Eurotrip 2019 - Mostar & Kotor
I made a Split decision (ha, see what I did there) and decided to head to Mostar from Croatia. I have always wanted to visit and it was easy enough to get to from Split - a 7 hour, 20 euro bus ride.
I was SO glad I went. I originally booked 2 nights and ended up staying another as I love it so much. It was hard picking a hostel to stay in because they all had such good reviews (not a bad problem to have!) so I went for the cheapest, Hostel Lovely Home at 8 euros a night. It was basic but the owner was so friendly, happily answered all my questions, booked me onto a tour, exchanged my money and gave me a delicious glass of juice when I arrived. He didn't have space for me for the extra night, so I moved to Hostel Musafa for my last night, 12 euros and slightly further away from the Old Town but it had a really nice outdoor area. I made friends with a guy who was travelling Europe on a motorbike called Rohan, and he met me after my first Old Town exploration for dinner and drinks watching live music by the river - not a bad first night in town!
The tour I booked was the standard tour all hostels seem to offer in Mostar - 35 Euros for a day trip to Blacaj to see a Dervish House, Pocitelj to see the fortress, and Kravica Falls for a swim and lunch. But - as much as I like to support local business, you could book for 20 Euros in the centre of own with the tourist company and it was exactly the same tour...so if you're wanting to save a buck or two, do that instead!! The tour was O-K, nothing spectacular, and Kravica Falls whilst beautiful were SUPER busy and a bit commercialised, on the river front is a big restaurant selling unspectacular food. But the best bit was I met some really awesome girls from Denmark who became my Mostar friends - Jensia and Ida, and Yuchen who lives on the Isle of Man and who I ended up bumping into in Kotor a few days later. I later met up with the girls for dinner, and hung out with them the following day. We went to the Genocide Museum, which is well worth a stop. It is very inexpensive and you'll spend around 2 hours in there - it is very...confronting....and moving, and we left wondering how humans can be so cruel to each other.
Mostar is very raw - if you're only staying in the Old Town you probably won't notice it so much, but if you wander to the outskirts you'll spot crumbling, bullet riddled buildings and a variety of graffiti. It's a strange juxtaposition to the quaintness of the Old Town. I also went to a war photography exhibition which gave me much more of an appreciation of how much of the Old Town has been rebuilt - Stari Most, Mostar's famous bridge was only rebuilt in 2004, having been blown up in 1993 by Croat paramilitary forces during the war. If buildings could talk, they've seen a hell of a lot.
It's only a small Old Town, but it is really lovely - the (slippery!!) cobbled streets are lined with stalls selling beautiful Ottoman style trinkets and nicknacks, I could have spent a fortune. There are street cats and dogs on every corner, gelato stalls, and the views to the bridge are like something in a fairy tale.
My top tips would be to wear sensible footwear!! The streets are slippery - especially the bridge, so don't wear flipflops as you'll be slipping all over the place, especially if it's raining. If you want to take photos of the bridge, you'd best get up early - it gets very crowded from 9am onwards and in high season sometimes there's a bit of a queue to walk across due to people wanting to take selfies. If you want to get internet points, talk to the pros about jumping off the bridge. From memory it costs 35 euros and they take you to a slightly lower diving platform a little upstream to make sure you know what you're doing before they allow you to jump from the bridge itself. Mostar could be explored in a day, but I would recommend spending at least 2 full days here if you're wanting to explore a bit further afield too.
The bus to Kotor was delayed by 30 or so minutes, which is always a bit stressful when you're in a different country and don't know the language or who to ask - but I trusted in the process and assumed it would come eventually! It was a pretty miserable journey, the AC didn't work - turning the bus into a sauna, and we got stuck in a lot of traffic so it took much longer than it should have done. I was excited to see Kotor as from other blog pictures I have seen it looked beautiful, but I was sorely disappointed.
I think a lot of it was to do with my mindset - I felt quite at home in Mostar, I enjoyed hanging out with the friends I made, and suddenly I got off from a shitty bus ride and arrived in a super crowded, touristy city, it wasn't very friendly (I had locals push in front of me several times in queues), it was too hot to really do any exploring, and I struggled to find any hostels to stay in that didn't describe themselves as a 'party' hostel. I settled on the complete opposite of a party hostel, and ended up regretting that decision a little bit - it was tiny, hosting only 6 people, none of whom I saw in my 3 night stay there.
I spent my time wandering round the old town, annoyingly by this point I wasn't appreciative of it and was angry at myself for not being more excited to be there. I think if I had been in a better mood I would have loved it, but by this point it was 'just another old town' to me and I was annoyed at myself for being so ungrateful at being there - anyone else experienced this whilst travelling?! But, as I said in my instagram post - don't let my negative nancying put you off, it is a beautiful city! However, as with Croatia - I wouldn't recommend travelling there in the height of season. It was very busy and I got the feeling some of the locals were frustrated at the tourists. On the day I left, HUGE cruise ship moored in the harbour and it looked ridiculous - it was larger than pretty much all the buildings in Kotor and it was so ugly and ruined the views.
On one of the days, I went on a speedboat tour of the area, which turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. Being a tour, I expected some commentary from the boat driver, but he said nothing the entire time unless I asked him a question. He would slow down for us to look at rock formations or random islands but not say what they were or why we were slowing down. However, it was undeniably beautiful, and I wish I had a GoPro when we stopped off at the Blue Lagoon for a swim - the water was luminous, it was quite incredible!
Kotor is also known for its stray cats, there's a myth that because of the amount of the stray cats it prevented the plague from reaching the city because the cats killed all the rats, but I don't know how true it is!! It is crazy how many cats there are though (and no dogs!) - one night I walked up to the city walls via a free back route which zigzags up the hillside behind the town, and found a cat halfway up, purring away. They have a cat museum too which I visited as it was super cheap to get in, but I don't really think it's worth the visit, it's 3 rooms with old magazine covers and cartoons of cats displayed. I spent 5 minutes looking at the exhibition and 20 minutes playing with the 2 adorable kittens they had in there.
Ugh I feel bad, I don't want to write negatively about the place, but my heart just really wasn't in it - I have heard LOADS of good reviews about it though so don't take my word for it!
I was SO glad I went. I originally booked 2 nights and ended up staying another as I love it so much. It was hard picking a hostel to stay in because they all had such good reviews (not a bad problem to have!) so I went for the cheapest, Hostel Lovely Home at 8 euros a night. It was basic but the owner was so friendly, happily answered all my questions, booked me onto a tour, exchanged my money and gave me a delicious glass of juice when I arrived. He didn't have space for me for the extra night, so I moved to Hostel Musafa for my last night, 12 euros and slightly further away from the Old Town but it had a really nice outdoor area. I made friends with a guy who was travelling Europe on a motorbike called Rohan, and he met me after my first Old Town exploration for dinner and drinks watching live music by the river - not a bad first night in town!
The tour I booked was the standard tour all hostels seem to offer in Mostar - 35 Euros for a day trip to Blacaj to see a Dervish House, Pocitelj to see the fortress, and Kravica Falls for a swim and lunch. But - as much as I like to support local business, you could book for 20 Euros in the centre of own with the tourist company and it was exactly the same tour...so if you're wanting to save a buck or two, do that instead!! The tour was O-K, nothing spectacular, and Kravica Falls whilst beautiful were SUPER busy and a bit commercialised, on the river front is a big restaurant selling unspectacular food. But the best bit was I met some really awesome girls from Denmark who became my Mostar friends - Jensia and Ida, and Yuchen who lives on the Isle of Man and who I ended up bumping into in Kotor a few days later. I later met up with the girls for dinner, and hung out with them the following day. We went to the Genocide Museum, which is well worth a stop. It is very inexpensive and you'll spend around 2 hours in there - it is very...confronting....and moving, and we left wondering how humans can be so cruel to each other.
Mostar is very raw - if you're only staying in the Old Town you probably won't notice it so much, but if you wander to the outskirts you'll spot crumbling, bullet riddled buildings and a variety of graffiti. It's a strange juxtaposition to the quaintness of the Old Town. I also went to a war photography exhibition which gave me much more of an appreciation of how much of the Old Town has been rebuilt - Stari Most, Mostar's famous bridge was only rebuilt in 2004, having been blown up in 1993 by Croat paramilitary forces during the war. If buildings could talk, they've seen a hell of a lot.
It's only a small Old Town, but it is really lovely - the (slippery!!) cobbled streets are lined with stalls selling beautiful Ottoman style trinkets and nicknacks, I could have spent a fortune. There are street cats and dogs on every corner, gelato stalls, and the views to the bridge are like something in a fairy tale.
My top tips would be to wear sensible footwear!! The streets are slippery - especially the bridge, so don't wear flipflops as you'll be slipping all over the place, especially if it's raining. If you want to take photos of the bridge, you'd best get up early - it gets very crowded from 9am onwards and in high season sometimes there's a bit of a queue to walk across due to people wanting to take selfies. If you want to get internet points, talk to the pros about jumping off the bridge. From memory it costs 35 euros and they take you to a slightly lower diving platform a little upstream to make sure you know what you're doing before they allow you to jump from the bridge itself. Mostar could be explored in a day, but I would recommend spending at least 2 full days here if you're wanting to explore a bit further afield too.
The bus to Kotor was delayed by 30 or so minutes, which is always a bit stressful when you're in a different country and don't know the language or who to ask - but I trusted in the process and assumed it would come eventually! It was a pretty miserable journey, the AC didn't work - turning the bus into a sauna, and we got stuck in a lot of traffic so it took much longer than it should have done. I was excited to see Kotor as from other blog pictures I have seen it looked beautiful, but I was sorely disappointed.
I think a lot of it was to do with my mindset - I felt quite at home in Mostar, I enjoyed hanging out with the friends I made, and suddenly I got off from a shitty bus ride and arrived in a super crowded, touristy city, it wasn't very friendly (I had locals push in front of me several times in queues), it was too hot to really do any exploring, and I struggled to find any hostels to stay in that didn't describe themselves as a 'party' hostel. I settled on the complete opposite of a party hostel, and ended up regretting that decision a little bit - it was tiny, hosting only 6 people, none of whom I saw in my 3 night stay there.
I spent my time wandering round the old town, annoyingly by this point I wasn't appreciative of it and was angry at myself for not being more excited to be there. I think if I had been in a better mood I would have loved it, but by this point it was 'just another old town' to me and I was annoyed at myself for being so ungrateful at being there - anyone else experienced this whilst travelling?! But, as I said in my instagram post - don't let my negative nancying put you off, it is a beautiful city! However, as with Croatia - I wouldn't recommend travelling there in the height of season. It was very busy and I got the feeling some of the locals were frustrated at the tourists. On the day I left, HUGE cruise ship moored in the harbour and it looked ridiculous - it was larger than pretty much all the buildings in Kotor and it was so ugly and ruined the views.
On one of the days, I went on a speedboat tour of the area, which turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. Being a tour, I expected some commentary from the boat driver, but he said nothing the entire time unless I asked him a question. He would slow down for us to look at rock formations or random islands but not say what they were or why we were slowing down. However, it was undeniably beautiful, and I wish I had a GoPro when we stopped off at the Blue Lagoon for a swim - the water was luminous, it was quite incredible!
Kotor is also known for its stray cats, there's a myth that because of the amount of the stray cats it prevented the plague from reaching the city because the cats killed all the rats, but I don't know how true it is!! It is crazy how many cats there are though (and no dogs!) - one night I walked up to the city walls via a free back route which zigzags up the hillside behind the town, and found a cat halfway up, purring away. They have a cat museum too which I visited as it was super cheap to get in, but I don't really think it's worth the visit, it's 3 rooms with old magazine covers and cartoons of cats displayed. I spent 5 minutes looking at the exhibition and 20 minutes playing with the 2 adorable kittens they had in there.
Ugh I feel bad, I don't want to write negatively about the place, but my heart just really wasn't in it - I have heard LOADS of good reviews about it though so don't take my word for it!
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