Adventurous Kate contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase through these links, I will earn a commission at no extra cost to you. The final Balkan country to add to my tally? This is something that Serbia is working to rectify β in fact, while in Belgrade, I met a group of my iambassador buds traveling around the country to do just that! As for me, my time in Serbia was limited. I only had a few days before I had to meet my mom and sister in Latvia, and I was still recovering from post-festival sickness and a haunted apartment in Montenegro.
After an evening of strolling the local pedestrian area, I decided to spend my first full day on the Belgrade Free Tour. Local free tours are a great way to get your bearings in a new city. After the tour, my days were spent simply strolling and spending time with friends. No major agenda. No list of sights to check off. Just letting Belgrade soak into my skin. My favorite neighborhood in Belgrade was Skadarlija β the Bohemian Quarter.
The fortress, located right on the river, was a spectacular place to watch the sunset. Being a fan of cured meats but a bit wary of often-too-salty Balkan cured meats, I asked the waiter for a recommendation and he told me to try the flat sausage. Good stuff! Not too salty but with plenty of flavor. Having previously traveled in Kosovo and Albania, I was curious to explore the conflict from the Serbian point of view. Above is the one and only mosque in Belgrade. Relations are still quite tense between the primarily Christian Serbians and primarily Muslim Albanians, including the ethnic Albanians that populate Kosovo.
My guide told me that during Serbia-Albania football games, they station lots of police to the mosque because locals will try to riot or destroy it. But most of all, in true Balkan style, the streets were filled with cafes, cafes, cafes. Cafes all day. God, I love the Balkans in the summer.
Belgrade is most notorious for having some of the wildest nightlife in Europe. Here, river barges like the ones above are home to clubs that go all night long. The kind of night that you look back on fondly but swear never to repeat again. I will say this β it always made me laugh whenever we went out to a cafe or a bar because no matter where we were, we would suddenly be surrounded by a live band!
