Jajce

Jajce, a beautiful city in Bosnia and Herzegovina, was our next destination. But first we had to get there. For now, we were at Lake Balaton in Hungary.

Morning

In the morning after waking up, the children shouted that they absolutely had to play in the pool. We agreed. After swimming, we had breakfast, then we went grocery shopping at Lidl in the town of Keszthely. And off we went!

Route to Bosnia and Herzegovina

We had two and a half hours of driving ahead of us to reach the Hungarian-Croatian border. The route led us through local roads, so we drove quite slowly due to speed limits. We crossed the border in the town of Barcs. The border crossing was at a bridge on the Drava River. The first passport check of our trip awaited us here, because Croatia was not part of the Schengen zone and you could not just travel from one country to another.

Good to know: Croatia joined the Schengen area on 1 January 2023, so checks at the Hungarian-Croatian border were lifted. On the same day, Croatia started using the euro. The border with Bosnia and Herzegovina is an external Schengen border, so passports or ID cards are still checked there. We checked these rules in November 2026.

That day we planned to cross the border twice. The first crossing was behind us, and the next one was the Croatian-Bosnian border. We crossed the second border in the town of Stara Gradiška, where the border crossing is on the bridge over the Sava River. We entered Croatia smoothly, but crossing the next border took a bit longer. The traffic jam started before the bridge and cleared up only after the border.

In Laktaši we stopped for a moment to get some local currency from an ATM and prepare for spending in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The currency there is the Bosnian Mark (convertible mark), with a rate of approximately 1 KM equal to 0.5 EUR. Our first purchase was fresh fruit from a roadside stall - including a watermelon, which we remember because it was so sweet. We also refueled the car because in Bosnia, fuel is much cheaper than in neighboring countries.

The next city on the route was Banja Luka, and just past it, we entered the Vrbas River canyon. And the breathtaking views began.

The route led downhill, along the river, through a series of sharp bends and sections hollowed out in the rocks. It required concentration, but local drivers clearly had no problem with it and drove very boldly. After a while we reached the town of Jajce - the destination of our route that day.

Jajce

There’s a beautiful waterfall on the Pliva River located in Jajce. This place appears on postcards from Bosnia and Herzegovina very often, so it's no wonder that it attracts crowds of tourists. Admission to the terrace at the foot of the waterfall is ticketed, and parking is metered. It's worth seeing in person how the water falls from a height of 22 meters.

After seeing the waterfall we went to a campsite in the same town - Autocamp Plivsko Jezero. The campsite is located next to a crystal-clear lake. We had probably never seen such clean water in a lake before.

We spent the evening at the campsite, where we tried Bosnian cuisine. We were struck by the slow pace of everyone around us. They were in no hurry.

Jajce is also famous for its second attraction - small wooden water mills. We got there the next morning, this time on foot as part of a walk. Visiting the open-air mill museum is free. The tiny huts that hold the mill mechanisms stand on the river, with a footbridge between them. The children wanted to peek inside each of them.

Fun fact: the little mills, called Mlinčići, stand between the Great and Small Pliva Lakes. A record from 1562 already lists 24 mills here. Today there are about 20 of them, and in 2009 the Pliva Lakes landscape with the mills was declared a National Monument of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The weather was unusually nice, so we decided to use the bathing spot recommended by the campsite owner. We are talking about a dam on the river, which is connected to the bathing beach. This place is called Kupaliste Brana. It’s amazing. We spent the whole morning swimming. It's fun when something unplanned sneaks into your trip.

The route in numbers: 274 km, 5h