Mostar

On Sunday, 27 July my family and I were in beautiful city Mostar. It is beautiful historic city in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is the biggest and the most important city in Herzegovina and the centre of the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton of the Federation.
Mostar is well known for its Old Bridge (Stari Most), after which it is named. The Old Bridge is situated in the old town of Mostar and it connects the riverbanks of emerald green Neretva River.
Diving off the Old Bridge (25 metres down into the rushing cold waters) is the popular extreme sport that is traditionally held every summer in this city. There were 61 competitors this year. 29 of them jumped on their feet and 32 competitors jumped on their head. There was no way I could capture anybody while was falling down but these photos could show you a little bit of the atmosphere itself that was there.
Please click on the photos to see more details.



This is one of the streets in old town. In the left top corner of this photo you can see a café called “Terasa” (Terrace) from which I took many nice photos. It is beautiful view from the top of it.

Under the Bridge

If you enlarge the photo above you can see a jumper just in the moment when he took himself off.

Vranduk Museum

Let’s see something of the interior of this ethnological museum.

Vranduk fortress

This time I would like to show you medieval Vranduk fortress where I spent wonderful time with my husband and my younger son on Saturday.
This is one of the cultural-historical treasures of Bosnian history. Little is known about the fortress and how far back its history goes but they say that this place was mentioned for the first time in 14 century. In Bosnian literature Vranduk is also mentioned as a prisoner for the most dangerous political rebels against Ottoman Empire. It also was written that this place was temporary used by Bosnian kings. Through its entire history Vranduk was connected by political, military and economic interests. If only the old walls of Vranduk fortress could talk but they are in silence and hide its secrets. The more mysterious this place is the more attractive it is.
Within the stone walls of this fortress there is an ethnological museum today. This place offers the visitors chance to learn more about the Bosnian history and to see old things saved in the museum that testifying to the past life style and customs of this area. Those photos I’ll show you tomorrow because I am afraid that again I have posted too many for today.

Nišićka visoravan

These wonderful views can be seen on the way to National Park Bijambare. This area called “Nišićka visoravan” (Nišićka plateau) where some of the heavy fighting were conducted in the past war (1992-1995). Nowadays, this attractive place is full of weekend houses because of its natural beauty and tourist potential. I took a few photos to share with my blogging friends.

No 3

No 2

Landscape No 1

In my next posts I'll send some photos of Bijambare landscapes. I hope you will like them.

Gornja Bijambarska Cave

Gornja Bijambarska Cave is the oldest cave in the Bijambare area. Its entrance lies below vertical rocks at 973 meters of elevation, and it is oriented toward southwest. It is distanced approximately 85 meters from the entrance to Srednja Bijambarska Cave, just 28 meters higher. This cave is neither a big speleological structure nor does it have the beautiful decorations which make Srednja cave so attractive. However it hides in its floor the most important records of past fauna and mankind prehistory.
During earlier explorations, different material culture finds were collected in the cave, i.e. ceramics fragments, which, based on their structure and ornaments, belong to late Bronze Age.
Within the animal fossils, one of the most representative inhabitants of the caves during the cold periods was the cave bear. This specie was more robust and bigger than the actual bear. Most of the weak and old bears died inside the caves during the hibernation period and for this reason many bones were found. The cave bear became extinct at the end of the last ice age around 10000 years ago.

Cave

This is another wonderful place which is about 40 km' away from Sarajevo. I would like to share some photos with you out there. Biambare is the name of this area where my husband and I had a wonderful time yesterday. We spent almost all day walking through the forest trails that lead among the tall firs. I enjoyed the smell of the various colourful wild flowers around many of meadows around. I’ll show some photos of it in my next post.
There are 8 caves in this area and I was excited the most when we visited one of them which is called „Srednja Bijbambarska cave“. I was delighted with the natural beauty of stalagmites and stalactites, those mineral decorations that fill ceiling, floor and wall of underground passages. It was bright sunny day with temperature around 30°C outside but the temperature in the cave was 3-5°C. My words as well as the photos cannot describe how much I really enjoyed. It was hard for me to choose which photos to post. These are only some out of many other beautiful photos that I took.
I’ll start with the narrow part that leads towards the cave.