Are you looking for the best day trips from Sarajevo? We wrote this blog post just for you, read further and find out more!
The heart of the Balkans and the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo, has appealed to travelers for its rich, long, and unique cultural and religious diversity history.
It is where east and west converge, and both belfries and minarets intrude on the skyline. It is both a vibrant and lively city that offers the authentic experience of a Europe tour with its traditional café culture and food and with an irresistible environment that reminds you of a mini version of Istanbul.
After visiting all of the principal tourist attractions, visitors can expand their thrill by driving out of the capital for complete day trips from Sarajevo. It will unearth the incredible and serene beauty of exotic mountains and canyons, ancient Ottoman towns, unspoiled nature, and culinary experiences. Here are some of the best options for day trips from Sarajevo.
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Top 10 BEST Day Trips from Sarajevo
Mostar
Train from Sarajevo to Mostar is the best option for getting there. The town is known for its cultural diversity and is placed in the Herzegovina region. The Ottoman Stari Most or Ottoman Old Bridge is the most popular spot in this city. It splits the town into its Catholic and Muslim sides; one is a Croatian neighborhood, and the other branches the Ottoman alleys.
According to the side you go, you will sense the authentic feel of culture and lifestyle. You can also enjoy the traditional food of Bosnia on a terrace in front of the Neretva River. Getting there is fairly easy. You can take a bus from the central station of Sarajevo or a train from Mostar to Sarajevo.
The bus is available every 1-2 hours, and the journey takes around two and a half hours. The ticket costs around 8 to 10 Euros per 16 to 20 km.
Where to stay in Sarajevo? Here’s a list of amazing hotels to choose from and find great deals!
Book this unique experience: Bosnian & Yugoslav Wars Tour with Tunnel Museum
Read also: The 20 Underrated Countries in Europe to Visit on Your Next Trip!
Travnik
The most Oriental Bosnian City, Travnik, is positioned in Lasva Valley, i.e., around 90 km from Sarajevo. If you are a history lover, Travnik is well known as the birthplace of Ivo Andric. He is a famous author who won the Nobel Prize. Travnik is also diverse in Ottoman architecture. There are the 15th-century old Travnik castle, clocks, and mosques.
You can also enjoy affordable meals with ćevapčići, the best cuisine you will ever taste in Europe. For thrill and adventure seekers, you may visit the nearby Mt. Vlasic, one of the tallest Bosnian peaks and an excellent spot for hiking, skiing, and sledding. You can also take buses to get there from Sarajevo.
They are available from the bus station every hour, and the journey takes around 2 hours. The ticket costs around 7 Euros per person for 13,50 km.
Where to stay in Sarajevo? Here’s a list of amazing hotels to choose from and find great deals!
Book this unique experience: Sarajevo Grand Walking Tour
Read also: Top 18 Most Iconic Landmarks in Europe
Srebrenica Tour
Layered in the valley of two small hilly ranges meeting the steep valley, Srebrenica is a picture-perfect town. It also houses the Srebrenica genocide, the worst atrocity in town. Under General Ratko Mladic’s orders in 1995, the troops killed over 8000 Bosnian Muslims with machine guns in the UN safe zone. The small town ironically got the title of the worst massacre in Europe since the Holocaust.
You may prefer to take a bus from the central station in Sarajevo. Every day, there are two buses to hop on. You may take a bus at seven every morning and another at 4:30 in the evening. The journey takes over 3 hours to get there. The average ticket costs around 18 Euros for 35-50 km per person.
Where to stay in Sarajevo? Here’s a list of amazing hotels to choose from and find great deals!
Book this unique experience: Tour to Mostar, Blagaj, Počitelj & Kravice Falls
Read also: Europe Holidays: Top 10 Awesome Destinations for Holidays in Europe
Are you planning your travels? Here’re my top travel resources!
I’m a serial planner both in life and in travel – I have bucket lists, things to do, see, and everything. So, I always love when my life is sorted easily using tools and resources that would make my general planning a little smoother and easier. Therefore, in my many years of traveling the world, I’ve seen myself returning to these travel resources repeatedly. And here I am, sharing my tips to make your life easy and breezy so you can stress less, travel heaps, and focus on the fun part of travel!
- Booking.com – I book all my hotels through this website and don’t honestly use anything else. They always have the best prices, in my opinion.
- Airbnb – If I’m traveling long-term to one destination, I book my flats through Airbnb.
- Skyscanner – The best place to find cheap flights on flexible dates. I use this a lot to score cheap flights within Europe!
- SafetyWing – Always travel insured! Never leave your home country without one. It is worth the extra money, I promise you!
- GetYourGuide – Hands-down, the best place to find cool and unique tours if you don’t feel like winging it, and go straight to a local expert. I use this a lot in new destinations to get acquainted with the area!
- My Pretty Wild World Travel Diary (coming soon) – A book you can write down your travel plans, create itineraries, track down your budget, and dot down memories along the way! A handy book you can keep and read later to revisit memory lane.
- Pretty Wild World Travel Planning Printables (coming soon) – Are you a nut like me when it comes to planning? Yes? Good. My travel planning resource in one zip file is an easy-to-use printable planner that comes with tips that helps you plan your travels during the planning stage, a pre-flight checklist, an itinerary planner, and so on.
Bosnian Pyramids
According to the locals, you may also have a chance to visit the mystic hills, called the most massive humanmade ancient pyramids in the world. Some are even believed to have healing properties.
Though scientists won’t believe these are real pyramids, you may still visit the archeological park, explore the tunnels, and join meditation sessions. You can take a bus from Sarajevo central station to Visoko, available every few hours, and it takes around one hour to complete the journey. The ticket per person costs around 2 Euros for 4 km.
Where to stay in Sarajevo? Here’s a list of amazing hotels to choose from and find great deals!
Book this unique tour: Under the Siege – Times of Misfortune War Tour
Read also: Winter in Europe: Top 21 Winter Destinations in Europe
Sutjeska National Park
Sutjeska National Park is the Mecca for most nature and history lovers coming from Bosnia and Herzegovina. In an excellent display of guerrilla warfare, Tito’s Partisans beat the German army in the hilly terrain of eastern Bosnia during World War II.
The national park is still flocked by tens of thousands of tourists yearly. They come here to pay tribute to the fallen, responsible for securing future success and the birth of Yugoslavia. Few people know that Sutjeska National Park is the stunning and most pristine product of Mother Nature in Southeastern Europe.
Where to stay in Sarajevo? Here’s a list of amazing hotels to choose from and find great deals!
Read also: 26+ Best National Parks in Europe You Must Check Out!
Višegrad
The enchanting and ancient Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge is the best part of Višegrad, and it is listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. It was mentioned in the novel “The Bridge over the Drina” by the Nobel Prize award-winning author Ivo Andric.
The bridge is located on the Drina River, which surrounds nature and makes it an ideal scenery. Mimar Sinan, a well-renowned Ottoman architect, known for architectural marvels like the Suleymanye Mosque of Istanbul, designed the bridge.
You can take a trolley bus around 12-14 km from the Old Town in Eastern Sarajevo. Every day there are four buses from there, and a one-way ticket costs around 8 Euros for 16km per adult.
Where to stay in Sarajevo? Here’s a list of amazing hotels to choose from and find great deals!
Read also: Top 10 Castles in Bosnia and Herzegovina to Visit
Hold up! Have you thought about the importance of travel insurance?
Remember this: anything can happen. Travel is fun, but your health is more important; thus, I always, always, always recommend getting insured during the duration of your trip. I have benefitted from having one multiple times, and it has been covered for thousands of euros!
The latest one is not necessarily “health” related – it was during the peak of the unspeakable terrible C that consumed the world. I was living in Vietnam when I received an email from SafetyWing (my travel insurance) that if I want they’ll fly be back home to Finland as the world goes through a global emergency alert. I flew back fully covered, and dealing with SafetyWing was a breeze despite the roar of people in contact with them trying to get back home.
I can’t highly recommend them enough. Otherwise, I rarely get sick; hence I don’t always need to head to a hospital, but knowing that I have travel insurance makes me feel safe at the very least.
Read my post about why you should get travel insurance for more information. Otherwise, you can get a free quote from SafetyWing – they’re the best, in my opinion.
Lukomir
The magical mountain village, Lukomir, has genuinely maintained the typical Bosnian lifestyle. It has never been isolated because of its huge popularity and the increasing number of travel operators, making it the best day trip from Sarajevo. You can’t find this experience in too many places in Europe.
Being in Lukomir is like living life in an ethnological museum where people still follow the Dinaric highlanders and nomadic tribes. It is an essential part of the cultural, historical, and architectural legacy of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and it offers a different heritage environment. It seems that it was inhabited by the stecci people scattered since the 14th and the the15th centuries.
There was only Donji Lukomir, around 3km from the village. The Gornji Lukomir was built in the 20th century as a summer village where Donji Lukomir residents bring cattle to graze. By 1950 they moved to Gornji Lukomir to have a better connection to the outer world.
Where to stay in Sarajevo? Here’s a list of amazing hotels to choose from and find great deals!
Read also: Top 20 Cheap European Holiday Destinations and Countries to Visit
Konjic
Being a house to Stara Cuprija Old Bridge from the Ottoman era, Konjic is an exotic and well-preserved village. One of the best-kept military secrets in Yugoslav history is nestled in its hills: a 6500 sq. m. nuclear bunker of Tito, ARK D-0, which is now open for tourists.
Bitovinja, Bjelašnica, and Prenj mountains make the triangle in which this village is tucked. In Northern Herzegovina, Konjic town has significant canyons, exotic architecture, alpine peaks, and lush green meadows.
It has rivers, lakes, and streams stretching through the countryside. You will explore the world of pure, raw nature as you travel into the heart of the Dinaric Alps and over the Prenj mountain foothills. Nature and adventure rule the scenic panorama accessed through the narrow and curvy pass from merely a half-hour drive.
Where to stay in Sarajevo? Here’s a list of amazing hotels to choose from and find great deals!
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Blagaj Tekke
Located 8km from Mostar’s backyard, Blagaj is one of the nation’s most captivating and photographed destinations for all the right reasons. When fresh water flows through the Buna River springs in various shades of cyan and well-preserved tekke, Blagaj is a graceful little spot where you can have delicious lunch or Bosnian coffee.
Blagaj Tekija or Tekke is a Dervish monastery around 600 years old. It is located out of Mostar, Bosnia, next to the source of the Buna River at the base of a cliff. It is a picture-perfect and unique series of complexes that look more exciting live than in photos.
The Tekke was initially founded during the Ottoman Empire. The rock slides and time have been responsible for the reconstruction and building revamp. Thanks to Turkish tourism, Tekke today looks as it did before.
It is a quick drive from Mostar, and the route leads to the beautiful single-track roads near Buna. There is more than just Tekke to explore. You can enjoy the breathtaking views from a couple of riverfront restaurants.
After capturing the picture at the top, you can take a quick boat ride in the cave at the source of Buna. Here, the water is clear and pure enough to drink. It even tastes better than bottled or tap water.
Where to stay in Sarajevo? Here’s a list of amazing hotels to choose from and find great deals!
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Kravice Waterfalls
Finding the Kravice Waterfalls in Bosnia is very difficult. They have located around 40km from Mostar. But if you are getting here for the first time, it is not advised to drive yourself, or you may be lost. Even Google Maps cannot track it from Bosnia, it seems crazy, but it is a fact. It is better to take a taxi or a tour to reach Kravice Waterfalls.
The taxi from Mostar to these waterfalls costs around 40 Euros with a driver who can wait for around an hour. It is too expensive for Bosnia, but you cannot get here. But it is worth paying for the mesmerizing view of the waterfalls and the vast lake around it.
Where to stay in Sarajevo? Here’s a list of amazing hotels to choose from and find great deals!
What are my favorite travel must-haves?
As a frequent traveler, I’ve learned a lot throughout my years of travel, and there are five items that I always carry with me regardless of where I go and how long the trip is. Here are my five travel must-haves!
- Warm packable jacket – I always carry a light jacket, even when heading to warm countries. There hasn’t been a time I never used it, especially in airports and planes.
- Transparent toiletry bag – I often bring a carry-on if I’m only traveling within Europe for a few days. Life is so much easier to go through security checks with a transparent toiletry bag.
- Kindle Paperwhite – I love a good read and always take my Kindle everywhere. It keeps me entertained during long flights and waiting times.
- Powerbank – I don’t know how I could travel without one! Having a power bank saved me a ton since I carry a lot of electronic devices with me.
- Travel Adapter – I never leave my luggage without a travel adapter! I carry one with me all the time. It is just one of that travel-must haves that doesn’t hurt to have in your bag at all times.
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