Cafes and Such

Cafes and Such
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
6:56 AM

We had another day without anything too specific as Marko was flying to Paris on Thursday and I was trying to work out my schedule for the rest of trip but had failed to do it up to this point (semi-busy without internet access). In the afternoon we met up with one of his friends who was in med school in Belgrade and just had gotten back from a vacation in Egypt where she said the sea life was amazing. As the bulk of the conversation was in Serbian I took some time to watch the café television that was showing reruns of ESPN Bassmaster competitions. I found it both interesting and awesome to watch such a decidedly American (at least in presentation) sporting event in a foreign country.

I snuck out a bit early to get some initial travel planning work done and to work on catching up the old weblog a bit. I did have one beneficial finding though, flying from Italy to London then to Dublin would actually be a little bit cheaper than flying straight to Dublin. I've always wanted to check London out, and while it is still disgustingly expensive the pound is weaker than it has been in the past so it is as good an opportunity as any. When Marko got back I readied up to take a jog and we met with Jovanna who was in from Cacak in preparation for an English test that she was going to have to take.

We took a bus down to the Danube and stopped in at Marko's favorite restaurant where they posted while I hit the trail. I took a fairly long loop down the river and around the man-made lake and for no real reason it reminded me of Greater Phoenix's beloved Tempe Town Lake. We had been to the lake for a quick glance earlier in the trip but it was nice to get a look around it. Most of the lake was surrounded by restaurants and clubs and they all looked really nice. When I got back to the restaurant we grubbed a bit.

Marko and Jovanna went out but I elected to stay in as I needed to finalize all my travel plans. I needed to know when I was going to fly out of Italy and how quickly I was going to get to Greece as I wanted to stop in Bulgaria and I entertained the thought of hitting Istanbul. I decided that Istanbul was a bit too far out of the way and would have been too costly as my Eurail pass doesn't include it but I've heard great things so I definitely want to go next time I'm out in this area. I ended up booking a flight to London for a total of 25 Euro, 10 of that being my bag fee, and 5 of it being a fee for the pleasure of using a credit card.