After settling in and finding the grocery store, Jelena showed up. She was flying in from Bosnia where she had been on vacation for the previous two weeks visiting with her dad. We then got ready and headed out to dinner to celebrate Lise's 30th birthday, which just happened to be that day.
Dinner was good. We ordered typical Serbian cuisine (the fact that Jelena speaks Serbian would come in handy multiple times during our trip), which included lots of grilled meat.
The next day, Tanja and I slept in and then went for a long run along the river, across one of the bridges and back along the other side of the river. Neither of us had run for that long in a long time (or ever Tanja says). After our long run, we went out into the city to do some exploring. The other girls had been shopping and we met them on their way back. Tanja and I walked around a bit in the shopping district and then to the fortress.
The next day we rented bikes and rode to Zermun, a small "town" in the outskirts of Belgrade. It was a really cute down. We had drinks at a cafe and then walked around the town and up to the tower, which we climbed for a great view of Belgrade.
For dinner that night, we went to the cool restaurants/bars/cafes in the old warehouses by the river in front of our apartment.
On our last day in Belgrade, we went shopping and got pedicures. Everything was really cheap in Serbia. Lise and I found this super awesome outdoor bar and had a glass of prosecco on the way home. The waitress told us that they had live music in the evening and the organic restaurant next door was amazing, so we made reservations for dinner and headed home.
Dinner was super delicious, and we were not disappointed with the live band which was a woman and her 80-90 year old band. They were adorable!
After a few glasses of wine, we headed to one of the bars/clubs on a boat on the river. This is one of the things Belgrade is known for. We showed up at about 11pm and there was NO ONE there! We were standing outside trying to determine if we should go in and finally decided we would have one drink there and go home. By the time our one drink was over, the bar was PACKED. We ended up staying there all night and having a blast dancing the night away.
The next morning came too early for most of us. We had to be out of the apartment at 11am. After a breakfast/lunch in the city, we walked around to see some new areas in the city and stopped at a couple cafes along the way.
Belgrade was so much fun thanks to the girls I was with for making it that way. The city itself was not at all touristy and very "raw" or "untapped".
