Day 14 Bosnia

We are officially at the halfway point.  We come home in 2 weeks and we left slightly under 2 weeks ago.  We spent all of day 14 exploring Bosnia (our only full day in Bosnia).  Highlights were visiting 4 really cool sites in Herzegovina (the southern more Mediterranean part of the country), a bus ride with beautiful scenery to Sarajevo, the cheapest dinner yet in Sarajevo, and visiting the more than 150 year old Sarajevo brewery

Breakfast was great especially for 3 euros.  They had everything you could ask for including eggs (for Zach not me) and french toast.  Well they did forget one thing.  There was no syrup for the toast.  

The only bad part about breakfast was the very load drilling noise.  They are building something next to the hotel that involving breaking lots of rocks very loudly.

Next we went to ihouse were our tour was supposed to start at 9.  We waited until 9:15 and the guy didn't show up.  After getting our hotel to call we learned there was some sort of miscommunication and he never got the final confirmation from us.  Luckily he was still up for taking us because we eventually had a great tour of the countryside.  This is the Dervish house in Blagaj.  It is a Dervish monestary at the source of a local river coming out of the rocks near it.  

Next stop was Zitomislici to see the recently rebuilt Serbian Orthodox church.  It was destroyed to the foundation and rebuilt in 2004.  There is currently 2 monks living there and the paintings are amazing.

The main part of the Serbian church

Our guide asked us if we wanted local fresh fruit and we said of course.  We stopped at this little fruit stand on the way to the next stop and enjoyed about 6 types of fruit each for all of $1.5 total (all local and organic)

Pocitelj was the next stop.  Our guide said we had 40 min which judged to be enough time to climb to the top of the ruins.  At this point it was already over 90 so it was quite the hot climb, but worth it

Dinky and the view from the tower.  We tried to climb to the other side of the ruins but got lost and had to come down

Final stop of our tour was this national park type place called Kravice.  I had totally missed the part about bring your swim suit but if I had we could have swam here.  At least we got to stick our hot feet in.

We had the national Bosnian dish.  It is like minced meat sausages, eggplant red pepper sauce, fresh onions and bread.  All while sitting pretty close to the waterfalls.

We hardly had any time after arrival in Mostar.  We managed to snag 2 souvenirs and get one more picture of the bridge during the day.

The taxi ride to the bus station was all of $1.5.  We got there 15 min early and of course our bus was 20 min late.

Great views from the bus on the way to Sarajevo

At the bus station we needed money but this super aggressive lady kept following us.  We had to get money and run or we weren't sure she would leave us alone

Sarajevo has the second oldest tram system in Europe.  We took the 1a line to our hostel

We stated at the Markale guesthouse (which is now the Massimo rooms).  I don't recommend it based on our stay.  While it seemed clean enough the guy checking us in didn't seem to care less that we were there.  He required payment before handing over our passports and then said he had abolutely no change.  Then our room had only 1 lightbulb, a broken shower head holder and no toilet paper.  At least it was clean and cheap!

We spent a few minutes figuring things out and then set off to find dinner.  We walked through old town as the sun was going down and it was very pretty.  You could see all sorts of different types of churches and mosques and a wide mix of people

Dinner was supper cheap.  We had these Burek things which is a pastry stuffed with things.  I had spinach, Zach and meat and garlic.  It was pretty good especially for a grand total of 5 dollars including the drink

Once we had some food in us we headed over to the Sarajevo brewery.  I was excited to try their unfiltered beer, but they were out.  The filtered light beer was as bad (or good) as anything else we have had.  The dark beer was pretty ok

Clock tower on the walk back to our place

Overall so far Sarajevo was somewhat overwhelming.  Perhaps it was because we reached the halfway point of our trip or because we have so much to see in so little time.  I am hoping so sleep we get us back into things.

Tomorrow we explore the city for a little, do a walking tour and then catch a flight to Montenegro.