different kind of place from Dubrovnik. Its 178,000+ population is almost four times that of its southern cousin. People here obviously do a lot more than tourism; the approach is lined with warehouses, factories and office parks. There are enormous shopping malls and modern tower blocks. But there's history, too. Much older than Dubrovnik's.

Split started life as the Roman Emperor Diocletian's heavily fortified retirement complex. A local boy done good, he chose a beautiful and easily-defended bay near his home village and built essentially a walled town that was half palace, half administrative offices and all luxury. He even included a grand mausoleum at the centre, so he could go on occupying the place after his death. Given that he was the only emperor across more than four centuries to successfully retire, and one of the few to die in his bed at a fairly advanced age (mid-60s), the strategy seems to have worked.

The empire collapsed. The local economy crashed. The palace sat empty. Eventually, locals saw the merit of using the old walls for defence and built a new town within the ruins. More than 1,700 years on, Split's centre is a magnificent jumble of medieval, Renaissance and Baroque buildings wedged around the original architecture. Most structures have obvious borrowed elements ... columns, arches, decorated doorways, bits of sculpture ... while some classical spaces have been left to stand intact. The latter includes the famous peristyle, a town square in what was once Diocletian's colonnaded garden, and a warren of enormous, vaulted cellars. They're not only a treasured resource for Roman archeologists but provided another stage set for Game of Thrones.

By the late Middle Ages the town had spread beyond the palace. The districts immediately outside have a strongly Venetian feel about them, unsurprising since Split was officially part of the Venetian empire for more than 400 years. (Dubrovnik, on the other hand, was an independent republic only under Venetian domination for about a century, making the towns old rivals and adding to the differences in culture. Overall, Split feels much more Italian.

There's a long, grand seafront promenade where you can stroll, lap gelato, watch the ferries come in and out and get enough distance to appreciate the original walls of the palace. In the 19th century the locals (presumably as an architectural insult to the then-ruling Austrians) built a grand square inspired by St. Mark's in Venice, but open on one side to take in the harbour. It's a must-visit for a relaxed drink with a view. Like Dubrovnik, shopping in Split is dominated by small boutiques rather than global chains. (They're all in the out-of-town mall.) Jewellery, art and craft are also on show here, and Split has an unusual number of high-fashion clothing boutiques, many of them full of creations from local designers. The natives are all remarkably fashionable, making us feel distinctly underdressed. There's also a rollicking local fish market on one side of town and an enormous fruit, veg and local food producers' market on the other; it's the kind of place that makes foodies wish they had access to a kitchen.

We stayed at the Heritage Hotel Antique, another boutique choice in a medieval tower block built onto the wall of one of the palace's administrative buildings. In a breathtaking difference between "discovered", trendy Dubrovnik and slightly less on-the-beaten track Split, the hotel had dropped to off-season prices and put us up for just under £80 per room, per night. For less than a third of the price of Dubrovnik we had slightly smaller rooms with the same (and possibly even better) service; they even sent us away with both a packed breakfast and lunch when we started our journey back to the UK at 5 am. Beds were the same high quality with good mattresses, down pillows and high thread-count sheets. The decor was similar, the finish slightly less luxurious. (Not quite so deep a pile on the carpet, high-end linoleum flooring in the bathroom rather than marble ... though the exact same rain shower and a slightly better pile of toiletries.) Breakfast was in a breakfast room, rather than served by a uniformed maid. Not quite so much pampering, the pastries more mass production than hand-crafted and coffee was from a machine rather than silver urns, but you had the choice of a range of fresh-cooked egg dishes from an adjacent kitchen. Quite simply, the Antique was one of the best value-for-money deals we've snagged on any girls' trip and, on that front, far outstripped the St. Joseph.

While both cities were remarkable, Split seemed to have a vibrancy and a creativity that Dubrovnik lacked. We all agreed we were glad we spent three nights here (not just for the bargain hotel), and the Northern city has left me more intrigued than the Southern for further exploration. With nearby national parks, holiday islands and local wineries, we left feeling that there were plenty of depths in Split still to plumb, while two days in and around Dubrovnik felt about right.

In coming days I'll write more about each town, including our Game of Thrones tour, Diocletian's palace and ... of course ... fabulous food and wine experiences.