Tuesday 11th June
We were up early today to catch our bus. We said goodbye to Pheebs and were on our way.
We bussed it through the beautiful Croatian countryside listening to the Croatian music one last time, all the way to the border, where we said farewell to this amazing country and hello to Serbia!
Six and a half hours later and we had made it to Belgrade!
The bus ride in through the countryside was really cool. You could actually see a difference between the Croatian and Serbian countryside. Where Croatia was much more natural land, Serbia had lots of fields being used for farming and mining right along the roadside. The architecture is also completely different.
It was stinking hot again today so once we arrived we quickly grabbed our bags and headed across the city to find our accommodation. Our phones don't work here so we had to do it old school without google maps!
It is very busy! We weaved our way up a steep hill and through streets and managed to find our apartment, yay!! The exterior was rather rough, but wow, it is such a nice apartment inside! We're right on the top floor and it's huge (and was super cheap)!
After cooling off in the air con for a bit, we headed out to get some dinner from the grocery store. We walked past Republic Square on the way to the store and saw the impressive building! The square was unfortunately having works done on it, but the building was still really cool!
We returned from our first Serbian grocery shop and just collapsed under the aircon and tried some "hot dog chips" that we'd found. They were strange, kinda good, kinda not, they were like a long cheezel and actually tasted like hot dog!
I then had my first proper shower in the 4 days! Woohoo it felt so good!
We chilled out in the aircon and put some bureks in the oven and a pizza. The bureks were really really good, they were potato which we hadn't seen before!
We were both wrecked after what felt like a big day and fell asleep almost instantly after dinner.
Wednesday 12th June
Time to explore Belgrade!
It seems like a really cool place, there is so much to do. I looked up all the things I thought we would be interested in doing and then made a route to take Sam on a mystery tour of Belgrade!
We sunscreened up because it is another scorcher of a day at 35 degrees and then headed out to find a pedestrian street called Skadarlija that we had heard about.
It is a really cool street filled with cute hip little cafes and painted buildings. It has a really nice feel to it. It’s really quite clever actually, a lot of the buildings are quite old but the way that they’ve painted them in different ways makes it seem really trendy and gives it character rather than being old and drab.
Our preconceptions of Belgrade and Serbia have been blown out the window, it feels so normal and safe walking around. We walked across the city to find the Ruzica church, which is the oldest church in the city, and it just felt like walking through Melbourne in a way. There were just trendy cafes and bars everywhere, and people were sitting out chilling, having a drink with friends, it was really really cool.
We found the church which was so cool, and I think this church might be Sam’s favourite find in Belgrade. It had vines growing all over it making it look like it had been overtaken by nature, and beautiful gardens around it.
From here there was another pretty little church that we could just see through some rose bushes and beyond that the Danube river.
Right next to the church was the Belgrade Fortress. It was really cool, I didn’t expect there to be a fortress here, it looks like the kind of thing we found in France. It had multiple city gates, and the classic turrets and fortress walls. It was up on a hill and from inside of it there were views of where the Sava and Danube river converged!
The fortress was really big which makes sense seeing as it used to contain the whole city of Belgrade back in the day. Now it has been turned into a beautiful giant park!
After exploring the fortress we wandered out and saw that there were tennis courts built right up against the walls! What a place to play!
There was one more surprise. So recently we kept seeing ads for “Dino Park” in different cities, and as we walked out of the fortress, guess what we stumbled across. That’s right, Belgrade's Dino Park!
On our search for our next stop we ended up on the street with a number of embassies, and the buildings were so grand!
Just around the corner from the embassies we found St Michael’s cathedral. It was ornately decorated from the outside and was quite fascinating inside. It’s the first church I’ve seen that doesn’t have any pews. It’s beautiful inside, wide open space, huge, and had the biggest crown of candles hanging from the ceiling, but there were no pews. The other thing that I found really interesting was that inside there are two pillars and in front of them are pictures of holy figures. People came in, and lined up to kiss the picture. They prayed, then they would make the sign of the holy cross and then kiss the picture. I’d never seen this before, it was very interesting.
We then made our way towards Knez Mihailova pedestrian street, which is known as the most expensive street per square metre in Belgrade. It is such a cool street, so lively, and thriving. You get such a feel for Belgrade just from this street, I really really like it. It’s lined with both upmarket boutique stores and big international brands for shopping, and cafes and restaurants that were all so alive! There were painters and balloon artists, music was playing, it had such an energetic atmosphere! And perhaps what added so much to the charm were the beautiful neoclassical mansions that lined this street. One thing that I really like about the architecture in Belgrade is that many corner buildings are rounded, which I think looks so much nicer. There’s also pieces of really cool street art on buildings, slightly hidden from immediate sight.
We were sweltering and fading a bit in the heat when we reached the end of the street and came across the modern all glass shopping centre at the end of the old beautiful buildings and in that we spotted a Starbucks. We needed a cold drink so popped in and ordered a strawberry and lime tea frappe for me and a tropical one for Sam. They were so good and exactly what we needed! We then wandered around in the shopping centre trying to cool down a little before we continued on. While we were in there we saw an Athlete’s Foot shop, we thought they were only in Australia!
We continued back down the street and popped into an English book shop to find Sam a book for when we’re in the Greek Islands (so exciting I know!). We were both so in our element in the book store, in the aircon, surrounded by the smell of fresh books. It was so lovely. The English section was upstairs and it had a cafe up there too! What a fantastic idea, a cafe in a book shop, two of the best things combined!
From the book shop we popped into the grocery store to pick up dinner and ended up back at the Republic Square.
After a fantastic day we headed back to the apartment, popped on the aircon, and spent a bit of time booking accommodation and transport for Greece. We had our potato bureks again for dinner, they were even better than before, and spent the evening chilling out.
Thursday 13th June
Day two of exploring Belgrade!
Our apartment is perfectly located for everything we want to do. Everything we did yesterday was on one side of the city from us, and everything for today is on the other.
We headed out this time with the addition of hats because it is soooo hot, I didn’t know Serbia got this hot!
First stop of the day was the House of the National Assembly of Serbia, a beautiful official building.
We then walked round the corner to St Marks Church. Walking around today I’m seeing a lot more of the austere architecture I was expecting.
The church was really cool, very different with its Serbo-Byzantine architecture, and again didn’t have any pews inside.
We then made the long and extremely hot walk to the Temple of Saint Sava.
The temple is the second largest Orthodox Church in Europe, and let me tell you, it was massive! I’ve never seen one as big as this! It was a beautiful building, incredibly impressive. The photos really don't capture the sheer size of it!
As we got closer after a 30 minute uphill walk in the insane heat, we turned to each other, are you kidding? The church was under construction! We couldn’t go inside! The number of churches, palaces, etc. we've tried to go into but they are having work done on them is quite comical! We found an entrance to the crypts underneath the church though and that itself was worth the walk over. We walked down a marble staircase (with mdf board above us as flooring for the construction workers upstairs, not gonna lie, that felt a little dodgy), and then we entered the crypt room. Wow! It was a marble room, covered in elaborate colourful frescos. It was so lovely and cool as well, which was a welcome reprieve from the heat outside! It also had the pictures that people would kiss. I found it quite amusing though, as we were coming out, there was a cleaner going around and disinfecting all the pictures.
We left the church and headed back towards the city and saw a giant Idea supermarket so ducked in to escape the heat momentarily and get a cold drink!
Refreshed, we continued on our exploration to the Novi Dvor (New Palace) and Stari Dvor (Old Palace). The old palace was very austere, but the new palace was beautiful, with its white stone and the classic sculptured figures used as pillars in the architecture.
It was such a fun morning! It was so hot though so we headed back to the apartment for the peak heat of the day and to have some lunch!
We chilled out for a bit and then headed back out to the main pedestrian street and book shop later in the evening for Sam to get the book he had decided on. I really like Belgrade, it’s surprised me, it’s a very cool place, and feels lively and artsy in a way.
We then spent the evening curled up watching tv, drinking ice tea and nibbling on some Serbian strawberry yogurt filled chocolate that was sooo good!
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