Today was another travel day as I left Croatia for Bosnia.   The bus from Dubrovnik to Sarajevo is about 7 hours long with the city of Mostar about halfway in between.

What most people do is take an early morning bus, stop in Mostar for a few hours, and then catch the later bus to end up in Sarajevo in the early evening.

I decided that was a pretty good plan so I did the same.

My bus left at 8am which meant I had to wake up at the ungodly hour of 6am.   This time I caught a local bus down the hill to the main bus station as opposed to doing the 4km hike I did when I arrived here.

As we entered Bosnia, our bus was boarded at 3 different times for passport checks.   For some reason I never got an entry stamp into Bosnia.   Not a big deal as I’m sure it won’t be a problem – just interesting, that’s all.   The men didn’t really spend that much time scrutinizing the passports, in fact, one time I went to hand my passport to the guy and he just saw the cover said Canada and just passed me by.

I arrived in Mostar around noon, checked my bag at the bus station and walked for about 15 minutes to the old town.

The streets are literally lined with souvenir shops, restaurants and hotels.   I kid you not – every store – and they went on and on.   There must have been hundreds of them.   So, to say it’s a tourist trap is an vast understatement.   I did see a couple interesting things though.   One was the old bridge that has been around for hundreds of years.

There are local divers in their speedos hanging around there collecting money from the tourists (a euro at a time) til they get 25 euros and then they’ll dive off the bridge.   I didn’t stand around long enough to witness it but I did see a crazy Belgium tourist do it.   Crazy Belgiums!

I also saw some remnants of the recent war – damaged buildings and walls with bullet holes in them.   I actually went into a little photography museum that had some poignant photos from the war.   Of course, I took photos of most of the photos.

I stopped for lunch in a little restaurant by the river where I had an appetizer of smoked mutton and beef sausage followed by the Hercegovacki mix (beef and rice wrapped in cabbage rolls).

For dessert I had a Bosnian delicacy Hurmasice which is similar tasting to a donut but is covered in simple syrup served with a lemon.   When you squirt the lemon on there it tastes just like lemon meringue pie.   Mmmmmm…. just typing it I want another one right now!

At 3pm I caught the bus to Sarajevo where I arrived around 6pm.   At the hostel I met Yves from Quebec who is actually leaving tomorrow which is a shame because he was great to talk to.

He’s traveled most of the places I plan to go to and he was a wealth of information.   We went out to dinner together and I had shrimp wrapped in smoked salmon followed by a bbqed meat dish served with veggies and potato.

And that was the day – long rides on buses, lots of tourists, bullet holes and some great food…