Mostar

On Friday after breakfast on the ship, we boarded a bus for Mostar. For many years, I have seen pictures of the Stari Most bridge in Mostar, in the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Mostar is about an hour from the Croation border-once you are across the border. After touring through some of the Dalmatian coastline and stopping for some freshly picked mandarins, we arrived at the border. We were bus number 4 in line at the border crossing from Croatia to Bosnia Herzegovina. Border control takes about 20 minutes to process a bus. You need to do it twice: the border crossing for leaving Croatia, and a half mile down the road, the border crossing to enter BH. Because the Jugo winds had stranded a lot of cruise ships in Dubrovnik, a lot of people were headed to Mostar that day. Mostar is the number one day trip destination from Dubrovnik. As a result of all the buses headed there, we were about an hour late arriving in Mostar. Once in Mostar, we encountered huge numbers of tour groups that made it difficult to move through the main passageways with the eastern bazaars, and the other shops and restaurants on the western side of the bridge.

It was all well worth it. Mostar was magical. The eastern side of the river is mostly Muslim residents. We heard the call to prayer from a big tower at 1pm. The western side of the river is mostly Christian residents. The history of this city is incredible. The city was hugely impacted by the war that occurred in the early 1990s. Our local tour group leader showed us a four-centuries old house, now a museum, to show how people lived back in the day. We had a group lunch with a traditional Bosnian meal at a restaurant with the view of the bridge. I took the picture above from my seat at lunch. Local men solicited money from tourists and would jump into the river far below.

Then it was time for the long bus ride and border crossings back to Dubrovnik. We spent a little less than 3 hours in Mostar, but nearly 8 hours on the bus (can’t say I am a fan of that ratio). We had dinner on the ship that night. This was our second night sleeping on the boat in Dubrovnik, and we had yet to see the town other than the area at the port where our boat was. That would come tomorrow.