Welcome to Sarajevo

Mosque in the Old Town of Sarajevo, Bosnia & Hercegovina
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After our gorgeous train ride through the mountains of Bosnia & Hercegovina we arrived in the capital of Sarajevo. Sarajevo is the city famous for hosting the 1984 Winter Olympics and ten years later being the center of the fighting during the Balkan wars. Our hostel picked us up right from the train station, which is always a plus, and took us right into the center of Old Sarajevo where our room was located. We went out and explored the old town which has a large pedestrian area and a huge market/bazaar area, grabbed some dinner and crashed for the night.

Life size chess game, Sarajevo, Bosnia & Hercegovina
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The next day we did the war history tour through our hostel which was pretty amazing. First they took us to the Tunnel Museum. The tunnel was built under the airport to smuggle supplies in and out of the city while they were under seige for four years, this was the main way in which the people survived as they were surrounded on all sides by the Serbian Army. We hit a few more points of interest from here and got a very detailed history lesson from our guide.

While Sarajevo has recovered much more so than Mostar you can definitely still see the remnants of the war. It is also a very fascinating and beautiful city, the city is covered with mosques, churches and synagogues and the only other places I think I have seen such a huge variety of people are Jerusalem and New York!

Spent the rest of the day walking and shopping, shopping somemore and walking somemore! I managed to find several good ice creams throughout the day and was very excited to discover Red Bull ice cream! Anyone who knows me will know how very happy this made me! I walked down along the river, which was very pretty, and to the bridge where Archduke Franz Ferdinand was shot in 1914 igniting WWI. I attempted to go to the History Museum but it was closed of course after I walked 45 minutes to get to it! After, I walked by the famous Holiday Inn which was the only functioning hotel during the war and was where all the journalists and photographers stayed. Walked by and through several mosques, churches, squares and yes, more markets before meeting back up with Andrew. After another good dinner we headed to some local bars and called it a day.