I’ve had a couple of Balkan cities on my list of places to visit for at least ten years. While planning our trip to Croatia in 2016 I had hoped to swing south and see Mostar and Kotor, but the way that trip worked out was a turn north instead. It would take us six more trips to Europe before we could make that southern swing.
Planning a trip to get around the Balkans was a challenge. The area is mainly dependent on roads – cars and buses – for getting around. The small airports in each country depend on some other third country as a hub, making it harder for us to use air travel to connect our destinations. Kuniko and I worked for a lot longer on planning this one, but luckily it worked out smoothly in the end.
My original idea was to make the trip starting with Kosovo, and then heading south to N. Macedonia, and the west and along the coast, ending up in Sarajevo. For various reasons we flipped it around and started in Bosnia, and I can’t imagine the trip any other way.
Another wrinkle was Singapore Airlines cancelling our return leg from Europe due to the US/Iran war in the gulf – they were consolidating flights and we ended up having to stay an extra day in Istanbul before returning home. That cost us a safety buffer day before going back to work, but luckily we didn’t need it. An extra slow day in a huge city we already know was a pleasant decompression step before flying back to Asia.
Finally the summer heat played a big factor in our trip. We got up early to sightsee before the heat kicked in, and had siestas most days to avoid the peak of the afternoon heat. But with the world trending hotter every summer we’ll need to consider some strategies to avoid the heat in future trips.
Below you’ll find the daily journals from each day of the two week trip – here they are (in order from bottom to top). As always the journals are not really to introduce the countries or educate, more to refresh our own memories about stories and incidents that happened while we were out there. Feel free to ask us any questions if you want to hear more about it!
