Woke up around 06:00, on the way to breakfast I changed people’s ‘Do not Disturb’ notices to ‘Please make up my room’ and vice versa. It’s the little things.
Breakfast was unusual – lots of local food. I had a sesame seed pastry filled with chopped bacon and tomato relish (not bad), a piece of roll with cream cheese, tomato and shredded cheese (too cheesy), bacon, cheese pie, and a couple of pastries. The restaurant was a bit small and was playing music, many of my favourite Serbian tunes.
Checked out, trundled down to the bus station and bought the tickets to Belgrade. It’s amazing how far pointing and nodding gets you when you don’t speak the language.
Journey took about 3 hours through fairly uninspiring countryside, saw quite a few abandoned and half built houses.
Arrived in Belgrade, pretty depressing; grey tower blocks, concrete overpasses, graffiti everywhere. It was also miserable weather. Got off the bus and the hotel was literally over the road, and another modern one. Very spacious bathroom but no bath, decent sized bedroom with a queen bed.
Left the hotel, went across the road to a supermarket to get some water, then back to the hotel to get the umbrella. Over the road to buy the tickets to Sarajevo, then back to the hotel to get some more cash because they only took cash and cleaned us out. Into the bank next door to exchange some money, then back to the hotel because the passport was in the safe. So far we hadn’t travelled more than 200m from the hotel.
Used Tripadvisor to find a seafood restaurant because we were both fed up with meat, asked at reception which bus to take and then waited at the wrong bus stop for 30 minutes. Got the bus, which was free. Well, it was for us because it was packed and we couldn’t get near the driver to pay. Tracked our location on Google maps to make sure we knew when to get off and he started to go in a different direction so we got off in what looked like a dodgy area. Turned down a street which had several jewellery shops – once again Song managed to find them. Walked for about 10 minutes in the rain – the weather was appalling – and saw the Danube river, very wide.
Thankfully the restaurant was open (it was only 17:30), wasn’t booked out, and had a table in the non smoking section. Although it was open so didn’t really make that much difference. They were playing more of my favourite Serbian hits.
I had a local beer (of course), and ordered the seared tuna steak on a bed of potato and shard cabbage cooked in olive oil and lemon juice. Song had octopus and calamari also on a bed of potato and shard. We also had a cherry tomato and rocket salad.
Very very very good. 100 times better than the the meat platter we had yesterday.
Had Tiramasu for dessert, the meal cost about $60 .
Walked back to the main road to get the bus back to the hotel, but it was raining so decided to get a taxi instead.
A bit tired, watched TV and went to sleep, another day in Belgrade tomorrow.
