We are back in Croatia after after having spent 16 days traveling in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In this post, we’ll share some of the things to do and see in Bosnia and Herzegovina with kids, including both on and off the main tourist track.

Bosnia is a beautiful country. The geography is quite dramatic, the history is very rich, and the people are incredibly friendly. In fact, Bosnia makes the top-five list of the places we’ve visited with the most family/kid-friendly people. The Bosnian people welcomed us with open arms and gave our kids nothing by smiles. That being said, it’s also a country that went through the hardships of war not so long ago. All of the places we visited still have the scars left by the war of the early 1990s. Everywhere we visited, we saw bullet holes on building walls, mortar impact holes, and buildings that had been hit by bombs. We were inspired, however, to see how people have turned the scars of war into art, as shown by the roses of Sarajevo (red paint used to fill mortar holes) or by graffiti painted around bullet holes.

Mostar

Our first stop in Bosnia was the city of Mostar. Mostar is best know for its gorgeous old bridge, the “Stari Most.” The bridge was originally built in the 16th century by the Ottoman Empire, and was destroyed on November 9th, 1993 during the civil war. After the war, an international coalition began reconstruction of the bridge. They rebuilt the new bridge as similar as possible to the original one using 16th-century techniques. In mid-July 2004, the bridge opened again, and is now one of Bosnia’s most recognizable landmarks and a UNESCO site.

Most people visit Mostar on a day-trip, but we are very glad we spent two full days exploring this city.

These are some of the things we did during our time in Mostar:

• The Bridge: There are different ways to enjoy Stari Most. You can walk on the bridge and enjoy the bazaars on each side of it (do not bring a stroller or you’ll end up having to carry it because the cobblestones are quite rough!). To get a panoramic view of the bridge and the town, you can pay a small fee to go up the minaret of the Koski Mehmed Pasha Mosque. Also, the Caffe Terasa Šećerlook offers an amazing view of the bridge along with great service and tasty coffee.

• At the Mostar Bridge we also saw locals who belong to the Mostar Divers Club jump and dive into the Neretva River following centuries-old tradition of taking a 27-meter dive from Mostar’s Old Bridge into the cold river. The collect donations until the crowd pays enough, and then someone jumps from the top of the bridge. It’s quite dramatic to watch!

• We spent some time at Park Zrinjevac. The park has a big green space and a playground. The playground is not in great shape but it works well enough to keep the kids happy for some time. There is also a statue of Bruce Lee in the park.

• Nearby the park there is an old abandoned bank building that was used as a sniper tower during the 1993 war. The tower is now covered in graffiti and the bullet holes have been used as part of artistic compositions. The kids really enjoyed visiting this site.

• We visited the nearby town of Blagaj. This town is where the turquoise Buda River begins with a spring that gushes out of a cliff-cave, right next to the Blagaj Tekija (monastery). The spring dumps out 43,000 liters per second of crystal clear water, which makes it one of the largest (maybe the largest) spring in Europe. We took a boat into the small cave where the spring originates and it was neat to see the color of the water and hear the explanation about water levels and the history of the area. The boat, which is more like a raft, is operated by holding on to a rope that runs from the dock into the cave, which avoids polluting this water source.

Sarajevo

After a two-and-a-half hour drive, we arrived to Sarajevo. We enjoyed our stay in this city and, the more time we spent there, the more we liked it. There are a lot of things to do in Sarajevo with kids and we didn’t even get to do all of them because, as we were entering the last couple of weeks of our road trip through Europe, we’ve started to prioritize a bit more down time, homemade meals, and relaxing evenings. That being said, we still got to do and see a lot while we were there!

Here are some things to see and do with kids in Sarajevo that we found super fun:

• On our first day we visited the Sarajevo City Center Mall as it was only a 15-minute walk downhill from our apartment. We found a Mexican restaurant place and, like good Californians, we raced to it! It was decent, but it tasted great because it’d been so long since we last ate a burrito! At the SCC Mall we found an amazing indoor play space for kids called PlayLand that had lots of coin-operated rides, a modeling clay station, and a great jungle gym space for kids aged three and older that included swings, a giant slide, trampolines, a ball pit and even a zip line!  They also have coin-operated massage chairs for parents!

• We visited the Old Town a couple of times. The historic center is a fun pedestrianized area to wander around, get a cup of Bosnian coffee (basically the same thing as Turkish coffee), and enjoy some sweet treats. We started our walk at the main square and checked out the Sebilj, an Ottoman-style wooden fountain in the center of the square built in 1753. Afterwards, we made our way down to the pedestrian area where there are lots of historic buildings, stores and restaurants. Along the way, we stopped at the exact place where the assassination of Austro-Hungarian prince, Franz Ferdinand happened, triggering the start of WWI (kind of a nerdy fact but quite interesting!).

• We went back to the main square early one day to chase pigeons. The first time we were there, there were lots of people so it was difficult to let the kids run around and chase the pigeons. When we got there early in the morning, we were the only ones and the kids had a blast chasing the pigeons around. After some hearty chasing, we found a store by the square that sold bird seed and we feed the birds before chasing them again!

• We rode the trams, which is something we like doing in every city we visit. Our kids love riding public transit! Fun fact: The Sarajevo trams pre-date the war and are some of the oldest in Europe. Apparently, they were used as models for testing the ones in Vienna.

• We visited the market in the city center. There’s an indoor hall full of meats (including delicious cured meats) and cheeses. On the street behind the meat market there is also a large fruit and vegetable market (just step out onto the backstreet, cross the street and turn right to find it). Vendors are super friendly to children in both markets and they gave our kids free samples of cheeses, meats, fruits, and nuts! This was a great place to get all the fresh ingredients we needed to be able to make some healthy meals at home!

• A highlight from our time in Sarajevo was visiting the bobsled track from the 1984 Winter Olympics. The track is about a 15-minute drive from the city center and it’s open to the public to walk on and explore. Our kids loved running on it, making some cool jumps off the curved walls, and admiring the cool graffiti that covers most of the track. On our way back to Sarajevo, we stopped at the Hotel Nature for a cup of coffee and to use their fun playground.

• During our time in Sarajevo, we learned about the Roses of Sarajevo. A Sarajevo Rose is a concrete scar left by a mortar shell’s explosion that was later filled with red resin. The way mortars land on concrete creates a unique pattern that looks almost like a floral arrangement. After posting a photo of one of the roses on Instagram, I learned that you are not supposed to step on them as a sign of respect. We explained to the kids what the roses were and they liked finding them in the streets. It’s a very unique way of turning a symbol of war and suffering into art.

• On our last morning in Sarajevo we visited Sunnyland, Bosnia’s first amusement park with an alpine coaster. The park is located on the Olympic Mountain Trebevic, only a five-minute drive up the mountain from Sarajevo. In addition to the alpine coaster, the park also has an outdoor playground/advengture course for kids 5 years and older, and an indoor playground with trampolines, scooters, slides, ball pits and some coin-operated rides. There are also a couple of cafes/restaurants and, once again, massage chairs for parents. Bosnians really seem to know how to do play spaces for kids! We had a blast for a good three hours or so there and the kids left completely wiped.

 

Jajce

Our final stay in Bosnia was in the small town of Jajce. A friend from college who is from Bosnia had mentioned to me a while ago that we could use her summer house if we ever visited Bosnia. Once we decided to visit Sarajevo, I contacted her and she very generously let us stay in her home for a week!

Jajce was a welcome break from big city sightseeing! It is a picturesque town at the confluence of two rivers with a medieval fortress and a large waterfall in front of the town. My friend’s home was perfect for our family. We were able to bake muffins there, play with the toys that were at the house, and cozy up with a fire. Our time there flew by!

These are some of the things we saw and did while in Jajce:

• We walked up to the fortress on top of the hill on which the town is built. This was the last fortress of the Bosnian kings and apparently the last place in Bosnia to fall to the Ottoman Empire. The space was super fun for the kids to play in, and the views of the town and the surrounding mountains were breathtaking. The walk up to the fortress was easy enough that Valentina did it mostly on her own. Half way down from the fortress we stopped to see some small but interesting catacombs hued out of pure rock and the nearby Bear Tower (a large round medieval tower).

• We took the scooters to the riverside walk by the old town. When the kids couldn’t ride their scooters because of the terrain, they ran around in the leaf piles and enjoyed looking at the river and the smaller waterfalls leading up to the big waterfall.

• On a sunny day, we went to town and crossed the small pedestrian bridge over the river to go see the Pliva Waterfalls. You can take a look at the falls from one of the overlooks on the side of the road, or you can take a path down to the river and walk right up to them. There is a small entrance fee (about 2 Euros) but it’s totally worth it. Regardless of the weather, be ready to get wet by the mist put out by the 22-meter high waterfalls!

• About a 5-minute walk from our house there was a boardwalk that crossed over a series of waterfalls on the river. This was our go-to place for a quick but super fun outing. The kids loved throwing dry leaves onto the falls and seeing them sail away on the river.

• On our last day we visited the Old Watermills, a collection of about twenty little houses that were once used as watermills by local farmers. Most of the huts go back to Austro-Hungarian times and they are no longer in use for actual milling but have become a big tourist attraction in the area. We walked all around the mills and loved looking at the tiny doors on the tiny houses, waiting for a gnome or a troll to come out!

After Jajce we spent a night in the border town of Bihac. We only went out to get dinner at a cute riverside restaurant and left very early the next morning to get to Plitvice Lakes in Croatia. When we arrived to Bihac, we noticed many large groups of mostly men hanging around the river and moving around town. While there, we learned that Bihac is experiencing a very difficult situation right now due to the flow of migrants mostly from the Middle East. Basically, the current migration route is traveling through Bosnia, since Greece and other countries have been closing their borders. However, Croatia (the next country to the west) has closed its border to migrants. Bihac is a border town in the corner of Bosnia, and migrants and refugees (from Pakistan, Syria, Iraq, and other countries) are starting to pile up there because they aren’t being let into Croatia. They just want to be able to move west, but Croatia isn’t letting them in and the EU and Bosnia don’t really know what to do with them. The day we arrived, the refugees protested peacefully at the Croatian border to try and draw attention to their plight. And, that same day, the local police commissioner stopped allowing migrants into Bihac by turning them around on trains and taking them off buses and sending them back to Sarajevo (we actually drove past a group of people being detained on the side of the road by a large amount of police). It’s a very sad and difficult humanitarian situation. We crossed the border the next day with absolutely no problem and it’s just because we happened to be born in a different country than the thousands of people stuck sleeping outside in the cold autumn weather whose homelands are no longer safe for them. We will continue to read news about Bihac and we will hope for the best for the migrants, refugees, and the residents of Bihac!