Sarajevo’s a fab city. The old town is beautiful, the East meets West influence means the food is great and I overdid the very nice Bosnian coffee to the point of a bout of gastritis.
It’s a great place to just wander about as there’s so much modern history associated with it everywhere you go - like they’ve filled mortar shell cracks in the pavements with red resin called Sarajevo Roses. We stayed outside the centre and had to get a taxi in and out each day. Traveling freely up and down sniper alley and past the Holiday Inn where journalists holed up during the war is surreal, and quite haunting.
It was about 15 years ago when we went, but I’d describe the museums as endearingly rubbish. The Sarajevo Museum is by the spot where Gavrilo Princip shot Franz Ferdinand and the place to go if you want to see a real life replica of the gun used. I think the National Museum of Bosnia & Herzegovina was the other we went to and it was a sleepy, dusty, badly lit set of exhibitions. Both were enjoyable, but the spaces were the artifacts as much as the exhibits! Maybe they’ve been updated since.
There was an excellent restaurant called To Be Or Not To Be with the Not To Be bit crossed out. It stayed open a through the war and the premise was that Not To Be just wasn’t an option. Don’t know if it’s still open, but for me it summed up the history and spirit of Sarajevo.