Croatia and a couple of Balkans, 2nd October, a morning in Mostar and a long drive

We woke up bright and early to have a good breakfast at the Villa Fortuna and stow our luggage so we could take advantage of our car parking space and walk around Mostar. First I took a picture of the little room in the garden set up like a Turkish kitchen.

We first visited the Old Bridge again, reconstructed by the Spanish after the civil war. There are steps constructed in the walk way to stop you slipping on the shiny stone. At one end is  a building which houses a photographic exhibition on the first floor. The pictures are by a New Zealander Wayne Goddard who came to Mostar in 1992 at the age of 22, and stayed during the war chronicling the survival of the Bosnian people living east of the river under siege from the Croats in the west. 

From the staircase leading up to the exhibition you get a great view of the bridge. Boys dive from the bridge into the Neretva river, in fact there is even a 'dive office' on the ground floor of the building we were in. A man in red bathing trunks was strutting about, climbing on to the parapet and then coming back down while his mate collected money. So we waited on the staircase for about 15 minutes but nothing happened. In fact some of the people who had given money had got bored and wandered away, so I don't know if he ever got wet.

Leaving the bridge we went through the historical part of the town, where we had wandered in the darkness the previous evening. We found ourselves at the Koski Mehmed Paša Mosque which is open to visitors and where you can take photographs of the interior. The mosque was originally built by the Ottomans in 1618 and reconstructed after the war. 

Still on a Turkish theme we visited the Kajtaz House, again reconstructed, which was built for a 16th century Turkish judge. It has a pretty balcony overlooking the shady courtyard, a magnificent sitting room and an outside kitchen. We had just managed our tour when a bus load of French people arrived and swamped the tiny place. 

Not to say they shouldn't have been there but more that we were lucky to escape.

Most of the town has been rebuilt but there are areas where the scars of war can still be seen. We walked across to the main road which originally divided east and west and where the destruction is still evident. Going through the city there are walls that still have bullet holes in them which have not been repaired. The Villa Fortuna stand very close to the frontline and I summoned up courage to ask our landlady if she had been there during the war. She said that she had been stupid enough to stay along with her children. The Villa has been totally refurbished but the house next door was in a poor state.

We had a coffee at the café shown above and set out to drive back to Croatia. I was navigating and missed the turning on to the motorway so the journey was longer than expected but gave some nice views of rural Bosnian life. Eventually we hit the coast just south of Split and and drove north through some fantastic scenery to arrive in that town as it was getting dark, ready for the  next chapter.