Belgrade, Serbia

We were up early-ish, what with the hour we gained. We had one of the better sleeps we’ve had so far on the trip. The bed, pillow and room temperature were all ideal. We found in Türkiye that hotels like to jack up the heat, which we don’t like at night. But here it was perfect.

The breakfast buffet was good, although I miss the Turkish tea already.

We started our touristing at Kalemegdan Park, home of the Belgrade Fortress. It was a bit chilly at 10am, about 12C, but it warmed up to 17C by the afternoon.

There weren’t many other tourists out this early. We explored around the Fortress. It takes up a lot of ground, it took us a while to get around. From the historic centre, it’s mostly walls and turrets and views of confluence of the Danube and Sava rivers. Around the north end, we came across the Roman well. It didn’t open until 11am, so we continued with our fortress exploring.

The Despot’s gate and Zindan gate are pretty interesting, with stairs and bridges across (empty) moats and passageways through the fortress walls.

Just outside the gates are a couple small churches. The interiors of both churches are pretty spectacular, with frescoes covering Ružica Church, and mosaic tiles in St. Petka Chapel. Both are active places of worship.

Back in the fortress, we walked past Damad Ali Pasha turbe, a mausoleum and one of the few surviving relics of Turkish rule.

It was almost 11am and there were now a handful of tour groups, although the grounds are large enough to absorb the crowds.

We walked back to the Roman well. The ticket booth person was just arriving to open up, and we were the first in. This is one place where it helps to avoid the tour groups. The well is over 51m deep, and lined with spotlights all the way down. There’s also spiral staircases on the outside of the well. It would have been quite the undertaking to dig this back in the day. It would have provided a constant water supply for when the fortress was under siege.

After Kalemegdan, we walked over to the Cathedral Church of Saint Michael the Archangel. We can see its spire from our hotel room. The cathedral is surrounded by 3-4 storey high buildings, so it’s not easy to get a full pic. Across the street is the Serbian Orthodox Church Museum, which also has nice architecture, complementing the cathedral.

We then walked about 30 minutes towards the Nikola Tesla Museum. We had lunch at nice cafe. We both had their gnocchi, which was excellent, followed by a Serbian coffee. A Serbian coffee (here at least, a sample size of one) was the size of a small coffee but muddy like a Turkish coffee. It was a lot of caffeine. We liked it.

We showed up at the Nikola Tesla museum around 1:45pm. That’s when we realized that visits are organized, scheduled on the hour. The 2pm tour was already full (there’s maybe 50 people allowed per tour). They suggested we come back at 2:30 to line up for the 3pm tour.

What to do for 45 minutes? Luckily, there was another highlight we wanted to see, about 15 minutes away. Perfect!

We walked over to the Church of Saint Sava. It’s a large building, white with green domes and black trim. Aside from its size, it didn’t stand out, although the design was based on the Hagia Sophia. Then we went inside, and were blown away. It’s completely covered in mosaics and sculptures. The size is really impressive inside. When we visited the Hagia Sophia, it was half covered in scaffolding and so we didn’t get a full appreciation of its size. Here the size is fully visible and it’s enormous. We were really impressed.

There’s more mosaics and artwork in the basement. We did have a schedule to keep (we’d almost forgotten about the Nikola Tesla museum) so didn’t spend much time down there.

We poked our heads into the St. Sava Small Church, it was just as elaborately decorated inside, but as its name suggests, smaller.

Then we walked quickly back to the museum. We got there around 2:35, there were maybe fifteen people already in line. Within minutes, the line grew down the stairs and out the gate, beyond where it was when we showed up originally.

At 3pm, they started letting folks in, ten at a time, to buy tickets. It’s cash Serbian RSD only.

There’s three parts to the tour. First we watched a fifteen minute video on the history of Nikola Tesla’s life.

Then there were demos of three experiments. The second experiment was the most nerve-wracking. We stood around a large transformer, with a few of us holding fluorescent light bulbs in the air. We grounded the electricity and the bulbs lit up. Heather filmed a video. I’m the fluorescent bulb closest on the left.

On the last part of the tour, we were free to wander around the museum (really just a few rooms in a house) and take pics. They have replicas of some of his patents, and some of the tools he used. Tesla’s ashes, stored in a spherical urn, are also displayed in a separate room.

Overall it was interesting to see, but not what I had pictured the museum to be.

We walked back to our hotel, taking in the street scenes. There’s a lot of wide sidewalks with mature tree canopies, and sidewalk cafes everywhere. It’s too bad they don’t turn Yonge St south of Bloor into something like this.

We had dinner at Lola, another restaurant close to our hotel. We over-ate, and had to go for a walk down Kneza Mihaila after. We also walked over to the nearby Republic Square, which reminded us a bit of the Zócalo in Mexico City. There was a band busking, playing a really catchy tune that stuck in my head right up until we fell asleep.