Stari Most

On our drive back up to Zadar from Cavtat we decided to take a detour through Bosnia and Herzegovina and visit a city called Mostar. The only thing we really knew about this city was the fact that it had a famous bridge where according to a friend, people jumped off into the river below. It was a fairly uneventful drive to the city, apart from long queues of trucks and cars to get through the border. As soon as we arrived in Mostar we could see the obvious destruction of buildings scattered throughout the city from the Bosnian War in the 90's. We gazed starry-eyed out of the car windows up at the devastated buildings around us. I've mentioned a few times in previous posts about how this kind of sight is still quite a novelty for us young Aussies who have had no experience of war directly.

We parked our trusty car in an overcrowded car park and took a short stroll down the narrow roads, following the signs to Stari Most. It didn't take us long to be amongst the hustle and bustle of the touristic streets surrounding the famous bridge. Even though it was a rather small bridge it was still nice to look at and the views from the bridge of the river and the city were quite beautiful. Unfortunately though we didn't see anyone jumping off the bridge. We did however see some people jumping off a platform further down the river into the alluring, green water below.

After some lunch (pizza again) at a restaurant with a view of the bridge, a quick wander through the tiny, tourist-filled streets and some rather strange tasting gelato we were back in the car and on our way to Zadar where our hotel awaited us.

We didn't have very clear instructions on how to get to our accommodation so we drove around aimlessly until we thought we should probably give the place a ring to ask for some more directions. It turns out that the lady could see us parked down the road so we weren't all that far away from where we were supposed to be. We had booked this place off a website that aggregates various hotel booking sites and we booked three rooms for the five of us. Somewhere along the lines the information got screwed up and she put all five of us in ONE room. It was a pretty big room with a kitchen etc, so don't have visions of all five of us squeezed onto the one queen-sized bed. We had booked and were prepared to pay for three separate rooms. After about an hour of arguing and her basically saying that what we were getting is what we booked (load of crap), we finally gave in and decided that we could put up with the close quarters for two nights but only if we paid a much cheaper price. Ahhh... so tense!

For such a small room and five tired people we did pretty well to not tread on each others toes. We did have to agree to a rough bathroom schedule though so there weren't too many arguments. When it was time for bed we regressed back to primary school camp antics and were giggling and making all kinds of sordid noises. I look at the whole experience as a relationship building experience. We all know each other quite well now... a little too well perhaps?