Day 10: Dubrovnik via Bosnia

Last transfer day (until Vienna I guess).  We woke up in Split, glad we didn’t have World Cup hangovers.   Last night was pretty special, and it will lead to the potential of a great night next Wednesday when Croatia plays England.

I forgot to mention that I barely saw one policeman yesterday and that despite a lot of crazy celebrations, no violence and very little mess this morning.   Impressive!

Beth tapped on the girls door at around 9am, and as usual, Robin opened the door wearing a mostly asleep face, and before Beth could even ask what they wanted for breakfast, they grunted “pizza and chocolate croissant”.... lol - I guess that makes it official - we are on vacation!   We grabbed breakfast to go from a nearby bakery, loaded the suitcases into the car at the nearby parking lot and hit the road.

Our place in Dubrovnik was not available until 5pm, and we wanted to give the Taylors with the little ones a chance to get settled and oriented, so I’d planned a side trip to Bosnia for the day.   We hit the expressway, but after 40 minutes, veered up towards the low mountains that seemed to define the border between Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia.  The border crossing going into Bosnia was empty (coming back looked like quite the wait).  Our main destination was Mostar, a well rated destination, with some short stop opportunities along the way.

Immediately, we noticed a few things.  It still seemed like Croatian territory - same beer ads, same colours, lots of football supporters.  Indeed, the Country is made up of Croats, Serbs and Bosniaks (basically, Islamic Slavics from back in the Ottoman age), so the Croatian culture naturally spanned the border.

The more obvious thing we noticed is that the roads were worse, though still serviceable, and there was a lot more evidence of things not ageing very well.

About 45 minutes from Mostar, I turned off the road for a 4km detour to Kravica Waterfall.   I could feel (and I think hear) the groans from the three girls (“not another waterfall”) but I had heard and read good things about this place and it was cheap and easy to visit.

Turns out, it was surprisingly good.   While the topography of the drive we’d been on the last half hour was pretty desolate, when we parked, bought tickets and walked down the path to the falls area, it felt like we were dropping into an Oasis.    When we rounded the last corner to the falls, we saw that we were in a big circular valley, maybe 750 meters in diameter, with the waterfalls spilling over around half the circle, and the receiving river leaking out the other end of the circle.  The water was Adriatic greenish blue, with the same clarity we’ve come to expect.

There were little one man kayaks you could rent, so we encouraged the girls to give it a whir.   They spent half an hour going up and down the river and in and around the base of the falls.

Shortly after, we were back on the road and skipping Medjugorje (a top destination for Catholic pilgrims where some women a few years back started seeing and speaking with an apparition of the Virgin Mary.... ...... yes, you read that correctly.   Look up the entire story, it’s pretty funny) and on our way to Mostar.

When we got to the Mostar city center, we were flagged down by an “official parking guy” who passed us on to a kid on a bike who kept waving us down an alley (Robin said “this seems like a scam”, and of course she was right but it seemed harmless and based on my map we were headed to where I wanted to park).  The kid passed us to a guy at a corner who directed us to a guy in a parking lot.   He proceeded to charge us $30 for parking, but it was very close and the sun was high so I was not going to argue!

We crossed a small foot bridge that crossed the river (the same one that the girls were kayaking on an hour ago, and the same one that leads all the way to the Adriatic Sea) and suddenly we were in Istanbul!  Crazy to describe, but the East side of the river in Mostar is the Muslim section of the city and the two kilometre or so Street that leads up to the iconic bridge that is the main sight in the city seems like it was taken right from Turkey.   

The bridge and its story is quite amazing.   I was shocked but I guess I shouldn’t have been given the Ottoman history but I found that the bridge was commissioned by Suleiman the Magnificent who was the most significant leader of the Ottoman Empire (from 1520 until his death in 1566) - he was also the man who commissioned the amazing Süleymaniye Mosque... known to be the most significant site in Istanbul that is near Versly Viewpoint (trademark, patent pending).  

The road leading up to the bridge was made of river stone cobbles, smooth but definitely not stroller friendly!   The Street narrowed as it continued, with a higher concentration of the copper shops and other tourist oriented things.

We crossed the rebuilt bridge that was finally destroyed during the Baltic war but that had survived for hundreds of years before that, even supporting the crossing of the river by Nazi tanks in WWII.  We went to a highly recommended restaurant across the river, and it didn’t disappoint.   We got essentially a “platter” of pretty much every kind of Bosnian food - rice and meat stuffed peppers, leaf wrapped rice, stewed veal and beef, a kind of ravioli, chicken, other things I can’t describe and a shared piece of baclava for dessert.   It was the best meal since our Piran swordfish - so good.

We meandered around the little streets on the west side of the river, absolutely baking.  We hiked down to the river bank and took in the bridge from a nice angle.   The whole scene was packed with tourists - I’m sure Sunday made it a little busier.

We eventually made our way back to the car, passing a few really perfect, small mosques that had pencil straight, beautiful minarets.  We found the whole area pretty stunning and it really caught us off guard as to how different it was compared to everything we’d seen in Slovenia and Croatia so far.

Google took us on a bit of weird route on the way back - narrow roads winding up and down over some mountains, and eventually descending towards the Croatian side.   I figured out that it was taking us to a smaller border crossing - avoiding the really busy border near the coastal city of Neum.   Neum actually breaks the coast line of Croatia into two and is a bit of a holdover all the way back from Ottoman times.   It means you can’t drive from Split to Dubrovnik (unless you take a ferry) without crossing into and out of Bosnia.

After many turns and near misses from oncoming cars trying to squeeze us off the road (it wasn’t that bad!) we made it through the border and down tot he coastal road that leads to Dubrovnik.   That road was beautiful.  We were constantly in view of and way above the Adriatic, and we could see the huge islands and peninsulas that lie just off the coast.

Within an hour travelling this road, we made it into the outskirts of Dubrovnik.  Soon, we crested a hill and spotted our first look s the huge walled city that makes up the old part of Dubrovnik.   With google’s help, we found our Villa, thanks to Brian standing on the road.   The entry to the garage was literally on the main road down to the old city and with the click of a button, we were parked and in our gigantic, seemingly secluded villa.   

We got the tour from Melly and Jordan who had been there for a couple of hours already.  There are about five or six levels, built into the side of a hill where each level slides further back into the hill.   There’s a central stairway that runs from the top villa to the bottom front (or back?) door.  Our three room “condo”gives us a place to ourselves, s couple of levels below the pol, which is another level below the Taylors which is another level below Papa and Blair.   There’s a ton of stuff for us here - botchi court, sauna, three kitchens, a games rooms, three family rooms, tons of little sitting areas... we are very lucky and grateful that Papa wanted to share his 75th birthday with us here in this amazing city that we have yet to explore!