Today's blog is a twofer--combining two days worth of touring into one.

The day after our food tour, we drove ourselves into the city and parked at this huge mall that's right on the edge of the pedestrian area. Parking costs about $0.75 an hour, so very reasonable. We wandered all over the old Town area, stopping to visit sights we'd seen the day before with our guide. It's not that large of an area, and is pretty easy to navigate. They have a city bus tour that we decided to take--it's the type where they have a narrator and you stay on the bus the entire time.

We went all over the city, visited the old Olympic stadium (the Winter Olympics were held here in 1982), and to the top of the opposite mountain, all within an hour. A lot of the destroyed buildings have been repaired, but a lot still remain with bullet holes in them.

There's a small museum that takes you through the days of terror--the war lasted from 1992-1995, a long time to live like they did. I watched a video that gave you a glimpse of what life was like, showing actual footage--it was horrible what these people went through.

Rich found a tour that we signed up for and went on yesterday. A guide picked us up at the apartment and drove us into the city. We met up with 4 other Americans, and away we went. Ervin, our guide, took us all over the city. He explained the history and different places that we saw along the way.

One stop was to visit a tunnel that the Bosnians had dug that went from a house in a suburb, under the airport, and came out on the other side in the city. This enabled the people to leave the city, to smuggle in goods, weapons, food, etc. Only a small section of the tunnel is open to the public, but we got to go in. They would actually have a rail car with a seat that they used, so you wouldn't have to stoop over and walk.

We visited two of the Olympic sights--the ski jump, and the bobsled track. They've turned both into tourist attractions. The graffiti artists have done a number on the bobsled track, though.

We also visited this former luxury hotel that hosted the officials for the Olympics. It was destroyed during the Bosnian/Serbian war. Ervin showed us pictures of what it had looked like--such a shame. It's now just a pile of rubble and concrete. See photos.

As we were returning to the city, it started to rain. Rich and I decided to try the one and only Mexican food place in Old Town that we'd heard about, so we got dropped off there. So how was it? Let's just say they don't sell margaritas--that should be a BIG clue.

We ordered the fajitas with veggies, thinking onions and peppers. Nope--meat was on a skewer, with lots of eggplant, zucchini, red peppers, onion and I'm not sure what all else. The nachos we got were chili flavored pita chips, not tortilla chips. The only thing that vaguely resembled Mexican food was the flour tortilla. :) Oh well--I had low expectations and they were met. LOL

We had a hotel receptionist next to the restaurant call a cab for us and got home just in time for it to start pouring rain.