The long way back...

Last week, after 2 weeks in the U.K (working and interviewing), I travelled back to Sarajevo. As I had had to cancel my original flight I was made to fly from East Midlands airport to Dubrovnik to avoid spending a ridiculous amount of money... there a dutiful Mr B would be waiting to drive me home... a further 5 hours. Seeing as we had no other choice we decided to celebrate our 1st anniversary, a week late, with a day by the sea.

After a few glasses of wine with Miss M and Winner of the Bosnian Big Brother last year, I set off on an overnight coach from Manchester, via EVERYWHERE, to East Midlands airport. At one point I looked up to see dawn breaking behind the twisted spire of Chesterfield, my seemingly spiritual and professional home. Wish I had taken a picture.

The airport was packed at 5am with thousands of Ryan Air, Easy Jet, and Thomson travellers off to their various cheap destinations. At one point I actually heard "Dubrovnik?! Now, that's a funny destination isn't it?! Who wants to go there?!" I believe they were on their merry way to Costa del Blackpool, which explains it.

Mlini

Then the plane nearly crashed on arrival at Dubrovnik... true story. Maybe a tad exaggerated, but who am I to say... All of us passengers certainly felt like it was a close call. The wind was ridiculous flying into Dubrovnik airport and it was a very bumpy and speedy descent. As we were about to touch the ground I knew we were going too fast and the lady next to me, more or less, got into the crash position as demonstrated by the laminated cards. As we landed one wheel lifted and threw the plane a good 35 degrees, where everyone let out a little scream and finally it righted itself... guess we were all waiting for the wing to catch the runway. Needless to say everyone was a little wide eyed and panicked getting off that particular BMI Baby.

The view from the Croatian/Bosnian border

However, the sun was shining and Dubrovnik was beautiful. Mr B and I drove to a small place called Mlini, near Dubrovnik, just spotted it from the road and drove to it, and settled there for half a day. We swam in the crystal blue, cold, sea and lazed in the hot sun on the pebble beaches. Bliss.

Around 3:30pm we set off back to Sarajevo, with the intention of stopping at anywhere that took our fancy on the way. One place that did was Stolac, in Bosnia. A beautiful old town, one of the oldest in Bosnia. We stopped for coffee and a walk down by the river, where I spotted ruins of a house that I would love to buy and rebuild. Just gorgeous.

Walkway across a river to the ruins in Stolac

On the road out of Stolac we stopped to look at some ancient gravestones. These were made before the Ottoman Empire took over Bosnia and Islam became the most prevalent religion of the country. The gravestones were from a time when Bosnia had its own church. I believe it's foundation was in the Christian faith, but it had broken away from Catholicism and become totally independent and not influenced by any other section of Christianity. If anyone knows more about them then let me know. I haven't even Wikipedia'd it yet... tut tut.

Gravestones of Bosnian Church

Another stop was for a late anniversary dinner in one of the lamb restaurants in Jablanica. Lamb portion for me, Pljeskavica and chips (Big hamburger) for Mr B, roast potatoes, cabbage salad, cucumber and tomato salad and two drinks all for the huge sum of £18!

House in Stolac

After one hell of a round trip Mr B got us home around 9pm where the in laws wanted to hear far more than we had the energy to say.