We woke up around 07:00, as the sun was up very early.  Unlike Tenerife, where we are on the western edge of a time zone, Serbia is on the eastern side of a time zone, in the same time zone as Madrid, Paris, Rome, and Berlin.  So the sun comes up quite early.  So Justin headed out early, around 07:30, to walk around the fortress complex and the waterfront(s).  It was a quiet morning, with only some people out running, walking dogs, or feeding birds.  When walking through the fortress complex, there was a bunch of military equipment in one part, as part of some sort of museum.  Close to the waterfront, it was easy to spot the confluence of Sava and Danube rivers – the Danube much more brown than the Sava.

After meandering through the fortress complex, he came out by the zoo, then walked north to the Danube.  Surprisingly there was basically nothing on the north side of the river, just a handful of houses and seemingly no roads.  He could see Gardos Tower to the west – it was on our list of things to check out, but it was too far to walk to see it.  But he had the telephoto lens, so there was at least that.  [Later, looking at the photos, it was probably not worth the long walk.]  There were lots of swans in the river(s).  Also, there were dozens of floating restaurants/bars/clubs - we're not sure how many of them were actually functional, and/or open, this time of year.  He walked past a bunch of new restaurants on a promenade along the river; nice, but stale, kind of like Puerto Madero in Buenos Aires.  On the walk back towards our hotel, Justin came up some stairs and saw an interesting restaurant (Kafana SFRJ), and made a mental note that it would be a better lunch spot.  He walked past the monastery or whatever that we’d seen the night before [Cathedral Church of Saint Michael the Archangel] before getting back to the hotel a little before 10:00. 

Crystal had a Hungarian class at 09:00, and it ended at 10:00, so after her class we headed out together.  We headed south towards St Sava Orthodox Church, poking around here and there.  It was a nice town, and much more undulating than expected.  There was a giant traffic circle that was very hard to get around for pedestrians – it needed a walkway underneath, as in Budapest.  At St Sava, we saw an enormous dog, probably some sort of mastiff.  We walked around the perimeter of the church, then went in.

St Sava reminded us of Hagia Sophia [and, as it turns out, it was based on Hagia Sophia, and built in the last 100 years].  It was the biggest Orthodox church we could recall having visited.  There were quite a few people there, including some tourist groups.  We walked around a bit more outside, getting some photos with some fountains on the western side of the building.  Also on the west side was the Karađorđe Monument, dedicated to a Serbian leader that led an uprising against the Ottomans in the 1800s.  From St Sava we headed towards the Tesla Museum.  [Tesla as in Nikola Tesla, the incredible inventor, not the company run by the a-hole.]  Justin told about Croatia and Serbia both claiming him as theirs, and Crystal mentioned that coincidentally, during her Hungarian lesson this morning, Benjamin had said he thought Tesla was Croatian.  [Tesla was born in Croatia, to Serbian parents.]

At the Tesla museum, you couldn’t just enter, as the museum had fixed entry times, which depended on language for the guide, and we weren’t near any of them.  So instead we kept on walking, going past St Mark’s, where we saw a small dog with a big stick playing fetch.  We also saw a Starbucks, but Crystal didn’t want to carry around a mug for the rest of the day, so we just made a mental note of the location and kept walking.  Nearby was the House of the National Assembly (Parliament) and the former Royal Palace.  Eventually we got to the church/monastery from last night, at which point Justin was able to find the stairs from this morning, and then the restaurant.

So we had lunch at Kafana SFRJ.  The interior décor was from the Yugoslav era [SFRJ stands for Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia], and was full of items related to Tito, the “President for Life” (which sounds like a nicer way of saying dictator).  Tito had carefully kept the various factions (Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks, etc.) together during his time in office, but everything fell apart fairly swiftly after he passed in 1980.  We had hoped for a window table because of the great views of the river, but they were all occupied when we arrived.  So we started one table in from the window, but we were able to move by the window before our food arrived.  We shared some Čvarci, which was basically fried pork skin, kind of like chicharrónes.  We were surprised it was room temperature.  Whatever the preparation, it tasted good.  Justin ordered Cevapi, and Crystal ordered Rebarca na kajmaku (pork ribs with sour cream).  The main dishes were excellent, but enormous.  Justin got a local beer, ordering whatever the table of 6 near us had just ordered.  It was fine.

We left a little before 14:00, and walked north and then east along the riverside promenade.  There were more swans, or perhaps the same ones from the morning.  We got a little warm going up the stairs into the fortress, especially since we walked up 2-3 different sets before finding some that actually worked (i.e., had an entrance through the walls).  At least the scenery was nice, with lots of blooming poppies and other wildflowers.  We meandered around for a bit before stopping at a café for waters around 15:15.  Across the river we saw a building that looked like it was two buildings connected by a skybridge, but we couldn’t quite tell.  The sky got darker as we sat there, like a storm was coming in.  That was actually one of the reasons we were doing so much today, despite the fact we were slated to do a lot of the same things tomorrow – it was supposed to rain tomorrow and we wanted to take advantage of the good weather.

We got back to the hotel just after 16:00.  It had been about 8 hours of being out for Justin, but that included lunch, so not too bad.  After a brief respite, around 16:45 we headed over to Idol, which was theoretically a tiki bar.  It wasn’t quite a tiki bar, but it was close enough, and the bartenders were nice.  Crystal ordered a Frida, and Justin got a Naked Monkey.  We chatted with the bartender about other bars in Belgrade - we had found almost all of them already, including the one we had visited the night before.  Suddenly it started pouring rain, and we wondered how we were going to get back to the hotel remotely dry.  We decided to just have more drinks and hope the weather let up a bit.  We purchased a mug for our collection in Hawaii, and got a mezcal drink called The Devil Wears Mango (mezcal, craft tequila infused with hot peppers, spiced liqueur, mango) that was quite good.

It was still raining, albeit lighter, when we left.  We tried to hug the side of buildings as we race-walked back towards the hotel, but we were still fairly soaked when we got back.  We dropped off our mug upstairs, and dried off as best as we could, before going down to meet our group.  First we met Joyce and Andy from Philly, then Peter from Boston (but originally from Wales), Bill from Jacksonville, and Alan and Cheryl from Miami.  We also met Martin, our guide, from Prague.  Both Martin and Peter are Arsenal fans, and commented on Justin’s Arsenal jacket.  We all had dinner in the hotel restaurant.  Drago, our driver, was running late, so it was 9 of us.  Everyone seemed to get along well, and we hoped it would last, as we’d never been on a group trip before.

It was hard to hear, so there was lots of repetition, but we took in as much as we could.  We noted that Peter had just visited Syria, and had flown in from Istanbul, so like us he had no jet lag.  Bill had recently been traveling to 13 countries in West Africa, and highly recommended it.  Andy was a high school economy and history teacher, who once had M Night Shyamalan as a student.  [The main character in Signs shares Andy’s last name.]  Alan and Cheryl had lived in Miami so long, they remembered when the courthouse was the tallest building - now it is barely visible.  Slowly but surely people peeled off to get some sleep, and we were with Peter, Martin, and Drago (who showed up around dessert) for a bit longer.  The piano player in the restaurant was amazing, and everyone was very impressed.  Peter and Drago eventually headed out, so it was just us and Martin for maybe 10 minutes before we headed upstairs just before 22:00.