Saturday morning we said goodbye to Sarajevo and took a bus 3 hours south through some cool mountains and rivers to Mostar, a town in southern Bosnia. Mostar is most famous for its old stone arch bridge which was built in the 1300s. Sadly the bridge was destroyed in 1993. But a few years ago the restored/replaced it with a new version, and a nice downtown area of shops and cafes have sprouted out along it and the river front.
After a few hours exploring town, we hoped on another (hot!) bus and headed to Split, Croatia.
Croatia is tough to write about. It is just amazingly beautiful and hard to capture in words. Green hills, craggy mountains, amazing beaches, beautiful blue coastlines. It is gorgeous.
Split was founded around 200AD by the Roman Emperor Diocletian who built it to be his retirement palace. (Italy is only a few hours west of Croatia by boat across the Adriatic Sea). While the "palace" still stands, it would best be described as a small complex, complete with city walls. Amazingly, not only is the palace still largely intact, there are over 3,000 people who still live in apartments and houses in the various alleyways and rooms of the palace! The whole area feels like a clean, largely undiscovered Venice.
We spent a pleasant night and day just walking around the Old Town, hanging out on the Promenade, admiring the nearly 2,000 year old columns, walls, archways, and art (including some Egyptian Sphinx sculptures that Diocletian imported for decoration). We also watched the Euro Cup final in a huge crowd outside and were ecstatic when Spain - who we've been cheering for throughout the tournament - pulled out a 1-0 victory.
We also spent a relaxing day and a half playing in the sea. We stayed at a nice hotel just outside town so we had a sweet pool and beach access right outside the door. Really pretty, though the rocky (not sand) beaches took a little getting used to. Still though, it was great.
Next stop - the island of Hvar. We are taking a big catamaran out to this increasingly popular Croatian island for 3 days of fun and sun.
Note: Uploading pictures so far has proven difficult. But, finally, I got a couple photos uploaded for the previous posts.
Bridge in Mostar
Cheesy B&W picture of tower in Split
Street corner, Split
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