Our bus from Montenegro departed about 1 hour late and arrived 2 hours late to Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Considering how horrid the traffic was getting to Montenegro, only a 2 hour delay was not bad at all. It was a relatively easy walk to old town from the bus stop where our guest house was located. Our arrival was later then we expected so we had a light lunch and relaxed. The guesthouse came with free homemade ‘ice cream’. We thought the term ice cream was a bit generous but it was still good and very kind of the host. For dinner we had the most delicious smash burgers from Von Herzog. We would end up having at least one of our meals at that restaurant every day in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Our first full day in Mostar we spent walking around in the old town and then to different notable places in the city. We started off by walking across the Old Bridge and down the bazaar to visit the Karađoz Beg Mosque before crossing back over the river to walk Tvrtka Miloša and check out the street art and murals. Everywhere we walked in Mostar had art of some variety. That included tiles to fill in sidewalk cracks, wall paintings, park mosaics, graffiti and more.

Tvrtka Miloša put us nearby our next couple spots to look at, Sniper Tower and Španski trg. Španski trg is a beautiful square with colorful buildings and fountains, and Sniper Tower is an abandoned building with a dark history from the siege of Mostar. From there we headed to the Partisan Memorial Cemetery, which appeared to be much more of a memorial than a cemetery. Nick was allowed a short stop at a church, Franjevačka Crkva u Mostaru, before I got too hungry and we needed to get lunch. For lunch we stopped at Hindin Han and enjoyed some traditional Bosnian food and a nice river view from the balcony.

That evening we enjoyed some sodas down by the river in front of the famous old bridge. We had excellent timing, as there was a guy about to jump. It appeared that most of the jumpers were men who would collect money then jump to entertain tourists. I had thought there would’ve been more people jumping just for fun, but that didn’t seem to be the case at least when we were there. Many boats go under the bridge for short rides with tourists, so they had to wait around for some time for the jumper to go.

The third and final day was an inefficient but nice one. We spent an embarrassingly long time finding a place for brunch. Our data did not work in Bosnia and Herzegovina so we had to be in our guesthouse in order to have internet. We found an amazing 5.0 star review pancake place that was a 15 minute walk away. Only to show up and it had been replaced by a bar 2 years ago. Eventually after 1.5 hours of doing more research and stopping at other spots we made it to Lokma House for some lokmas and pancakes that were absurdly delicious.

In the afternoon we visited the Museum of War and Genocide Victims. It was an excellent museum with a ton of information about the war, accounts from people who lived through it, personal belongings of victims, short films, and maps. It was emotional reading all the testimonies. We both knew very little about the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina before visiting and were glad the museum was so informational. In addition to being covered in art, many buildings were also riddled with bullet holes. A walking tour group passed us at one point and we overheard that only the newly renovated buildings hide the scars from the genocide.