Pocitelj, Bosnia & Herzegovina
Posted on July 26, 2023 • 5 minutes • 1063 words
Max and I took the bus to the airport to get the rental car and then swung back to get the rest of them. I just couldn’t handle us all loading stuff on a bus and getting all sweaty so early…and it worked out for Dan to get some school time in with the 2 older kids.
As we are starting the drive and just getting out of town, Dan asks if I want the scenic route or the highway. I didn’t love the autostrada in Italy (it felt like you were stuck on it and missing a lot of small towns) so even though it was 40minutes longer, we went for the scenic route…aka R roads.
Border crossing was uneventful and took about 5 minutes.
I had previously found a random restaurant that got great reviews at a good time on the route. As we approached it, we are quite sure it doesn’t exist. We could not find it at all and we kept driving into an area with more and more empty dilapidated buildings. We aborted the plan and decided to just stop at the next place we saw. I had to pee and we were hungry. The next ‘restaurant’ didn’t serve food. Then Dan says he found a place 4 minutes away. He takes us down a steep one lane road to god knows were and we pop out in an adorable town along a river with a citadel looming over it.
Amazing find and I am still in awe of Dan’s skill (or luck?) at finding this place. And any place with hanging plants is cool in my book.
I had to hop back in the car to get cash, but we picked out a restaurant along the river that too perfect. Our Bosnian is non-existent but we figured we could get by with pointing…the menu had pictures. As I came back with cash we tried to order by pointing, but there was some confusion as maybe they were out of something. I swore I heard “30 minutos” and then something else in Spanish and thought, “hmmm…that’s odd, I would not have thought Bosnian had any relation to Spanish”. As she continued talking and pointing I finally blurted out “Hablas Espanol?!” She responded “Si” and we continued ordering and the rest of the meal easily in Spanish. I didn’t ask, but I’m still so confused why she decided to speak Spanish to us, not Bosnian…AND what are the chances!?!? This still makes me so happy. :)
After lunch we decided to check out the small town and climb up to the tower within the citadel.
Halfway up
It was crazy cool! I honestly cannot explain how much we loved this…and maybe it was made even more special due to the fact that we stumbled upon this absolute gem by total chance.
After we walked up the zigzagged streets to the base of the tower, we climbed all the way up the tower and probably in the same way that was done for hundreds of years. We walked up the narrow steps that wrapped around the inside of the tower.
You can see the roof of this room (above), which is where we are standing when we are at the top of the tower. No rebar, fully relying on compression to stay up…as it has for so long!
And a photo of the photographer below.
100% sketch at times, but with my death grip on Max and keeping the others close, we winded our way (on all 4s at times) up around the tower to the top.
Took in the views at the top as my heart raced each time a kid wanted to get a ‘better look’ and then winded our way back down around the tower.
In addition to the tower, many walls of the citadel were still intact.
Down the town steps and got called out by Sam for going the wrong way. Not actually the wrong way, just a different way, but he totally realized it was different. I was quite amazed he figured it out as so many of the stone steps look so similar.
Seriously, the ruins of the old town were so amazing. I know I sound like a broken record, but I can’t say it enough. I’m always in awe of how these building are still standing, using methods we wouldn’t dream of using these days. And we got to explore to our heart’s content.
As we got back in the car and continued our drive, we explained the to the kids about safely standards in different countries and how that would not have happened in the States for numerous reasons. :) We were all jazzed up from Pocitelj (which we finally figured out was the name of the town) and heading to Trebinje. Again Dan asks “road that goes by a lake or M road?” So far the R road had served us well and what’s not to love about driving by a lake, so R road we took. Well, this was a different version of an R road! Single lane, so winding that I made the whole car look ahead for cars anywhere up ahead to give me a heads up. Hairpin turns and even had to back up to get by a car, but maybe just maybe it was worth it. Gorgeous views! Paralleling a river and huge lakes. I mean gorgeous!
After all the winding around the lake we popped out on a flat single lane (and when I say single lane, I mean single lane for both directions) that hung to the side of a mountain above a valley.
We saw signs with a train and a bike on it and figured out we were driving along an old railroad line that had been turned into a bike route.
Too amazing and of course Dan is now planning to come back to bike it. It seems there was some road construction that was in limbo and hard left and we were shot onto a dirt road. Some bad-mouthing R roads, which we have now dubbed ‘rural’ and lots of thumping along the dirt/rock road we finally got to a road with a center divide line. Celebrations throughout the car and 15 more minutes we turned the corner to find our home for the next 5 days; Trebinje.