Day 6 - Novi Sad, Serbia

6-3 Mon

from the OAT itinerary:

Day 6:

After breakfast this morning, enjoy an included tour of Novi Sad, Serbia's cultural hub, and second-largest city. The beauty of the city is in its name—Novi Sad in English translates to "new garden." Nestled along a bend in the Danube River, Novi Sad is peppered with myriad historical and cultural monuments, verdant parks, bustling squares, a thriving pedestrian zone, and a history-rich fortress standing tall on the right bank of the river.

After lunch onboard, the remainder of the afternoon is at leisure to further discover Novi Sad on your own. Perhaps you'll choose to explore the Petrovaradin Fortress, built between 1692 and 1780 by the Austrians as a defense against invading Turks. Declared a historical monument 200 years later, this partially restored fortress is now a museum. Delve deep into its strange past, including a twelve-mile network of underground tunnels, a mysterious well with supposed links to black magic, and an iconic clock tower on which the size of the minute and hour hands are reversed.

Tonight, enjoy dinner at a local restaurant.

* * * * *

We don’t seem to get much sleep on this vacation, ha-ha. We are awake so early. Woke up at 5:30 am this morning again. Decided I had to try though and turned against the wall. It only took 30 seconds and I was asleep again. An hour later I woke up out of the deepest sleep when James came in with a cup of tea. It looks like a great day today. We have docked already. The sun is shining and it looks interesting outside. We are in Novi Sad, Serbia.

Breakfast at 7 am as usual and Discovery & Learning Lecture at 9 am. “Why Serbia is not in the EU?” is very interesting. Glad I went to hear it.

10 am we start on our walking tour of the City. Of course we leave in our color coordinated groups. I don’t think I mentioned that we have “whisperers” in our rooms in chargers waiting to be used by us. The daily itinerary tells us when to bring them with the headsets. Those things are really great. You don’t have to try to stand next to the guide as close enough to hear them. You hear the information and can turn and look at things, walk around and take photos. We have a local guide and it was very interesting.

This photo taken for our grandsons who love popcorn. Do you see the popcorn on the roof?

Novi Sad is a really nice town. With lots of pedestrian streets. First we are taken to the open air market. Since there are mainly older people they don’t speak much English but they always seem to be friendly.

The local guides tells us about the world’s most expensive bench from America. Lots of people don’t seem to be happy about the price-tag. 

Lots of interesting things to see. Lots of interesting information. I am not going to repeat this here though. If a photo looks deserted that is because I was waiting to as many people to get out of the photo as possible. It was a very lively buzzing town. 

At 12:15 am we have lunch in a local restaurant in the city. It is very nice and fun.

Of course it starts out with the customary “shot”. 

After that we are free to walk back to the ship by ourselves. It is easy to find. We stop though at the Orthodox Church which we were interested to see.

The place to light a candle to say a prayer was in a little room to the side. We see how black the walls were, black with soot. When we visit other orthodox churches the guides tell us that the frescos had to be cleaned because you could not see them any more from all the use of candles. Now the churches use electric light too and are very careful about candle use.

From the outside.

We just have a little time to refresh ourself at the ship and at 3 pm is the next adventure. All on foot. Those who want to walk to the bridge and over to the Fort.  The official way to write things in Serbia is with cyrillic letters. Here “River Danube” is written two ways.

Alex explains to us that Serbians really like Americans but a few days some protesters wrote this on the bridge. The ironic thing is that the bridge was built by Americans. 

On the other side we meet our new local guy he works for the museum. His name was difficult. We had been told there were 214 steps up and I was worried about that but it was no problem for me. The guide leads up all the steps and then into and through the tunnel of the fort. It was all very interesting. Very unusual. We had never seen a fort like this.

Once we were out and had paid the guide, James wanted to walk the circle around but I decided to make my way back to the ship. 

It still was quite a way. But first I went to the famous “Drunken Tower” to enjoy the view.

I took my time looking here and there and leisurely walked back down and over the bridge. When I was on the other side I also walked a little under the bridge to take a photo from there. 

Happen to see James walking over the bridge too. 

We refreshed in the cabin and then had a beer on the sundeck. 

We went to the Port Talk (about what’s happening tomorrow), get to know a new card game (5 crowns) from some nice fellow travelers, and go to dinner. I need to quit taking all 4 courses but how can you resist? The dessert was especially incredible today. But may be I burned some calories today. 16024 steps so far.

And that is it for today!