Mostar, Trogir and Split

From Tivat, we drove to northern Croatia to attend a hub. On the way, we stopped at Mostar in Bosnia, and Trogir and Split in Croatia.

Mostar

We had so many people tell us to visit Mostar that we were really excited to check it out. It did not disappoint. This Ottoman town has a really cool old bazaar area and old town. The old bridge has an interesting history as it was blown up during the 1990s war and then rebuilt with funding from UNESCO and Saudi Arabia.

Mostar saw very heavy fighting and a siege in 1992 – 1993. A couple thousand people were killed, tens of thousands fled, and there were a few cemeteries (the photos of the one above as an example) where all the tombs were from 1993. There are still many bullet and mortar holes in building walls and a couple of different ‘sniper towers’. One of these towers had some cool graffiti artwork.

Mostar still feels like a divided city. I read several articles while I was there about how the city is still divided by the river – Bosnians on the east and Croatians on the west. They even have different curricula taught in schools. In fact, Bosnia and Herzegovina feels like a divided country in general. Part of the country is Eastern Orthodox Christian and sides with Serbia and Russia, part of the country has Croatian ethnicity and are catholics, and the rest of the country is muslim.

We really liked Mostar and wish we’d had more time to visit it.

Trogir

We stayed in a suburb between Split and Trogir so that we could visit both. We were pleasantly surprised by Trogir. We had never heard of it before, but we were so glad we went! At least half the family thought it was better than Split. It was a very cute little town on an island with narrow streets you could get lost in. Trogir was established by the Greeks in the 3rd century BC and has been inhabited ever since!

Split

This city was founded in the 3rd or 4th century AD and, like so many other Mediterranean towns, was Greek, then Roman, then Ottoman, etc. It is famous for the Roman Emperor Diocletian’s palace built around 300 AD.

Next stop is Istra, in northwestern Croatia.