Day Trips from Bosnia and Herzegovina

Drive an hour south-west of Sarajevo and Mostar's 16th-century bridge throws its stone arc over the Neretva's turquoise rush. Cobblestone lanes steer you past coppersmiths beating coffee sets while grill smoke drifts from ćevapi stands. Ten minutes east, Blagaj's Dervish house grips a cliff where an ice-cold spring explodes from the rock, order trout on the wooden terraces and eat it inches from the roar.

The Trebižat River falls 25 m in a horseshoe of misty cascades you can swim right up to. Pine needles stab your soles and the air tastes of wet limestone and grilled corn. Down the road, Počitelj is a stone fortress village where art students pour pomegranate juice in shaded courtyards.

Cross the 20 km coastal strip and you walk into a Renaissance canvas: marble streets glossed by centuries of sandals, oleander scent drifting over 2-km-long city walls. Croatia's most famous walled city slots into a day thanks to fast new highways.

Europe's oldest rainforest, Perućica, lies inside Bosnia and Herzegovina's wildest park. You scramble beside waterfalls you hear long before you see, while Maglić massif mirrors itself in glass-calm Trnovačko Lake. The air hangs thick with pine resin and blueberries burst underfoot.

Ivo Andrić's bridge at Višegrad sweeps a stone crescent over the green, slow Drina. Next door, Andrićgrad is a whimsical stone town built by filmmaker Emir Kusturica, churches, mosques and a cinema smelling of fresh popcorn cram a mini-Bosnia into one square.

Halfway to the coast the Neretva carves canyons near Konjic, where Tito's nuclear bunker sits 80 m underground, chilly, echoing, laced with diesel. Above ground, Boracko lake glimmers inside a beech ring while farmers rent kayaks.

Deep in the south-east, the Sutjeska valley memorial looms over wolf pines and trout streams. Push on across Zelengora's nine lakes where shepherd dogs bark across flower meadows and your only company may be a lone UN jeep.