One week, four countries.

We took advantage of an extended holiday weekend and combined it with some vacation time to take a week trip to Dubrovnik. Since it is a long drive there, we decided to take it slowly and make a giant circle, starting by going via Bosnia to Croatia and then going south to Montenegro to return to Serbia.

Sarajevo

I was amazed by the amount of reconstruction that has occurred in this city since the near complete destruction in the 1990s. The gentleman where we rented an apartment gave us some insight of how scary it was for him as a teen to grow up in the middle of a siege and war. Sarajevo downtown is very walkable and has several interesting places to visit. It is not a large city and the old part of the city has some shopping and several mosques.

Mostar

We drove then west to Mostar, which is famous for its beautiful Ottoman bridge. This bridge was almost completely destroyed as well during the 1990s war, but has now been fully reconstructed. The waters of the river below it are beautiful, with a turquoise color that we noticed to be common as well in the Adriatic sea. Mostar had plenty of souvenir shopping, but otherwise was easily done in one half day.

Dubrovnik

This was the main destination for this trip and indeed was the highlight of our vacation. What a wonderful place! The town of Dubrovnik has an old town section that has a surrounding protecting wall. This seems to be a common theme among many old cities in this region and we saw it again in Kotor and Budva later in the trip.

Dubrovnik is a UNESCO World Heritage destination for a good reason. When Dubrovnik was a city-state, the old town was the center of action. It is possible to walk on the protection wall around the city, with a birds-eye view of the old town. Once finished with walking on top of the walls, we went into the old town to see some of the churches and have a great lunch at a local restaurant.

We also took a day trip in a bout tour to the Elaphites Islands. There are various tour companies with which you can purchase a day trip to three nearby islands. They cook a delicious fish lunch on board and the day is very relaxing. The islands don’t have much to actually see, but they were fun to just lay on the beach and relax while they kids attempted getting in the cold water.

Kotor and Budva

After a few nights in Dubrovnik, we drove south into Montenegro to see Kotor and Budva. Each place had its own character and had beautiful places to visit. They also had an old town with a fortified wall around them, although smaller than Dubrovniks.

Durmitor National Forest

Last, but not least, we started our drive back to Serbia. We stopped at the Durmitor National Forest still in the Montenegro side, high up in the mountains. This is a ski resort during the winter, but despite being mid Spring it still had a thick later of snow in shaded areas. The weather was perfect, and it was warm enough to wear shorts despite being able to walk on the snow.

The Polar Star Hotel in Zabljak was great and I highly recommend it. We took long walks near Crno Jezero (black lake) and the mountains were beautiful.

Underground Belgrade

Julie and I took and interesting tour this week organized by a local tour company. The tour highlighted different underground structures in downtown Belgrade. I found this tour coincidentally when looking onlilne for something fun to do on one of our "date" nights.Their website can be found here.

We started with some underground bunkers at Kalemegdan Fortress, which were built during World War II as a strategic defense of the Sava River. The bunkers were built so that the soldiers could stay there forseveral weeks at a time and had a sophisticated ventilation system with apassive flow of air.

We then went to various other tunnels and man-made caves in the downtown area. It is rather amazing what an extensive underground tunnelsystem exists, and how many were built, destroyed and rebuilt throughout many different invasions that have occurred over hundreds of years.

Some clever businessmen have made extensions and created underground taverns/bars as well.

We were very impressed with the tour guide, Goran, who made the tour a very informative and interesting experience.

We finished the tour with some home-made wine at a local underground cellar.

Coming from the Americas, we find it ever-so-interesting to see how much history lurks in every corner of these European cities. This time we found there is also much history underground as well.

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Weekend at Sunkana Reka (Sunny River)

To celebrate Julie’s birthday we took a weekend trip to the western edge of Serbia, right at the border with Bosnia. It only takes about two hours to get to the border, and we stayed on the Serbian side at a country B&B called Sunkana Reka (meaning sunny river). The place is a recreation center with a soccer field, basketball and tennis courts and plenty of horses, mules and chickens. It was a nice relaxing place to see a rather authentic country lifestyle.

The room turned out to be huge and rather cute with its rustic look. The family room was big enough for the five of us, and Tyler even had a second floor loft where he slept.

We’ve found that most places here in Serbia we find someone that speaks some English. That was not the case this time, so we used our survival Serbian we’ve learned. The people were very friendly and helpful and somehow we figure-out a way to communicate.

The sign on this cabin says apparently Robert DeNiro spent the night here once!

The food was typical Serbian old-country style and was delicious.We tooks horse rides in the facility and a longer wagon ride to the nearby town.

Being still Winter, the actual B&B did not have many guests, so we felt like we had it all for ourselves. It was great. We used this time for great family bonding and talked a lot about our family values and future plans.

Although originally we were planning to take a quick side trip to the Bosnian side, we forgot we had taken our dog with us and did not bring any papers for him showing his health status. Rather than risk getting stuck with a dog in the other side, we decided to make a trip to Bosnia at a different time.

Skiing in Bulgaria

Winter in the Balkans brings ample opportunities to go skiing. Many of our friends took the opportunity of having kids winter break from school to go skiing at various locations in the region. Slovenia, Bosnia, Austria and Bulgaria are popular as well as the southern region of Serbia. Last year we went to beautiful Bled in Slovenia. This year we had already done a trip to Switzerland (where Robert dislocated an shoulder while sledding) and this time we decided to go to Bansko in Bulgaria.

Bansko is about 2 hours south of Sofia and the region is surrounded by beautiful mountains at the Pirin National Park. We found a fantastic hotel (thanks Tripadvisor) called Pirin River Hotel and Spa which had family rooms just right for our family size. The place had a good in-house restaurant and indoor heated pool.

Skiing in Bansko was great fun. They had more beginner slopes than other places which was just right for us amateurs. Austin took some lessons both days and by the end he was skiing rather nicely.

We were happy that nobody had any accidents this time and we all had a great time. I would highly recommend this skiing location for families with various levels of expertise. The only problem at Bansko is the long line to catch the funicular that takes you up to the skiing resort. Otherwise, the prices were very good and for this reason many British, French and other European families come skiing in Bansko. 

On our way back we stopped by Rila Monastery. This monastery was initially built in the 10th century and is the largest Eastern Orthodox monastery in Bulgaria. It had some beautiful frescoes inside.

Day Off without the kids

This last Monday was an official U.S. government holiday and I had the day off work. However, the kids did not have a day off school. Many times the international schools have a mix of local and international holidays that they try to fit, but as you would imagine they cannot give every holiday off as otherwise our kids would not have many school days left. Needless to say they were envious we had a day off and not them.

Anyway, Julie and I had a nice day for ourselves and decided to take a nice long walk. One of the great joys of living in Belgrade is the many parks and walking/bike routes to explore. We took a long walk starting from Ada, the island-park near our home and walked along the riverbank of the Sava and then the Danube which follow a series of boat nightclubs on the waterside and downtown Belgrade in the other side. We finished our walk at Kalemegdan fortress, at the heart of downtown Belgrade. We had a nice lunch at the Kalemegdan Terasa, which is a very good restaurant at the top of the Fortress area.

New Year in Switzerland

Growing up in Costa Rica, people often referred of this small country as the "Switzerland of the Americas". This is because of the peaceful nature of both countries and the natural beauty. I was always intrigued about Switzerland as a child.

This year we had some fun for the holidays and I got to finally visit this country of which I heard so much as a child. Since my sister is currently studying in Lugano, Switzerland, this was a perfect excuse to visit this country. We took a flight to Milan and rented a car there to do the traveling.

We spent New Year in Zurich and got to walk along the lakeside where they had end-of-year festivities going on. The lake is populated by beautiful swans and don’t seem to mind the frigid temperatures. 

Zurich is very close to the German border and also to the Rhine Falls. We took this short drive to the falls which, despite being cold and misty, offered an imposing view.

We spent a day in Lucerne. This is a gorgeous town with the stereotypical lake next to the city and snow-capped mountains in the background. Somehow this seems to be a common thread in many Swiss towns offering  incredibly beautiful views every time.

Near Lucerne is Mount Pilatus. To get there you have to take either a cogwheel train (not available in the Winter) or a funicular. We did the latter, although prices seemed to be rather steep for just the ride (over $50 per adult). Anyway, the view was rather nice going up, although once there the view was not that exciting since it was completely covered by clouds/fog that day.

We picked up and drove again for a couple of days to the Grindelwald Ski resort. This is a huge complex, which is actually composed of several resorts in a series of mountains. The view are just amazing and difficult to do justice in pictures. The first day we did some sledding which was very fun. Unfortunately Austin and I crashed in a hole. He suffered some skin scrapes while I managed to dislocate my shoulder. Although very painful, I was able to instruct my sister on how to replace it back. Unfortunately, that meant I was basically done with winter sports for the duration of the vacation, so the next day I talk a nice long alpine walk while Julie, my sister and the kids did some skiing.

Finally, we drove back to Lugano where we did some sightseeing around the lake and on nearby Monte Bre. We got there just on time for sunset and the views were again amazing.

Overall we found Switzerland to even more beautiful than already expected. However, we did also find it to be way too expensive for tourists.