I am not a huge Game of Thrones fan, but one of the highlights of my recent trip to Croatia was definitely visiting the Fortress of Klis.
Klis Fortress is a medieval fortress situated above the very tiny village of Klis in central Dalmatia, Croatia. Since Duke Mislav of the Duchy of Croatia made Klis Fortress the seat of his throne in the middle of the 9th century, the fortress served as the seat of many Croatia’s rulers. The fortress is probably best known for its defence against the Ottoman invasion of Europe in the early 16th century.
We visited the Fortress on our last day in Croatia, which happened to be the coldest and wettest day of the trip so far. We were actually quite lucky with the weather every other day, so we were not prepared for a downpour at all. We grabbed some warmer clothes from Split market in the morning then made our way to the Fortress in time for the sun to start setting.
As we didn’t have a rental car, we caught an Uber from Split to Klis. He dropped us off at the bottom of Klis town, which didn’t bother us too much at the time as we were happy to walk up to fortress ourselves.
Bearing in mind I had a massive bug bite that was slowing me down, I did well to make it to the Fortress at the top as it involved A LOT of steep climbing. I’m a lot less scared of heights than I used to be, but this trek really had me scared. A lot of it was steep thin paths with no barriers to hold, so I found that in torrential rain and strong winds I was holding on to anything I could find in fear, including the rocks at the side of the mountain/hill? As you can see from the picture below (source) it was NOT an easy climb.
When we finally made it to the top (with a lot of ‘I can’t’ from me) we paid our 40 Kuna to a very grumpy man to get in.
Overall all it took us about an hour and a half to walk around the whole fortress as I stopped to take a lot of photos and video. I was happy taking it at a leisurely pace as I really enjoyed the whole experience. The fortress its self was absolutely fascinating to see and views from the top of the mountain were incredible.
There were areas where you could see exclusive pictures from the filming of Game of Thrones and also see the history of the Fortress, as well as small ‘museum style’ enclosures you could go in.
To be honest, it was a lot bigger than I was expecting and if it wasn’t such terrible weather we probably would have stayed much longer. The most incredible thing about the weather though was that we pretty much had the place to ourselves, which was so cool.
I think the view from the very top of the fortress was one of my absolute favourite moments from my entire Croatia trip as I felt a massive sense of accomplishment when it comes to facing my fears. For years and years, I wouldn’t do even the smallest of things as they would scare me (including driving through the countryside), but I feel like I am slowly conquering my fears one by one.
When we were done at the fortress we decided to walk down a path my boyfriend had noticed while he was trying to find a safe path for me to walk on and we discovered a main road wih a couple of bars, a shop and a post office. Cursing our taxi driver for dropping us off in the middle of nowhere we decided to treat ourselves to a beer to celebrate our last night in Split. It was bittersweet as I was happy to have climbed such an incredible amount, but I was gutted it was the last I was going to see of the beautiful country.
Guess, I’ll just have to go back, won’t I?
Kirsty Leanne
xoxo
