Our Many Moons of Honey: Beautiful Serbia: Part II

We did two short day trips while in Belgrade; one was to a town called Topola an the other was to the hill of Avala. Topola is located about 85 km from Belgrade on the slopes of the Oplenac hill. It is a well-known historical locaton assoicated with Karadjordje, a Serbian revolutionary chosen as the leader of the first Serbian uprising against the Ottoman Empire in 1804. The beautiful white marbled five dome church that sits on top of the Oplenac hill is the burial place of the Karedjordjevac Dynasty. The interior is quite something to see with its walls and ceilings decorated with a mosaic depicting Serbian Orthodox frescoes. The mosaic consists of 60 million tiles!! There is also this fantastic chandelier made from melted enemy weapons from WWI. Unfortunately, cameras were not allowed inside so we don't have our own pictures.

The hill of Avala is another great day-trip. It is only 15 km's from downtown Belgrade and has a large recreational park, a monument to the unknown soldier (in honour of those who died in WWI) and the newly re-built Avala TV tower (the first one was destroyed in the NATO bombings in 1999). The monument of the unknown soldier is an impressive marble structure housing eight female sculptures representing the mother of a soldier from each of the different nationalities forming Yugoslavia at that time.

And suprise suprise, we ate an excellent rostilj at the Hotel Avala restaurant at the very top of the hill (several pictures of table spread were posted on our earlier food post J ). Tip: If you do ever eat at this restaurant, don't have the muckalica, as the waiter put it, "they don't know how to make it well here". Of course, a few words on the Avala TV Tower: its reconstruction was just recently refinished (April 2010) and it is currently the tallest structure in Serbia at 204m high (though its got nothing on our CN Tower).