Here’s where Franz Ferdinand died. Too bad his driver didn’t have Google Maps because turning the wrong way can lead to problems.
Here’s more of Old Town and the city center where churches, mosques, and synagogues are neighbors.
Jeanette hit her back head on a doorway again. She’s pretty tall.
Then we took a ride out into the mountains to walk in cool weather. But Jeanette liked the chalet’s menu, so we didn’t do much walking. It was in the spot where downhill skiing was in the 1984 Olympics. The area has lots of new construction going on.
Bill wanted to go see the ski jump and climbed up. It’s scary up there.
Back in Sarajevo at night. The streets look like the State Fair in Minnesota and it is an ordinary, summer, Tuesday night around nine o’clock.
Lots of traveling today. We woke up late in Mostar due to the late concerts then drove to Sarajevo. On the way we purchased advanced tickets for Tito’s bunker, but Google doesn’t know where it is (!) so we got it there late. And then nobody was around to let us in. We waited a bit at a river nearby, but nobody showed, so we then just continued on.
We arrived in Sarajevo in the afternoon and walked around the downtown area where we are staying. Jeanette’s planned route looked short to her… it was five restaurants that she was considering, but it was up and down hills. They first Restaurant-Pizzeria she’d choose was on its own first day of being closed for their vacation. But a long, four dish dinner was had at her restaurant number four, and then we walked a bit more before returning early to our place. I took a night shot from the apartment balcony to remember that people stay up and out late, but it didn’t turn out. Perhaps tomorrow!
We left Dubrovnik in the morning to take a shuttle back to the airport to pick up a rental car. We found out that they won’t rent a car to those going to Albania, so we had to reconfigure our trip.
But we got driving and made our way, via manual transmission, through Bosnia on the way to Mostar, which Bill wanted to visit everyone since he read about the Old Bridge that was destroyed in 1993.
On the way, we made our first grocery stop at Lidl.
Next stop was the town of Trebinje where we visited a church at the top of the town and then to walk across the Arslanagic Bridge down in town.
Still in Trebinje Jeanette found a farmers market which made her feel at home, except for the fact that nobody spoke any English. We even got some homemade liquor.
Jeanette also found a bakery that had a sign that said they they required Covid masking but nobody in town seemed to be wearing one either inside or out.
I was going to get ice cream in a cone, so I pointed to the sign that showed it to the young girl working at the stand and she just shook her head no. So I pointed to the cup of ice cream, and she shook her head again. Then she said, “milkshake” so that’s what I got. Some ice cream with caramel in a plastic cup.
We then went to see a waterfall which really was a park that locals use to swim. Jeanette didn’t have her suit so she ate a great salad while Bill swam and cooled off. It got up to 104 degrees today.
Then it was a trip to some fort which turned out to be a disaster because the road there was horrible. And when I reached the end of the road, there was no fort. I was Thankfully I looked up out of the window and saw what might be considered a fort on a hill, but at that point I just wanted to get myself back down to a real road without the car lying at the bottom of a cliff with us both alive.
Then we drove to Mostar so Bill could see the bridge. Our AirBnb happened to have an outdoor concert right outside its window. It must go pretty late because it is 1:36 in the morning (Monday, now) and they are still rocking outside our window.
Unfortunately, today was the annual bridge jumping but we didn’t know if and we got here after it ended. From this photo, it was doesn’t look like the little rocks I jumped into the Adriatic yesterday.
We began the day with a trip to Lokum Island via ferry. Jeanette and I swum in the Adriatic for quite some time – certainly enough to get too much sun. Jeanette was impressed by the many features of the island such as the flora, the peacocks, and the naked guy with a boat cruising the island.
Later we walked back to downtown Dubrovnik for a restaurant that we went to because we skipped out on another whose menu had changed sometime since we saw it on Google. We were quite pleased with the one we found and were amused that Google Maps doesn’t think that it exists.
We then took a bus home and went to bed knowing that we had to leave Dubrovnik in the morning.
We woke up in Dubrovnik. Our first stop was to walk along the walls that surround the old town where we are staying.
Latter, we took a long walk into downtown Dubrovnik for a grocery store, a swim, dinner, and then some drinks on a beautiful warm night on their pedestrian street.
Jeanette and I had a six hour layover at Charlie de Gaulle Airport so we took a cab (which was wasn’t easy to do because of the construction at the airport) into a town near the airport for a few hours where we walked around and relearned the hard way about credits card debacles when traveling. But that just gave Jeanette a good excuse to go back to the bakery again to see if her credit card card actually workers or if the bar’s system was the problem. (It was the bar’s)
We then flew to Dubrovnik and got in late evening. Our AirBnb had plumbing issues (or so she said) so we were given different accommodations. Rather than dwell on how much to complain, we walked through town and had a nice dinner. Our waiter, who was also the owner, felt bad for making us wait for the drinks so we gave them to us on the house and then later offered us a three hour kayak rental for tomorrow.
My phone was newly dead by then, so I have few photos.
I got Helena’s car jumped and started, but needed her to drive it to recharge the battery.ย
She made it to 50th and Lyndale before it died – the first time. Then three more times on Dupont on the way to the garage. But we never did make it to the garage, so it had to be towed two days later for a new battery. Now, despite the speedometer no longer working, she does have a running car.
Liam had his first freshman team match today. Early in the match he just missed and then hit the crossbar with headers, but he did put one in with his feet off a corner for the team’s first goal. He also got the last goal of the match with a looper over their keeper.
He also got his first ever bus card today.
And Helena passed her drivers test, even though she said that it didn’t go perfectly. And the person giving her the test was rude.
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