Bosnia and Herzegovina :blessed By Mother Nature

Bosnia and Herzegovina :blessed By Mother Nature

We planned to go to Bosnia and Herzegovina for the EID Holidays  this year. In Bahrain, we get 3 working days leave for Eid and so this is a nice time for short 5-7 days vacation .

As we were checking the flights, very few airlines were flying to Bosnia from Bahrain.

Pegasus airlines, Turkish Airlines and   flydubai were our options.

We booked  our tickets with Pegasus.

Accommodation : we booked Hotel Hills from Booking.com .

This hotel was  5* and there were very good reviews  about the hotel and the thermal spa in the hotel.

Visa for  residents  of Bahrain is on arrival , provided they have Schengen or US Visa. This Visa is free of cost and is just a stamp on the passport.

Next was the itinerary planning. After my usual research  on few itineraries online and also places to visit in Bosnia, I made a list of must see places.

I also enquired with many travel agencies  both through email and also through Instagram  messages. Very few of them replied  and out of that there was this person by Instagram page travel_in_bosnia who replied  very promptly  and explained  and gave us 2 itineraries to decide on.

We selected the first itinerary as it covered almost all important places and also it was returning back to Sarajevo everyday and so we  could stay in the same hotel for the whole trip.

We also discussed on the prices and  inclusions and exclusions.

Day 1 :

We  reached Bosnia after a 4 hr long stopover in Istanbul.

We were greeted by our travel Agent Mr.Muneer and  were dropped off at the hotel.

The hotel room was quite big with a spacious balcony and nice seating area. There were many big size mirrors  and  hot water . Very good housekeeping  and  we enjoyed the stay in the room. We could watch flights take off and land  from the balcony.

We  ate some packed tidbits and slept for sometime. Then we requested Mr.Muneer to  take us to Bascarsija the Old Town in Sarajevo to scroll around .  We walked around Bascarsija clicked few pics near Sebilj, eternal flames,16^th century Mosque , Cathedral and walked back. We were also given 2 simcards  for local use, but we only used one  .Since Mr.Muneer  fasts for Ramadan, we planned to go for dinner  later near the hotel.

Just few meters away from the hotel Hills is Grand Centar Ilidza .This is a mall and there was a restaurant by name Only One Sarajevo. There is  Mercator which is a supermarket chain  .Also there is an exchange there where we could changed EUROS to KM Bosnian convertible mark. We went to the supermarket almost everyday either to eat or exchange money or to buy water.

We were told similar to all countries in Europe we could drink water directly from the tap as  it is natural spring water.

We went to the restaurant Only One and had the only vegetarian items on the menu like Veg Pizza, Hot chocolate and French fries.