Serbia

We spent last weekend in Belgrade, Serbia - not a place we ever thought we'd visit. 

I had a conference there so we bought some extra train tickets and the whole family came along for the ride. The 8 hour ride (which actually seems longer when there's a group of drunk 30-something guys in the seats across from your kids...) was rough. And long. Way too long.

While there we toured the Nikola Tesla museum, a Medieval torture device museum, visited Republic Square, the Fortress of Belgrade, the Roman Well, the city park, the Bohemian Quarter (Skadarlija), the Parliament building, walked by the zoo & amusement park, saw St. Mark's church, saw the famous Hotel Moscow, some local parks and (of course) McDonald's. My kids have made it a mission of theirs to eat at McDonald's in every country we visit. I picked up all of one word in 4 days there - Hvala - which means 'thank you'. 

We saw a few interesting sights on our way into the country and the city. Recently, a border has been erected between Hungary and Serbia due to the current migrant/refugee situation and the train goes right through there. 

We also saw some buildings that were still standing despite being bombed in 1999 by NATO as well as some memorials to those who died in the bombings. 

We left the weekend with a sweet note to the hotel staff at Hotel Excelsior from our youngest about how much he liked the family suite room. (We really did like it - plenty of room for the 6 of us and they were very accommodating). 

Oh yeah, the conference talk went well, too :)