Had a lazy morning before heading south out of Zadar.
For the first time we had a lot of rain and so we decided to just bypass the city of Split. By all accounts it's a beautiful place but it's also the #1 tourist destination in Croatia.
Even though we missed Split, by midday it put us into one of my absolute favorite places in all the world - Mostar, Bosnia. The area in Mostar around the Stari Most (Old Bridge) has a feeling of walking into a living Thomas Kincaid painting. The emerald water, the quaint buildings and the 500 year old bridge create a surreal atmosphere which I haven't felt anywhere else in all my travels. Stari Most is a 16th-century Ottoman bridge that crosses the river Neretva and connects the two parts of the city. It stood for 427 years, until it was destroyed in 1993 by the Croatian military during the Bosnian War. Most historians say the bridge carried no strategic importance and that its shelling was simply an example of deliberate cultural destruction. In fact, even though he publically disgreed with this conclusion, the Croat general who had the bridge destroyed later committed suicide by drinking poison after being convicted of war crimes.
Side note - on my first visit here in 1999 I had an American missionary, who had stayed in country throughout the war, tell me more people came to Jesus after the destruction of the bridge then at any other time in his 10 years in Bosnia. They just couldn't believe they had reached a point as a people where they would destroy their own national treasures. He likened it to Americans blowing up Mt. Rushmore.
Thankfully, the bridge was rebuilt in 2004 with the same style and process of the original construction.
We stayed the night in a small hotel which was actually just a few rooms in the home of a local family. Very friendly folks, father is Muslim and the mother is Catholic but they were married long before the war and their family has survived. They told us they were very thankful the tension and problems are in the past.
Mostar.
I.Love.This.Place.