Our most memorable holiday this year was a trip to Bosnia Herzegovina, based in Sarajevo, known as the Jerusalem of Europe.  However, the year started with a trip to the Milan Olympics was decided upon in the summer of 2024 after I came back from the Paris Olympics early due to struggling with attending all the events in the heat.  So, having cashed in my unused tickets, I decided to keep that money to buy tickets to the Winter Olympics instead, knowing that heat wouldn’t be a factor.  It also meant that I could complete my sporting CV with attendance at what I believe to be the major once every 4-year events on the planet (World Cup, Euros, Summer and Winter Olympics and Paralympics).  

The run up to the trip was a difficult time.  My mum passed away a few weeks before and so the build up was full of logistics culminating in my mums funeral taking place just 2 days before the trip.  On top of that, the apartment that I had booked 12 months earlier decided to keep a long term tenant and cancelled on me, and therefore finding a last minute replacement was a difficulty I could have done without.  However, the trip took place and we had a really nice time.  During the day I would travel around Milan with Judy doing some of the sights, such as the Duomo, Castello Sforzesca and Arch of Peace, as well as visiting the Navigli district and a big market for Judy.  We then headed back to the apartment to have an early tea together before I went to my evening event whilst Judy rested.  I won’t lie, I was often already tired by the evening after my earlier travels and getting back as late as 1.00am often meant I struggled to sleep afterwards as I was too alert when getting back.  Add in the metros, crowds, security lines and difficulty taking food and drink into venues combined with then long queues to get this inside the venues meant that at times it was more tiring than enjoyable.  However, some great sporting memories were still made.  It was fantastic to be inside my favourite stadium, the San Siro, to see the Opening Ceremony.  I had a great view with the parade of nations and raising of the Olympic flag nearest to me.  The lighting was spectacular and the only disappointment was that the flame wasn’t lit in the stadium, but instead at the Arch of Peace in the city centre, but this allowed us to visit the flame and light show at the Arch on another day which was more than compensation.  As for the events themselves, I didn’t enjoy the long walk to the ice hockey and speed skating through their Expo halls, with the arenas being a mile and a half walk through the equivalent of the NEC in Birmingham.  I found ice hockey and speed bit difficult to follow the puck, and the speed skating was a bit quick and monotonous.  However, I surprisingly loved the figure skating, and the arena that hosted it, together with the short track.  Most of the venues were noisy, whipping up the crowd with disco lights and trying to get everybody to sing YMCA, so the pleasant music the ice skaters danced to was a welcome addition, and as expected the short track was full of thrills and spills, with lots of falls and disqualifications, and my final Olympic moment was to see the host nation Italy win gold in the mixed relay and the excitement was at fever pitch.  I was even able to move to one of the more expensive seats for great views of the medal ceremony which gave me a fantastic finale to the sporting part of the trip.

To make the trip to the Olympics more interesting for Judy we added three days on in Venice.  We stayed at a fantastic hotel right near the railway station, with its own Grand Canal boat stop and also adjacent to the taxi rank to the airport.  This made logistics so much easier.  We had booked a room with a side canal view, but on arrival we were told we had been given a free upgrade to a room with a Grand Canal view.  The room was lovely.  The first evening on arrival we just had a general wander.  The second day we walked all the way via the shops and canals to Rialto Bridge and onwards to St Marks Square.  The Venice carnival was in full swing and there were a lot of people in masks everywhere.  Our final day we decided to walk through the back streets of Venice, off the beaten path, and this again was lovely, not knowing where we would end up or what we would see.  Judy found some lovely soft cats in a basket in one of the shops and this was her favourite purchase of the trip.  Overall, even though we had been to Venice many times previously, it still retained all its magic, and adding this unique city to our trip was a very welcome addition and meant that we went home happy having had a really lovely trip.

Next up was the trip to Bosnia, our 71st different country visited together.  Our trip to Sarajevo from London Stansted was a routine one, quickly exiting the airport and being kindly picked up by the brother of the owner of the apartment we were staying at, giving us a ride for free.  The destination was chosen as the Balkans area of Europe was one of the few parts of the continent that we had yet to explore, and research suggested that the combination of war and Olympics history, being surrounded by mountains, a mix of modern and old town, lots of shopping, a cable car and one of the top 10 scenic rail trips in Europe as voted for by the Guardian to the historic city of Mostar, all combined into thinking this would be an ideal destination for our interests, without spending either too much money or too much energy either.

The highlight in Sarajevo was the beautiful old town, full of shopping opportunities and delightfully for me the pride of hosting the Olympics back in 1984 was still visible everywhere with lots of merchandise opportunities for me, including a more modern cuddly version of Vucko the mascot from those Games.  He was everywhere, and I had photo opportunities with him also at the arena where Torvill and Dean won gold in 1984, when I visited to watch basketball, as well as the Olympic museum itself.  Then there was the war side of things.  A terrible war in the 1990s meant Sarajevo was under siege for around 4 years, and there are permanent scars from those days with lots of bullet holes in buildings that hadn’t been rebuilt, as well as occasional “roses” a splat of “blood” on the ground to signify where somebody had died.  We went to the Museum of Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide and this was very bleak, wandering around in silence with many others with tears in their eyes at the personal stories and items such as a chair where people were tortured daily and killed, together with a mallet that did the damage.  After that visit we made a choice not to visit any other of the war memorials as it was harrowing.

One of the highlights of our Bosnian adventure was the rail trip to Mostar.  There is only 1 train in the morning at 7.15am and one returning back from Mostar at 5.09pm.  The ride was beautiful, we got 2nd class tickets but were able to sit in two individual window seats in 1st class after a tip off from the Man in Seat 61 who is the rail guru of the internet.  The views were spectacular, emerald green river valleys, viaducts, tunnels and mountains throughout.  Then there was rail network in Bosnia is almost non-existent however, the railway stations at both ends of the journey reflected communist times and had an empty eerie feel to them.  Mostar itself was beautiful, as expected, a short walk from the station to where all the nice shops are either side of the spectacular bridge which dominates the city, rebuilt exactly as it was after being bombed in the 1990s war.  It was incredibly slippy to cross due to the materials used, but the views from the bridge were breathtaking.  We were hoping to see one of the professional bridge divers jump into the river from the bridge, but he never did.  They wait for ages to jump, and only do so when they have collected enough money from tourists to do it, so clearly he hadn’t got enough money yet to do it, which was a shame.  In Mostar, two other memories stand out, a lovely restaurant called Zaman which served lovely affordable meals, we ate there twice, once on arrival and again before departure, and aLos a lovely yellow plush Labubu which was cuddly and unlike anything we could see in China.  So we bought it, and it matched the fact we were both wearing yellow that day too.

Back to Sarajevo for the last few days of the trip where there were two more highlights.  Firstly, on my birthday we went up Trebevic mountain to where bobsleigh was held at the Olympics.  Unfortunately, the cable car was closed for maintenance so we got a taxi to the top instead but unfortunately the taxi driver couldn’t find my preferred drop off point.  This left us contemplating a 25 minute uphill walk with a gradient of 150 yards.  It was really tough, but we made it and I had my photo taken with the Olympic rings at the top and then continued an extra 10 minute uphill walk to the start of the bobsleigh track, now infamously graffitied but iconic nonetheless, and I got to stand on the track where medals were won.  The second highlight was going up Avaz Tower, the 11th tallest twist tower in the world.  We went there on our final day and the sky was blue, the sun was shining and the views were one of the best I have ever experienced from any tower in the world, you could see for miles with four different mountains surrounding the city.  Finally, a word about our apartment, it was lovely.  It was called Apartment 304 just around the corner from the biggest shopping mall the SCC.  It was a great base with lots of food options at their food court and we had lovely country style breakfasts at Metropolis, and the tram stop to get everywhere was just outside.  The apartment really felt like home, with a plush L shaped sofa that was so cosy.  Slightly noisy at night when we needed the window open, particularly the noise as a tram passed sounded like an earthquake, but to be honest we generally slept well despite the noise.  It was only £46 per night and the standard of apartment would cost quadruple that across most of the rest of Europe.  So, our base was perfect and we had such a lovely time on this Bosnian adventure that it will stay in our memories as one of our better holidays, and probably the best value for money holiday, considering the relatively small cost, that we have ever had.

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Milan