The old town of Trogir also suffers from another problem, which is this: when you first arrive, overflowing with excitement for the historic town in which you will be staying, it is a little disappointing to discover that you can walk through it in 30 seconds flat and find yourself at a harbour full of cafes and yachts before you've even noticed the charm. It quickly turns out, however, that this is entirely your own fault and what you forgot to go was make any sort of effort. Instead of turning randomly down any of the myriad of side streets which lead into the labyrinth and ensure that you'll never see the light of day again, you've simply done what everybody does and marched straight down the central alleyway which cuts through the middle and takes you straight from the car park to the harbour on the other side. On the other hand, starting a visit out with a moment of disappointment only makes it so much more satisfying when you discover that you've been doing it all wrong and that, actually, that darkened alley you passed right by leads to an entirely different world you really weren't expecting. Trogir, it turns out, is a hell of a lot longer than it is wide, so unless you turn off that mean thoroughfare, you're really not going to see anything - it's a bit like taking Hampton Court maze and sticking a whopping great pathway straight from the entrance to the exit and then not bothering to tell anyone that there's anything beyond.

The maze reference is entirely appropriate, actually. Once you get onto the backstreets of Trogir, you are almost certainly going to get hopelessly lost - but that's a good thing. There is nothing more satisfying than wandering aimlessly around a maze of ridiculously narrow medieval streets peering in the windows of tiny shops selling miniature copies of the buildings outside on the street for you to take home and wave in front of your friend's jealous eyes. I swear to god, Trogir is one of the most confusing places on the face of the earth. You make a careful note of the position of a particular souvenir shop in which you've seen the perfect gift for Mindy in accounting, and while you pop over the road to get some money out of an ATM, some b****** moves all the streets around on some sort of ratchet mechanism. If you're a big fan of the movies Labyrinth and The Maze Runner and you like having your head messed with, this is the place to come - I'd be willing to swear an oath that nothing has been in the same place twice since I got here.

It's also a good idea, in Trogir, to be prepared for a quite unlikely amount of small children playing ball games in the street with the specific intent of knocking the wind out of tourists unexpectedly as they come around the corner - and kids on bikes, which puzzles me slightly as I wouldn't have thought a series of uneven stone streets just wide enough to entertain a donkey would've been the obvious place to travel about on any sort of vehicle, let alone one on which you are forced to sit on a small piece of plastic which threatens to ram itself up your backside every time you go over a hump. On the other hand, you do tend to jump out of the way into a doorway you hadn't previously noticed, resulting in you discovering another of those quaint little shops you'll almost certainly never find again, selling things you'd never see anywhere else at the price. Whenever I point out to a shopkeeper how cheap things are here - 4 pounds for something that would probably cost a tenner anywhere else - they keep telling me that they have low standards in Croatia. I'm almost certain there's something lost in translation there, because the last time I checked, low standards was not the same thing as a low cost of living, and judging from the quality of the food, low standards is definitely not something you have to worry about…

I had dinner tonight at a restaurant in the middle of historic Trogir itself, which was a delight. Rather than going inside and sitting down in one of the crowded little stone rooms in which lighting the candle on your table may set light to the person at the next table as they reach for the salt, I chose to sit outside in the courtyard where I could enjoy my meal surrounded by the charm of the old town, beneath one of those pergolas restaurant management like to install everywhere for no adequately explored reason. I really don't understand why everybody doesn't do this - when you're staying somewhere only slightly cooler than molten lava, why would you knowingly choose (and yes, I know that's a tautology) to sit inside surrounded by a hundred sweaty people when there are perfectly good seats outside overlooking the harbour? Anyway, I ordered my meal with potato slices instead of salad vegetables, as I'm a firm believer in the old saying that salad is what food eats, and when the waiter brought it to my table he quipped: "Baby portion for you, Sir?". Cheeky b******. If the roles were reversed, I would've spat in my soup. When he returned at the end of the meal to discover that I hadn't managed to eat up every single morsel on my plate on the basis that the plate was the size of a medieval shield, and asked me what I expected him to tell the chef, I seriously felt like bopping him one on the nose. Of course, it wasn't until sometime later it occurred to me that his English probably wasn't as good as mine - he was probably attempting to be sarcastic by suggesting that the portions were massive at his restaurant and in no way "a baby portion". I guess he was what we like to refer to as "a character" - I actually heard him introducing the menu to the American group at the next table with the words: "We have everything for you here, ladies - local specialities, American dishes, meat, fish, pasta. Everything is very good, the only thing that isn't very good is the service - but I try."

About Simon and Burfords Travels:

Simon Burford is a UK based travel writer. He will be re-publishing his travel blogs, chapters from his books and other miscellaneous rantings on these pages over the coming weeks and months, and the entry on this page may not necessarily reflect todays date.