BALKAN ROAD TRIP
Last month I took a road-trip with friends across the western Balkans. While I am in Europe I am trying to squeeze in as much travel as possible. The initial plan was to go to Bosnia and Herzegovina for rafting, but we decided to make it a little road-trip with multiple stops along the way. Total lenght of the trip was 5 days and we visited 5 countries, not bad at all. So in this post I will share the itinerary we had from our western Balkan road-trip.
Day 1: We departed from Skopje, Macedonia in the morning and headed towards Foča, BiH (where our rafting camp was). Along the way we stopped at Drvengrad a small village built by the movie director Emir Kosturica for his movie “Life is a miracle”. Short walk around Drvengrad and few photos later we passed the border into Bosnia and Herzegovina. The first stop we made in BiH was in Visegrad- the childhood place of Nobel literature prize winner Ivo Andrič. In Visegrad is also the famous bridge that he used in the book for which he won the Nobel literature prize “Bridge on the Drina”. The city is really cute, we took a stroll around the center before driving to our rafting camp Centar Drina Tara. We arrived at the rafting camp in the evening just in time for dinner and rest before our rafting adventures.
Day 2: woke up in the beautiful wooden houses and had breakfast before getting ready and leaving for our rafting adventure. I wrote in detail about my rafting experience on Canyon Tara in this blog post. The second day was spent in rafting, afternoon relaxation and dinner in the camping center.
Day 3: We checked out from the rafting camp and continued our road trip to Mostar, a 3 hour drive through beautiful landscapes. Although the roads are small and with turns it was worth it once we arrived in Mostar. We took a little detour to Blagaj Monastery (20minutes before Mostar), where we saw the monastery and the springs. After which we departed for our hotel in Mostar. We had lunch at the traditional restaurant Šadrvan in the old town of Mostar, followed by walking around the old town, souvenier shopping, seeing the famous Stari Most and having a drink in a cafe with a view of the Stari Most. You ca read my full Mostar travel guide here.
Day 4: Early morning walk through Mostar before driving out to Kravica Waterfalls. We didn’t expect a lot from the waterfalls but boy were we surprised by the beauty of it. Short walk down to the waterfalls and enjoying the beautiful nature before we started our drive to Dubrovnik, Croatia. We arrived in Dubrovnik just in time for lunch, after spending good 30 minutes looking for parking (prepare for overpriced parking in the center of Dubrovnik). We took a walk through the Old Town and got transported to Mediveal times. We sat down for some fresh seafood at Bistro Tavulin. After lunch we did a bit more walking and discovered an ice-cream shop that had very unique flavours, the place is called Aroma. As the sun was setting we departed for Tivat, Montenegro. Arrived there in the evening we were too tired to do anything so we called it a night.
Day 5: Our last day was rainy and gloomy so it mixed up our plans. We had a quick breakfast at Porto Montenegro before heading for a short stroll in Kotor. Kotor was charming despite the rain, went around the old town and the narrow alleyways had a quick coffee and decided to call it a day since we were soaked. Our last stop before heading back in Skopje was the agro tourism restaurant Mrizi and Zanave in Albania. We had the most delicious dinner, everything that we ate was from farm to table it was superb!
