A little of the gloom lifts

We ventured into Sarajevo Old Town by tram this morning after a rather poor nights sleep as possibly signalled in yesterday's blog.

You are unlikely to sleep well when your accommodation is right beside a roadway which is used by the locals as their raceway and on the outside of the road is a rail line!

Anyway beggars can't be choosers and we have to endure the same again tonight.

The tram drops one at the far end of the old town where it changes to residential as the houses start to rise on the hillside - Sarajevo sits in a valley surrounded by hills on all sides.

You may recall that the 1984 Winter Olympics were held here so that indicates that in winter there is plenty of activity on the hills.

One of the first things we did was walk up the hill to the White Fortress to get a view out over the city


I didn't take any still shots but did take a video and will post that if I can work out how to - this is the fortress as seen from down by the river (with magnification quite high)


This is looking back up to the hills from the Old town.

From the fortress one could see 6 cemeteries in the view another stark reminder of


the conflict. In fact right beside our accommodation is another cemetery.


At the top end of the Old Town is Pigeon Square where the pigeons are so well


feed there is excess feed sitting on the ground.

In the square is a monument known as Sebilj and off to the sides are alleyways





where silver work, rugs & other fabric products are prominently displayed.






We got talking to a silversmith who is working out of the same shop that his


grandfather started in 1948. It passed to his father and now to he and his brother.


Other sights were the clock tower and the Gazi Husrev-begova market place





Further along there is the Cathedral and the Gazi Husrev-begova mosque which





was in good use later in the day.


The City Hall by the river was rather impressive but no more so than the


Serbian Old Orthodox Church - the waiter in Novi Sad emphasised that their (the


Serbian's) Church was in the middle of the Muslim dominated Sarajevo and we





gathered that this was a point of contention!



From the placard outside it indicates that there has been a church on this site since the 5th or 6th century - if only we had this sort of history back home!

And so we completed another city in our travels, done in a temperature of 35C and we can look forward at least to that temperature again over the next three days when we are in Dubrovnik.