Framedlight

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 r...

The road from Blagaj into Mostar descends on to a green plain. The summer temperatures here can reach into the 50's centigrade and although it was October Mostar was pleasantly warm. We drove straight to our pension, the Villa Fortuna and booked in There was a little courtyard with a small stone building in it which was modelled on a Turkish style kitchen with antique furniture inside, looking as it might have done a hundred years ago. The cooking and eating areas used to be kept away from the main house to stop it smelling of food and getting too hot. We took a glass of wine down with us but the lady who had checked us in showed us round the building and offered us more wine and a bowl of olives. She then left the bottle with us! We drunk a little of it and then went out to find something to eat. It was dark but we were not too far from the centre and we walked through quiet cobbled streets until we found a restaurant we fancied. We were starving so chose a shared mixed grill pl...