We woke up early, and ate some leftover fruits from yesterday for our breakfast while packing up our stuff. Overnight we had found some troubles with our hotel room – the air conditioning had suddenly turned on in the middle of the night (maybe the power had turned off and on?), the WiFi kept dropping out, and the doorknob to the bathroom came right off and fell in pieces to the floor. Luckily we aren’t staying another day.

We checked out of the hotel and then walked down to where we figured the ferry would be moored. We actually hadn’t seen to ferry itself yet, so we walked around a bit until we found someone who knew what we were looking for, and they directed us towards the right boat. We arrived early at the ferry terminal, and soon were in a long line to go through immigration and board. The line continued behind us, extended right outside the building and into the hot sun – we were glad we got there early. The line and the immigration process were not organized, and several times people were cutting ahead for whatever reason. Eventually we got our documents checked and we were able to board, sitting near the window on the starboard side of the boat. 

We looked back and saw that there was still a long line of people waiting for immigration, so we had time to relax. The ferry left a little late (and completely full), but soon gained speed and started heading south along the coastline. Because we were making an international trip the ferry was closed up – just like our ferry between Hong Kong and Macau there was no access to the outside. Kuniko played picture shiritori and enjoyed the views now and then of the coastline to our left and the ocean to our right. 

After an hour or so we turned into the Bay of Kotor, and once we did they opened up the back doors of the ferry so that we could enjoy the fresh air and take photos. Later we went back to our seats – the guy who had been sitting next to us was gone, leaving only a half empty plastic bottle on his seat. This led to a weird situation. 

We sat back in our original seats, and enjoyed the cruise through the bay. A lady came by and asked if the empty seat was occupied, and we said that there was a guy there before, but he left and there was only his bottle remaining. She shrugged and picked up his bottle and threw it in the nearby recycling bin, and then sat down in the now-empty seat. After a few minutes the ship captain announced that we’d be docking soon, and that everyone should take their seats. So the original guy came back and was surprised to see this lady in his seat. He told the lady that it was his seat, and she said that she thought it was available, and then they both looked at us like we were somehow responsible for this situation. WTF?

The guy asked the lady where his bottle was, and she told him that she had dumped it, and then he asked where her original seat was because he needed to be seated for docking, and she motioned somewhere in the back – so off he went. It was so weird.

Once we docked at Kotor, people stood up and started lining up to get off the boat. I grabbed our suitcase and we left the boat near the middle of the group – about half the people were in front of us and half behind. But the system outside was (also) completely disorganized. There was a little shade next to a building, and people were supposed to line up to go through immigration, but the line was chaotically weaving back and forth and nobody seemed to know which way to go. Somehow even though we got off the boat in the middle we were second to last in line. 

Some unlucky people were lined up directly in the sun and just burning. We managed to sidle up to the shade most of the time, but it took 90 minutes of standing around before we were able to get into the immigration building. At no time did the staff of the boat do anything to guide, direct, or assist their passengers. The ferry company, Adriatic Lines, was very poorly staffed and organized.

Finally we got into the building, got our passports stamped, and we were free to enter the walled city of Kotor. By this time the city was packed with tourists, and it was still really hot. We entered the main city gates, and the architecture and layout was similar to Dubrovnik and Zadar, but slightly narrower streets. Above the city on the hillside a fortified wall zigzagged upwards, with people actually hiking up the steep hillside. I’m sure the views were great but there was no way I was hiking up there in this kind of summer heat. 

Not far inside the city gate we found our hotel, Hotel Vardar. It was a really nice hotel, and we dropped off our suitcase in our air conditioned room and then went out to take a look around. Everywhere in town they were selling items related to cats – shirts, magnets, etc. Soon we found out why – there were cats everywhere. More than Istanbul, and they were all friendly. We were always walking by cats in this town.

We were hungry so we found a restaurant and sat down for some food and drink. Our table was in the shade, a fan was hooked up to a mister above us and did a great job of cooling us down. We ordered a plate of local meat and cheese – the smoked prosciutto was awesome, and some of the sheep’s cheese was stored in olive oil, also tasty. We ordered a bottle of local sparkling wine, and our cheerful server managed to get it open and set it in an ice bucket next to the table. We were in heaven – totally blissed out.

Afterwards we walked some more – bought a keychain, had some gelato (not that great), checked out a square that seemed to be cat central, where many kittens lay in the shade, and there was a small care station where volunteers (I guess) took care of cats and made sure they were healthy. Back outside our hotel front entrance the pizza place that had a huge line when we came in was surprisingly empty, so I made a slightly drunken decision to buy a big slice, and we took it up to our room to enjoy it – yum, pizza!

Since it was siesta time I took a nap, Kuniko checked out YouTube, and we waited patiently for the heat to pass. Later that evening we went for a walk outside the city along the waterfront. We sat and enjoyed the view of the bay – it was very peaceful in the evenings with fewer boats and cruise ships. Some guys walked by and a swimmer pointed out that one of them had sat in something – his friend used water to clean the seat of his pants. The swimmer later asked me to take his picture as he treaded water in the bay. We also stopped at a small market nearby to get some water and pear juice. We took them back to our room, hydrated a little, and then went back out to get some dinner. 

One thing we had noticed was that from outside the city you could see a building that had a set of three big domes, almost like a mosque. But once we got into the city the streets were so narrow that we couldn’t find the domed building. We tried several times – where was it? 

For dinner we ate in a big square outside a church, with the sun down it was nice to eat under the sky. We had tuna tartare, and Montenegran bruschetta with soft cheese, tomatoes and dried ham chips. We also had some wine – I had a rosé that was good, Kuniko had a tart white wine. A place nearby was playing some background music and it was a very peaceful dinner. We watched tourists walking by, many stopping to take pictures of the church. At 8 pm the church bells rang, not 8 times but about 50 times, that was unusual. While the bells were ringing the restaurant turned off the background music until they were done – a nice touch.

After dinner we again searched for the domed building but came up empty. There were a lot of cute restaurants, some with people waiting in line. One place that was popular had tacos(!) on the menu – that didn’t sound very traditional. The city was really beautiful at night – it sort of reminded me of Havana in a way, with dark corners and so much history. 

Finally we headed back to our hotel – it is great to be staying inside the city itself. After two travel days we get to have a whole day here in Kotor tomorrow. 

The way we arranged this trip was that we would generally alternate travel days with resting days. Today was one of the big travel days, so we got up early at 5:15 am to get started. We showered, packed up our suitcase and picked up our to-go breakfast from the empty hotel front desk. They had packed us some fruits – apples, nectarines and pears, some ham and cheese sandwiches, and a pack of crackers and some chocolates. On top of that we had the snacks we had bought at the market yesterday, so we were well-supplied for a long travel day. We left our room key with some kitchen staff in the back, and then went outside and found our taxi waiting. It was a very short ride to the train station, and we found that it was slightly busier than yesterday, but still pretty empty.

There was a short line at the ticket counter which we joined, and everybody looked a little anxious to get on the train. Behind us in line a very talkative British lady was telling travel stories to some other people that she just met – it was a lot of chatter for this early in the morning and she was relentless in sharing all the great places she had been this trip. Ahead of us three Chinese people came over and talked to a solo Chinese woman in line, and then they all left the line together and went towards the platform. Maybe they had an extra ticket and invited her to join them?

Just as we reached the front of the line the another station staff showed up and so the ticket seller went back to help them prepare, and ticket sales stopped until they finished. During this time we could feel the anxiety of the longer and longer line forming behind us, and some people came up and were investigating why nothing was happening. But finally we were able to get our handwritten paper tickets, and we walked to the platform. The train was already sitting there, with all the carriages locked. We lined up at one of the rear carriages, and I hoped that when we boarded that orderly affair rather than a free-for-all that we sometimes see in other countries.

After a while the conductor came and started unlocking train cars from the front of the train working backwards. When other cars were unlocked people in front of us ran to the open doors, but that just put us in the front of our line when the conductor unlocked our door. The seats were non-reserved, so we casually walked in and sat on the left side of the train, as advised by Gemini the AI bot, who insisted the scenery is much better from the left side window.

I had read online that the train never sells out and there are always spaces available, so I was surprised to see all the seats filling up. Some couples were separated into single seats, and some people heading to the back of the train had to go back to the front to look for seats. Eventually the conductor unlocked one more train car in the back and apparently the train was full. Glad we got there early!

We always like traveling by train wherever we go, and as it worked out this was the only train ride of this trip. The train runs south, stopping at the city of Mostar before going on – just a few trains a week. The train cars themselves were reasonable modern but a little dirty, the train locomotives on either end looked really old. It felt a little like when we rode the train in Morocco a few years ago.

Soon enough the train started rolling, and we enjoyed some of our breakfast while checking out the view. As usual the outskirts of the city were not so beautiful, with more trash and junk piles than anything. But once we got a little farther we saw more nature. As the train ran they piped in some interesting background music – I liked the selection and sometimes activated my music ID app to make a playlist later on when we get back. Occasionally we stopped at some really small stations, and there were some dramatic bridges to cross. If the windows weren’t so dirty we might have gotten some nice photos.

During the first half of the 2.5 hour train ride it seemed like the best scenery was on the right side, rather than the left. Were we mislead by AI? But in the second half the train started following a beautiful river, and the high mountains with dramatic cliffs combined with the river offered the best views to the left side. As we got closer to Mostar I even saw some fish farms in the river, so the water must have been quite clean.

Finally we reached Mostar station, and it was even more abandoned and spooky than Sarajevo station was. We had a fair journey in the heat to get to Mostar old town, but it was a long straight road and we decided to walk it. Kuniko helped us navigate and I pulled our suitcase along, hoping that the partially damaged wheel would hold up.

We found the old town of Mostar on our right, and then descended some steps to find that the road was historic cobblestone – the enemy of suitcases everywhere. So that was how we first saw the bridge at Mostar, with me carrying our suitcase through the hot summer morning, and freely sweating through my clothes. There were also a ton of people here as the tour buses from other places had already arrived by that time. I carried our suitcase over the historic bridge, and then we parked along the side of the busy tourist street to figure out our best strategy to move forward. We had a car scheduled to pick us up at 3 pm, and here we were at 11:00 am in Mostar.

For now Kuniko searched out a restaurant on the far side of the bridge that had a riverside terrace with a nice bridge view, and so we confirmed that it was OK to sit for drinks for a while. The staff were super-friendly and we got a table with a nice view in the shade. It felt good to cool down a bit – we had some local beer and wine, and let the sweat dry. A couple sat nearby with a tiny chihuahua, the man looked exactly like Michael Peña – a dead ringer!

As for the bridge it was one of the landmarks we both really wanted to see, but we felt like it was less impressive in person. Usually there are divers that stand at the bridge and encourage people to pay into a pot – when they reach a suitable amount they jump off. Nobody was diving on that day. Just a few days before there had been a Red Bull diving event – we had lucked out and missed it. If they had pro divers jumping off I doubt they’d let me carry our suitcase across. 

I took a few more pictures of the bridge before we left, and then we settled up for the drinks and went to go find a place for lunch. I had found a couple of possible restaurants in advance, and we had to again carry the suitcase around while looking for one of them. At one point I rested in the shade while Kuniko did the detective work, and finally we found Restaurant Sadrvan, with tables under a shady arbor and misters that blew cold mist into the hot air intermittently. We snagged a table (without permission) and that turned out to be a great idea because the place was about to get really busy.

The food was a little more touristy than I had hoped. We had japkra and domas, and the red wine that we ordered arrived at a rather warm temperature – the one time that I wouldn’t mind chilled red. While we ate we enjoyed the mist, and watched all the activity around us. The place was busy – the staff had to wear some pretty traditional costumes – the women looked like they were not really happy wearing their version of the uniform. Occasionally a lost dog with a collar would run in looking for something familiar, and run back out again looking somewhere else. When I looked back at the restaurant entrance there was a big line of people waiting for tables.

Despite the arbor and the mist it was really hot – and we couldn’t stay there forever. The restaurant’s women’s bathroom had a broken door that didn’t offer privacy so we decided to make our move. I was able to contact the driver and arrange an earlier pickup – we were done with the crowds and heat of Mostar.

As fate would have it near our meeting point was a drinking hole so we sat in the shade and had some drinks, used the clean bathroom, and waited for Sandi, our driver. The owner of the place was super-chill and didn’t mind us hanging out. Across the way Kuniko spotted a Hilton hotel that was either getting ready to open or recently abandoned. 

Finally the driver came – the first time he drove by he missed us, but the second time we got it right and we jumped into his air conditioned car. It was about 1 pm, luckily he was cool with an early pickup and he told us that it would make crossing the border into Croatia easier. There are buses that run from Mostar to Croatia, but they take a really long time, especially at the border crossing. Having the driver was a good solution to this problem – worth the extra money for the flexibility and guidance. 

Sandi was really nice, he spoke English well, and was really helpful. We had booked a stop at a monastery along the way that makes wine. He suggested a friend that had a winery where we could do some wine tasting, but it sounded like it might add significant time to our trip and we politely declined. From Mostar to the monastery it was a 2.5 hour drive, so we leaned back and enjoyed the scenery. 

While not as dramatic as the train view the valleys and fields we drove through were pretty. There were mountains off in the distance, quite a few vineyards, and lots of fruit trees. As we got closer to the monastery there were big fields full of broken white rocks, and lots of empty space that reminded me of Read Dead Redemption. Sandi stopped once to run in and grab a bite to eat, but he rushed through it and we made good time.

We arrived at the monastery – it appeared suddenly and seemed to be surrounded by empty space. There were vineyards on the grounds, but not much space devoted to grape growing. Sandi asked if we wanted an escort into the grounds, but we said we’d do it ourselves and walked in. There were signs pointing towards buildings, the one pointing to a winery seemed to lead towards a big building under construction, so they may have been undergoing some modernization upgrades.

We sort of followed the path until we came upon a group of people who seemed to be taking a tour inside a church on the grounds – the language was not English, so we stepped back outside the building and continued looking for some kind of tasting room. The grounds themselves were quite beautiful and well-maintained. It was just hard to understand what to do. 

While Kuniko waited in the shade I followed the group around the path to see if they were heading into some kind of main building, but instead they went into a cemetery. Just as I decided to give up on the group and head back to Kuniko they all suddenly broke into song, and given the location it gave me a weird vibe. So we decided that we’d head back to the car and move on. On the way to the car we popped into the gift shop, and they had about 70% religious goods and 30% products made at the monastery, including wine. We tossed around the idea of buying a bottle for our hotel room that night, but in the end we decided not to. Sandi was a little surprised that we were ready to leave so quickly, but soon enough we were off.

From there it was quite close to the border to Croatia. We approached and there was a very short line of cars. Sandi said that he has seen much, much longer lines and thanks to our early departure from Mostar we were missing that. While leaving Bosnia we were entering the EU, so the border crossing involved a photo of each person in the car – we had to step out one by one and get our picture taken. 

Once we had entered Croatia we had a very short ride along the coast to get to Dubrovnik. The approach to the old city was quite beautiful, as we came over the mountain we looked down on the orange tile roofs in the old city surrounded by tall walls. It was instantly recognizable from Game of Thrones, and later we saw plenty of shops inside selling GoT goods to take advantage of this. The road we were traveling on was just two lanes and quite narrow on the side of the mountain, and I was interested to see that wherever there was a turnout they had put up boards to block the view of the city below. I imagined they blocked the view to avoid cars gathering there with people taking pictures and causing gridlock.

It took two passes for our driver to find our hotel, it was part of a restaurant called Urban&Veggie, so it wasn’t really clear on the first pass. But he dropped us off close, and we thanked him for all his help. It was a good experience and we really liked Sandi.

When we entered the restaurant to check-in to the hotel, the staff seemed like they were not really happy to see us. Maybe because they are restaurant workers that are doing hotel jobs in addition to their regular jobs? They had trouble finding the key, the heavily accented English they used made it unclear what our room number was, and so we couldn’t quite find the right room and knocked on a few other doors first. Eventually we got it figured out and we entered our room. It was small but good enough for our purposes – we would be leaving early tomorrow morning.

We hurried off to go look at Dubrovnik and get some dinner. We had to leave by a special side door that opened into a sort of suspicious alleyway, but once we figured out the locking mechanism we were free. Unfortunately during all this travel my phone  was running low on juice, so Kuniko offered to use her phone and GPS to guide us to the historic walls and old town. Basically the sun was getting low enough that we could find shade to walk in, but it was still quite hot. We started up a long hill, making good time. Near the top of the hill something felt off to me, and so we checked again and realized we were going a different direction than where we wanted to go. We backtracked closer to a busy street, and bought some water in a shop to cool down. From there I used my phone to call an Uber, and the (bad) driver took us to just outside the old town gates. Just as the Uber dropped us off and drove away my phone battery officially died – luckily timing, I guess – Kuniko didn’t have the Uber app.

With my phone dead we entered the city without some key items. I was basically using my phone for photos, to refer to a list of sightseeing spots that I wanted to check out, and a map with saved restaurants that I wanted to try. I couldn’t do anything about the map or restaurants, but I did have my point-and-shoot camera with me to take pictures. 

The city itself is beautiful. The walls surround the city and the buildings are made of old stone that has been smoothed over the ages. We had been to Croatia before exactly 10 years ago, but at that time we didn’t make it to this city and instead went to Zadar. I remember being so impressed with Zadar as the architecture is very similar – just a smaller version of Dubrovnik. Because of this, tonight’s visit to the city made less of an impression. It almost felt like we had been here before.

We walked down a long street, descending steps until we reached a main square, and it was fairly crowded with tourists like us. We poked around, took some photos of some of the more dramatic buildings, and then went out to the wharf and around to the side. Young people had gathered, some swimming in the water while others lounged in the setting sun drying off.

From there we made an attempt to go up to the city walls and see the view from there, but in a blatant money grab the city was charging 40 euros a person to walk on the city walls. That means all of the city walls, and they had built little booths everywhere the walls had an entrance to make sure tourists were paying. We were definitely not going to get 80 Euros of enjoyment out of that and decided instead to invest that in a good meal somewhere. 

There were restaurants everywhere in the city – down every little street and alley there were tables, and most restaurants had touts outside to try to get customers. We were getting hungry but we kept finding Italian restaurants – I was hoping for something more traditional, and we wanted to eat some seafood as we were right next to the ocean. No pizza or pasta necessary. The first place we considered I vetoed because it clearly said Italian restaurant on the menu. The second place we found had a seafood section, and I was so focused on that information that I missed that it was also an Italian restaurant. I told Kuniko that we should try this place, and we sat down – Kuniko slightly confused why we were eating at an Italian place after all. We talked about it and I realized my mistake, but we decided since we had been seated and they did have seafood that we’d make a go of it. 

I ordered a tuna steak, Kuniko ordered a grilled fish fillet, and when they came we were really disappointed. They were both super simple, overly salted, and served with a mountain of french fries. I had a big beer which was fine, but Kuniko’s white wine was a little tart and not pleasant to drink. I was really bummed out – here we were in Dubrovnik, one night only, and we just wasted a meal on generic tourist fare. Next to us a Chinese family was scarfing through pasta – the server even said “Welcome back!”to them so they apparently liked it here. To top it all off the staff said that they couldn’t accept credit cards (!) because their machine doesn’t connect sometimes, so we had to burn some of our precious Euros that we had prepared for use in Montenegro and Kosovo.

After we left I swung by the menu and was surprised to see that there was no restaurant name at all. Later I looked online and there was nothing listed in that location. We had walked into the very definition of a tourist trap. I was seriously bummed out but Kuniko was not about to let our evening end like this. Earlier while walking around we had seen a cute little restaurant down an alley and had filed away that info – we went back and had a second dinner there. This place was actually quite good, called the Renaissance Art Restaurant, and we ordered shrimp carpaccio with onions, Adriatic shrimp ravioli and two glasses of white wine that were excellent. This was more like it.

After (second) dinner we walked around and found a keychain that we liked, and then walked back up the steps (still hot, even in the evening) and caught a taxi back to our hotel. My Uber app was unavailable so we did it the old fashioned way. The driver was really nice and got us where we needed to go.

Before retiring we took a walk along the waterfront – our hotel was on the harbor itself – passing boats big and small moored for the night. One boat was in party mode with flashing disco lights on the deck. We scoped out the likely location for tomorrow’s ferry to Montenegro, and then went back to our hotel to call it a night. Outside our windows there was outdoor dining for the restaurant, and we fell asleep to the sounds of forks and knives on plates. 

That was a big travel day! We have some more traveling to do tomorrow and then things should settle into a more regular rhythm.

I slept really well, whereas Kuniko was awoken in the middle of the night by some people talking loudly in another room in the hotel. The time was nearly 3 am, and these people had come back from whatever event/party they had attended and the high ceilings were carrying their voices throughout the building. Kuniko actually went out of our room to track down the source. Eventually around 4 am one of them left and things got quiet. I just lay there – oblivious, unconscious, unhelpful.

Our hotel offered breakfast and we went to partake at 7 am, and it was quite a spread. Considering the size of the hotel they had lots of different items, the usual stuff and also some burek, rolls, plenty of yogurts, hot eggs, and so we were looking good. The automatic espresso machine made a pretty good cappuccino, but we noticed only afterwards that the empty cup should be placed on the left – we lost some precious coffee thanks to our lack of attention to the sign. Once a cook came in to check on things and get her own coffee, and she seemed really friendly although we couldn’t communicate very well.

Afterwards we set out to walk through old town and do some sightseeing with fewer people around. This early sightseeing was our strategy whenever we travel – but even in the morning the sun was quite hot, and we had to stick to walking in the shade only.

We did a bit of exploring, beyond to the old town to climb a hill overlooking part of the city, to see a memorial graveyard. We tried to visit a mosque that look quite beautiful, but the gates were firmly closed at the early hour. The old brewery in town looked interesting online but was all shut down when we went past. Other than those fails we had success seeing other things. At 9 am we went into the big city office that was renovated after a fire in the 1990s. The entrance hall was dramatically lit up with vivid colors and they had movie scores playing from some hidden speakers – it felt a little like Instagram bait. But the rooms upstairs were dedicated to documenting the war crimes of the Yugoslavian war. They were fairly graphic (by design) and I think the showy entrance was probably a good strategy to get more young people in there to learn about their history. 

Afterwards we walked along the river (which was flowing more freely than yesterday) towards the Academy of Fine Arts building in the west part of town. Along the way we tried to stay to the shady side of the street. We checked out the Latin Bridge – hard to believe this historic bridge was so simple. We had unknowingly walked over it the night before.

We also passed some kind of military building – outside a large squad of soldiers was in the process of lining up – maybe going on duty. Across from the Fine Arts building was an interesting artistic bridge that looked like it was doing a loop. Artistic and eye-catching!

Since we had already come across most of the city we decided to make a run to the train station in the northwest to buy tickets for tomorrow’s train to Mostar. Usually I like to get those lined up online but their website had said that online sales were unavailable at the moment (the message stayed the same for four months before we arrived).We didn’t want to miss out on the train so we thought we’d lock down the tickets today.

It was a fair walk in the heat, about 25 minutes, and even trying to stay in the shade we were starting to get sweaty. We spotted some markets on the way, and some interesting building architecture. Once we got to the train station there was no shade anywhere, so we had to cross a big hot parking lot in the sun. Luckily we had brought sunscreen.

We approached the station and it appeared empty. There were just two or three cars in the giant lot, and not what we expected in the capital city of the country. Inside was also empty – I was reminded of exploring ruins in the Fallout video games. There was someone sitting in the ticket office, but when we asked about tickets she said that we should come early tomorrow and buy them then. So our trip to the station was sort of a bust. As soon as we walked away from the station we saw the ticket agent and her friend walking away – apparently to go to lunch. I can’t help thinking that we could have gotten tickets if lunchtime hadn’t been coming up. 

On our way back we stopped in a little convenience store to get some water. The store’s name was “Konsume” which is a very direct name for a retail outlet. They took credit cards, so we didn’t have to use any of our precious BAM. From there we stopped in at the giant SCC (Sarajevo City Center) which was an air conditioned shopping mall. Besides cooling down we bought some snacks for the train trip the next day, and some more water. We also hit another ATM, figuring that we should have cash on hand for train tickets just in case.

As we got closer to our hotel I looked up a wine bar that I wanted to try, and even with the GPS it was hard to pin down. But when we finally found the place it was open. We sat on the patio outside in the shade of a green park and enjoyed a couple glasses of a Malvasia/Chardonnay blend from Herzegovina – the name on the bottle was VukojE. Sitting at the high table enjoying the cool shade of the park, wine in hand – I was glad to be back in Europe. 

After a short break back at our hotel we went back towards old town to find some lunch. We chose a lunch place called Kiopa, right next to the Sacred Heart Cathedral – which had an abstract sculpture of Pope John Paul in front of it. The restaurant had tables in the shade, and while we sipped wine and beer a little black kitten came to play with our ankles and get attention. We had a plate of lamb skewers, and a chicken pastry pot for lunch, they went well with homemade bread and some local beer. We love eating outside – it was a nice vibe there. 

More and more people were walking around the old town, the heat was starting to really build, so we went back to our air-conditioned hotel room to wait out the crowds and heat. This siesta style worked well for us during the trip – I’d hate to spend the whole day out in the brutal summer heat. We watched a little YouTube on the hotel TV, polluting the YouTube watch history with k-pop girl groups and cartoon rabbits talking finance.

By 5:30 pm the temperature was starting to drop outside and we were getting hungry again. As we left we talked with our hotel staff. We set up an early morning taxi to get us to the train station on time to buy tickets, and since we were leaving before breakfast was served we asked if they could put together a to-go bag. The combination of the two requests flustered the guy, but in the end everything worked out.

Outside the pavement was still radiating heat but it was much more manageable. We went to a restaurant called “The Singing Nettle” – a small family owned place that specialized in traditional foods. The waitress/owner/mom was really friendly and set us up at a table for two even though we didn’t have reservations. Her husband must have been in the kitchen, and her son was goofing around and playing while singing weird songs. 

For dinner we had some red and wine by the glass, some nettle fritters, and breaded beef  on cinnamon sticks with rice. I really liked the cinnamon and beef combination. The fritters were good, but sort of tasted like healthy food. By the end of the meal the small restaurant was heating up as more customers appeared. I was starting sweat – no air conditioning in there. The cost of the meal was 75 BAM – which worked out to about 7000 Japanese yen or $45 USD. 

We walked around a little after dinner to cool off. There were a ton of people around with us, even tour groups were walking around in the early evening. Walking again through the Turkish area the air was filled with smoke from the meats grilling in various restaurants. Things were noisy and motorcycles roared past in the streets. Because of the summer it was still quite light out, so we didn’t have a chance to see any of the landmarks illuminated. 

It looked like bars and nightclubs were getting ready to open. Nightlife is really not our scene, so we wandered back to our hotel. There we paid our bill in advance of checking out the next morning. The staff was still a little flustered about the plan for the early morning, but after a brief delay we got it all figured out. In the evening I got an email from our driver who will take us from Mostar to Dubrovnik, so as long as we can catch that train the rest should be easy. Fingers crossed!

Last year we broke from tradition and took a shorter August trip, spending a week in Africa rather than visiting Europe. But this year we were heading back, aiming to visit some of the Eastern European countries that have more challenging transport links and infrastructure. It took a lot more planning to pull off this trip, which will become apparent as you read along.

Following tradition we had dinner at Piccini, a little semi-Italian restaurant near our house on the night before we left. We don’t want to cook and leave trash in the house for two weeks, so we usually hit Piccini and get ourselves in the mood of European travel a little bit. 

Saturday morning we were able to sleep in a bit but woke to a very hot day. Temperatures were hitting 35 degrees Celsius and we had no choice but to walk through the heat and sun to get to Okubo station and start the trip. We arrived in Sannomiya and had lunch there, at a sort of modern Chinese/Japanese place called Mononoke. They’ve got some pretty good lamb skewers and a few different dim sum options. The restaurant was starting to fill up with people getting the lunch buffet special, but we stuck with ordering just what we liked. 

We caught the airport bus then, and it was a slightly different route (apparently a concert by J-pop group “Key to Lit” was causing traffic on the regular route). At KIX we were able to drop off our bag immediately, and then being hands-free it was easy to go through security. However when it was time for me to go through immigration, I found the lines for non-Japanese residents to be full of people. Most were from Vietnam or the Philippines, a result of the recent increase in workers to support certain industries. Usually there are very few people in these lines, so it is a point that I’ll have to keep in mind in the future. 

We bypassed the overpriced restaurants (targeting foreign visitors with more powerful currencies) and instead went directly to the convenience store at the far edge of the terminal. In the center of the terminal a draft beer (or highball) costs a standard 1100 yen, the same drink in a can costs 500 yen, but that same can at the distant convenience store is only 200 yen. Worth the walk for us! We had some Jagarico and two tall highballs, feeling the buzz of the alcohol and impending vacation.

We caught our flight on Singapore airlines to Changi airport, sitting near a group of young Japanese students who may have been on their first flight ever. They were curious about everything, asking their teacher questions, and one boy even took a barf bag as a souvenir. The woman sitting next to me had some kind of irregular shaped hands with shorter fingers and fewer joints, and it was fascinating to me to watch her handle everyday tasks that I normally take for granted. I was trying to watch but not look like I was watching, not sure if I succeeded.

It was six hours to Changi airport, and by the time we arrived we weren’t so hungry so we had a ginger honey flavored tea at the food court, but I wish I had the stomach space for their dry noodles – they looked so good. Walking around the airport we saw lots of great looking restaurants, and I had to explain to Kuniko why I laughed out loud at the restaurant called “Heavenly Wang” – plenty of joke material there. 

The next flight was the longer leg, again on Singapore airlines for a 12 hour flight to Istanbul. We sat in a row of three seats in the back of the plane, and we blocked in an Indian guy who was able to make it through almost the whole flight without using the restroom – impressive. Near the end he made a run for it, I think his hands were shaking with the effort of holding his bladder. Across from us a Japanese guy requested the flight attendant serving meals to open up both options and show him so he could decide visually – that was a first time to see that happen. A few seats in front of us a young Japanese couple were traveling, and Kuniko said it reminded her of her youth, when we first started traveling together. We slept for about six hours on this flight, which made it much easier to get through.

Arriving at Istanbul airport we actually entered the country this time, since we were using a different airline for our connection to Sarajevo. That meant that we had to grab our suitcase and roll it with us to check in for our next flight. While rolling we noticed that one of the wheels was pretty damaged. These wheels are actually skateboard wheels – really tough and we subject them to a lot of rough situations when we travel – and about 30% of the material had been ripped off somehow, maybe in some machinery in one of the airports. Luckily it still rolled but it was a situation that I would have to keep an eye on for the next two weeks.

The line to check in for our short flight to Sarajevo on Turkish Airlines was quite long – I was glad that we had enough time to make the connection. Once checked in we stopped at Jackie’s bar at one end of the terminal, and Kuniko bought us a couple glasses of prosecco and two cocktails – my daiquiri was not great, Kuniko’s cosmopolitan was better. Drinking at Istanbul airport is wildly expensive (those four drinks cost us approximately the same as what we pay for two weeks of groceries back home), but we were happy to be kicking off another European trip.

We still had time to kill before our flight, so we sat around fiddling with our phones near a random gate (I played a lot of Angry Birds this trip). Suddenly the gate staff closed off the area and we were sort of default going to Medina, Saudi Arabia. We didn’t have tickets to that destination but now we were sitting in a pre-sorted area – kind of weird situation. To leave we had to push through a huge crowd of Muslim visitors eager to board.

Once we boarded our plane to Sarajevo we noticed that the plane had a surprising number of people who seemed to be not used to air travel. People kept swapping seats with family members and blocking others from boarding, but the staff were amazingly patient with them and we got off the ground on time. Our flight was only 80 minutes but we got a lunch out of it – a sandwich with melted cheese and roasted veggies that was so good we were still talking about it at the end of our trip. I guess we had low expectations but in this case Turkish Airlines over-delivered.

After landing at Sarajevo airport in the afternoon I was surprised to see how small it was. We were able to deplane from the back as well as the front and walk into the terminal. Immigration was simple (no stamps – seems like passport stamps will soon be a thing of the past). One guy in front of us in line did get asked a lot of questions, and I was sure it was rubber hose time but eventually they let him through. The airport’s luggage carousel system was pretty cheesy – it held new luggage back until there was space available on the carousel, but the luggage seemed spaced in such a way that new stuff appeared only occasionally – it took a long time to get our bag.

Outside we met our driver, and I had my first experience with an ATM on this trip to withdraw Bosnian convertible marks (with is shortened to a much more fun “BAM”). One new (to us) upgrade to modern ATMs is that you can touch your bank card to the pad instead of having to insert the card into the machine (which always seemed risky – especially in a foreign country). Here I tapped and got my 200 BAM and was ready to go.

We had to wait a few minutes for the driver to pay for parking. That gave us time to look around the outside of the airport. The weather was really hot – even in the shade – but at least it wasn’t humid. We had booked a driver because we had heard bad things about airport taxi drivers here, and at least visually they lived up to our expectations. These guys all looked shady and it seemed like everyone was smoking. Later we learned that smoking was huge in every city we visited – not the healthiest countries in that respect.

Our driver was really nice but didn’t speak much English, so we were left to our own observations as we drove into the center of Sarajevo. Speaking for myself I didn’t get a great impression – buildings had a lot of graffiti and damage to them, most houses had high security fences and the trash collection areas were piled high with, well, trash. Not many people walking around. Honestly I started to get a little worried about our trip – if the other cities and countries we were visiting look liked this it was going to be a long two weeks.

Our driver dropped us off right near our hotel in the center of Old Town Sarajevo. We paid him the agreed on 25 Euros (our hotel said we couldn’t pay in BAM). Later we found that the price was about double the normal price, but I guess that is because the guy had to stand around waiting for our plane to land. We walked through more burning sunshine to get to Hotel Eleven, our first hotel of the trip.

The hotel was sort of a boutique, artistic hotel built into the first floor of an older building. The ceilings were very high throughout, and our bedroom had an interesting art exhibit of what looked like planets on the wall above our bed – which lit up with LED lights on a switch. Cool! We turned on the AC and even though we really wanted to sleep we forced ourselves to go out and look around to try to get our internal clocks working on local time.

Outside the sun felt super intense on our skin – it was essential to find the shade wherever it was and walk to our destinations there. This was a theme throughout the trip – summer this time felt more painful than before. We walked towards the heart of Old Town, and there were plenty of people on the streets with us. They seemed like a younger crowd, mostly European visitors. I think Kuniko was the only Asian visitor I saw during our stay in the city. 

We managed to find a cool keychain to convert to an ornament for our Christmas tree, but the shop staff was missing. So we had to leave it hanging there and hope to come back later. We found a convenience store that was open but it was absolutely slammed with customers – we found some drinkable yogurt and some waters but we couldn’t find the end of the line to pay. Eventually we figured it out, but it was a chaotic scene. We took the water and yogurt back to our room so we could regroup and rest – the heat was already taking a toll on our already tired bodies.

Despite the temptation to crash out we decided to make one more journey out to get an early dinner. We walked a little southeast of our hotel to the river running through town, although when we crossed it was merely a trickle of water. We crossed over a simple bridge (this bridge would become more important later) and then walked riverside to a restaurant I had picked called Inat Kuca (“House of Spite”). The restaurant is riverside and is named because the owner refused to sell to developers and forced the city to expand around his quaint little house. The house was now a restaurant, and the restaurant was popular even at this early hour. We stood in the baking sun while the staff looked for a table for us, and after a few minutes of heat exposure we were led to a table for two under the covered balcony overlooking the riverbed. Being out of the direct sun made a big difference – and the cold beer I ordered next also helped a lot.

Rather strange Bosnian music was playing on the speaker just over our heads (it reminded us of our visit to Georgia). While I had the beer Kuniko had some local white wine by the glass, and later we both had some red – both wines were pretty good. Our waiter spoke English and was very friendly – that made for a good experience. For dinner we had shopska salad (one of our favorites from our visit to Belgrade), klepe (ravioli with garlic and yogurt), and Sarjevski sahan (“Sarajevo Platter)” of beef, rice and stuffed vegetables. Both dishes were really good – and just on food alone we were happy we made the visit. 

With some cold drinks and delicious food, being out of the sun, things were looking up in Bosnia for us. Around us people came and went, most of them smoking. Some customers ordered a huge (bigger than you are imagining right now) platter to share amongst them, and it looked like an interesting way of eating with a group. We got a big bowl of free bread, too – people have big appetites here.

We walked around a bit more in a wide circle towards our hotel. We walked through part of the Old Town that was dedicated to Turkish shops and restaurants – a Turkeytown if you will. It was a really big area, flooded with smoke from the grilled meats and more than a few mosques. Our last few days of this trip will bring us back to Istanbul to spend some slow time, so we reluctantly avoided all the delicious looking restaurants in this area to save ourselves for later.

Our last stop on the way back to our room was to buy a keychain from another shop – this one had a kind shopkeeper who spoke English fluently. Since I didn’t have small bills in BAM I bought it with Euros – not sure to whose advantage that was. Finally it was back to hotel after a very long day of travel. Our journey is underway!