Hello Sarajevo!

It’s only 300km from our hotel in Belgrade to our hotel in Sarajevo, but there is no easy train journey, so we are flying!

Thankfully it wasn’t an early flight, raspberry liqueur is lethal! We woke up at 9am, had a leisurely breakfast and wandered over to the Courtyard by Marriott for our taxi to the airport. I wasn’t expecting much, but a very well dressed driver in a very nice car picked us up. The journey to the airport was roughly 20 minutes so we had plenty of time, although Air Serbia did advise being at the airport at least 3 hours before the flight.

We check-in then headed to departures; a bit of advice if you ever go to Belgrade, pay for fast track, it will be worth it! It took us an hour to drop our cases, go through passport control and clear the baggage check. There was a small restaurant near to our gate so we bought a couple of cokes and settled ourselves down for an hour or so.

The flight was delayed a little, we are not sure why, but we were definitely missing people as the bus was waiting to take us to the plane for at least another 10 minutes. They eventually closed the doors and we got on our way; we even had to stop so a plane could get past our little bus which seemed to be driving around the whole airport and of course, it was another propeller plane. We all got on and we were in the air within 10 minutes. 

The pilot told us the flight was 45 minutes, but I am sure we went up to 30,000 feet and came straight back down again; plus the more annoying thing was that we only got one biscuit instead of two! We arrived 30 minutes late, but we got through security and collected our luggage in 10 minutes as the airport is tiny.

The driver picked us up and drove us 15 minutes to the Hotel Colors Inn, which is not far from the centres pedestrian area. The journey was pretty dull, but I could see lots of homes with bullet holes from the war last century. We checked into the hotel, and on arrival in our room, a lovely note and a packet of biscuits had been left; I’m sure they wont last long.



We had no plans for today, so decided to go for a wander. We found the Sarajevo Eternal Flame memorial which is at the bottom of the pedestrian street where there are shops, restaurants and the market. The Eternal Flame is a memorial to he military and civilian victims of WW2.


We walked for a bit, before deciding on a restaurant for dinner. Just to note, no restaurants serve alcohol due to the large Muslim  population here. There are lots of other bars, but they are only bars and quite separate. Iain had a Chicken kebab and and ice coffee while I had a beef salad and a coke, out of a wine glass I might add! The food was good, but now it as time for a beer.




We ended up in a coupe of places, the first was an Aperol bar, although it did serve other drinks and the second was called Thriller. We sat outside Thriller which looked onto the Sacred Heart Cathedral, it had loads of tables outside, but it was actually a cellar bar. I had to go to the toilet, and rather than have Male and Female or Pictures, one door had “Bla” once and the other had “Bla” all over the door; I’m sure you can guess which one was which!




After paying up (£5.20 for a large beer and an Aperol Spritz), we walked back to the hotel to call it a night; although it seems like everyone in the Balkans is doing the opposite to us and the party is just getting started, with or without alcohol!






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