Well I was meant to be sitting on my sofa waxing lyrically about this trip right now, but Ryanair were the only airline here incapable of flying in the modest amount of fog that was here. No replacement flight, and by the time we figured out what to do all the Ryanair future flights were booked until January 3rd. Hopefully getting out of here on Wizzair Sunday 
Have you checked any flight combos from Tuzla/Banja Luka?
Probably wouldnât be direct but thought Iâd ask.
Weâre looking at any option that isnât prohibitively expensive, especially as todayâs Wizzair flight is also delayed by fog (diverted to Banja Luka, actually). At the moment the least-worst backup option is taking an 8 hour bus to Belgrade on Monday and a cheap flight to Luton that night.
In summary I donât recommend flying here in winter.
Ooof! Rough! Good luck with whatever decision you land on!
Have you checked Dubrovnik? Think thatâs about 4 hours by coach, donât know how many flights outside of summer there are thoughâŚ
We would have needed to be on a bus to Dubrovnik right now to catch the last reasonably priced flight tomorrow.
Thank fuck that wasnât required. Luton never looked so good!
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The two subsequent Ryanair flights to Stansted (that we were too slow to rebook on) have also been cancelled. 80% of other airlinesâ flights have been fine. It now seems pretty irresponsible that they even fly this route in the winter as they are incapable of delivering the service.
OK, Iâm now ready for a proper summary of the trip. Overall it was great (weâre just going to forget about the unplanned extra 48h in airport limbo), Iâve not been to another city remotely like it. For example, hearing the muslim call to prayer in a snowstorm is probably a unique experience! And you really do feel a strong sense of the history, recent and not so recent, everywhere around town.
Food is generally very good and excellent value. We âsplurgedâ on Christmas dinner at a nice restaurant but it was only about 55 euros. But my favourite meal was probably a cevapi place right in the tourist centre, super cheap, super tasty and a fun chaotic atmosphere.
We went to 5 museums in the end, they were all very interesting but several of them were obviously a bit limited due to lack of funds. For instance the History Museum offered a discount because they didnât have the heating turned on and it was about 2 degrees inside (we did get some free hot tea). At most of them we were 5 or fewer other patrons besides us.
With a few minor exceptions people were particularly friendly. A special mention for the woman running the small art shop who insisted on giving my kids two cool postcards for free when I didnât have enough cash, and insisted again on an extra two cool postcards when I went back to give her the cash later when I did have it.
A few practical things:
¡ Money was a bit of a pain. A lot of places were cash only, but as mentioned itâs virtually impossible to get Bosnian Marks in advance. Unfortunately the cashpoints charge a 6 or 7 euro fee no matter how much you take out, so you need to carefully calculate how much cash you need to avoid repeated trips to the ATM (spoiler: we didnât do this). Probably the best option is to bring a bunch of euros and exchange them there.
¡ Totally forgot I wouldnât get free roaming as BiH is not in the EU. Many places offered free WiFi so we could look things up when we were out and about.
¡ The indoor smoking situation was nowhere near as bad as I had feared. However the days we were stuck due to fog, the pollution was pretty awful and left me feeling claustrophobic.
Additional random observation:
¡ I am 6â1â and have never been someplace with more people that were taller than me!
Gratuitous photo dump:
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Lovely photos, glad you had a good time!
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Oh man! Major FOMO with your write-up and photos!
On the roaming thing - the big phone companies all offer tourist sims for a reasonable price in their stores.
Did you have kajmak with your Äevapi?
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