Day 04 - Friday 29th May

We had a good night's sleep. It would have been even better if we'd been able to work out how to adjust the air conditioning to make it a little warmer.

After I put on my hearing aids, I realised that the rooms are not particularly well sound proofed. This is partly because there is an interconnecting door to the next suite. Also there is no carpet on the floors - just a couple of mats.

The door locks are somewhat dated because it uses a key lock rather than the electronic systems you generally see nowadays in hotels. There wasn't even a way of locking the door once you are inside - except by using the key from the inside.

There was a buffet breakfast in the hotel restaurant offering a good range of options. The selection was quaint and probably reflected local customs. Unlike yesterday afternoon and evening, there were quite a few guests in the restaurant.

For this morning, we'd booked to go on a guided tour (Serbian Heritage Tours) of Belgrade with a guide and a driver starting at 9am in the hotel foyer. Our guide, Snezana, runs her own business providing customised tours of Belgrade. Her driver was parked in the laneway next to the hotel.

First they took us to the banks of the Saba River where we could see the junction of this river and the Danube River. Next we drove to the Belgrade Fortress which is located on a hill that overlooks the rivers.

The fortress has tall stone walls, gateways, timber bridges, churches, courtyards, parks and various other buildings.

When we went inside the first church, she wasn't sure if I'd be allowed to take photos. The priest was busy chatting to other people so eventually she said to take the photos anyway provided I didn't use the flash. It was a good test of the new cameras ability to take photos inside a dimly lit building.

In the second church, there was a service underway and so she said to look but not take photos.

The tour of the fortress ended at park where we had ended our walk yesterday afternoon. She took us along some of the plaza we walked down yesterday and then down side-streets to see other interesting buildings and churches.

Our driver met us there and took us to a national museum where Tito and his wife are buried. This is on a tree-lined park overlooking the city.

The final destination on the tour was St Saba Cathedral. This is a very impressive structure that is currently being refurbished. Next to it is another smaller church where the decorations have already been fully restored and maintained.

Our tour was due to finish at 1pm but it was close to 1:30pm by the time we got back to our hotel - mainly because of the city traffic.

Snezana was certainly a knowledgeable guide. She was keen to explain about everything we went past. In fact, I often found it hard to get a word in and so it was sometimes hard to get an answer to my questions.

Once again we considered other options for lunch before concluding that the hotel restaurant was once again the best option. I asked the waiter for a Serbian beer. He said the most popular beer is Jelen and I could see why because it was an enjoyable beer.

Our flight to Vienna with Serbian Air was due to leave at 6:55pm and so we'd organised for the hotel's driver to pick us up from the hotel at 4:45pm to take us to the hotel. Although there was quite a lot of traffic (mainly going the other way into town thankfully), we got to the airport in less than 30 minutes.

Once again check-in was quick. The gate didn't open until 6pm and so we filled in time have an ice cream and a glass of wine. We noticed that the aircraft was labelled Aviolet instead of Air Serbia.

All the passengers must have been punctual because the plane pulled away from the terminal ten minutes early. The flight to Vienna was only about an hour and so the flight attendant quickly distributed a snack and some wine. The snack consisted of a chicken roll, biscuit and water. Quite OK for a quick snack.

The Hilton Hotel's driver was waiting for us when we emerged from customs. He had a nice big black Mercedes for the 15 minute journey into Vienna. As you would expect the Hilton is an impressive hotel with good service.

The hotel has free WiFi in the lobby area but you need to pay for internet access in the room. However the lady at reception suggested we sign up to join Hilton Honors so we could get free access. It turned out that the internet speed was much slower than at the hotel in Belgrade.

We also asked her advice about sight-seeing for tomorrow.

After settling into our room, we came back down to the foyer. I ate a club sandwich for dinner an ordered a glass of Blaufrankisch which is an Austrian red wine.