Spending 48 hours in Belgrade, Serbia

Belgrade is a city I’ve wanted to visit for so long-I have a couple of Serbian friends and so seeing a little bit of their country is really important to me. It’s never been an easy to get to country for me, though, which is why it’s taken me until 2025 to manage it! Spending 48 hours in Belgrade was all we could fit in, this time, but I already know I’ll be back.

We visited Belgrade after Sarajevo because there were direct flights to and from both cities, and between them, if we started at Luton airport, and whilst that’s a real trek for us to get to from the north, doing it to manage both of these new countries made sense. I’ve really enjoyed all of the Balkan countries I’ve visited and Serbia was the last one for me to be able to say I’d briefly visited them all.

Serbia was originally part of Yugoslavia until 1992, when it then became Federal Republic of Yugoslavia until Montenegro declared it’s independence in 2003 and Kosovo did the same in 2008. There’s a lot of protests happening in the country currently, and I’m not going to pretend I know enough to do this subject justice, but we did hear a bit about it during our walking tour. Effectively, Serbian citizens are not happy with a lot of what the government are doing, so they’re taking to the streets to make their voices heard.

My friend who was born in Belgrade told me the city is full of street art and that it’s known for it’s nightlife, specifically the many bars/clubs on boats on the river. I’d heard of their football team, Redstar Belgrade, and it’s ‘ultras’, but didn’t know much else about the city-and I love those sort of trips, exploring a city with no preconceptions.

What do I need to know if I’m visiting Belgrade?

First of all, the internet had told me, in many places, that on arrival into Belgrade airport, you needed to declare anything of value (such as laptops, cameras etc). We travel with a laptop each and one of my two cameras, so we were very aware of this as we didn’t want to have any problems when we left. Well, there was nowhere to declare these items, or certainly absolutely no signs about where to do this at Belgrade airport, and no one cared on the way back out of the country either. Maybe that’s an old rule?

When visiting Serbia, you need to register with the local police within 24 hours of arrival. Hotels do it for you and so we were expecting to need to do it ourselves as we were in an air b n b. But actually, our host did it, and we got a confirmation email that it was done. Make sure you have that, even if you’re only spending 48 hours in Belgrade, as you could be asked for it at any point.

Protests were happening whilst we were there and we got caught in the city during one. We popped into a coffee shop and didn’t feel at all unsafe, but public transport stopped due to road closures, we had to walk back to our accommodation and we missed our evening plans, which I’m still sad about.

Serbian currency, dinars, can’t be exchanged outside of the country. I brought home about £5 worth because I knew my Serbian friend, Dan, would like to show his kids, and a couple of notes for my foreign currency collection.

Like a lot of countries, you must always carry your passport.

UK citizens are entitled to free emergency healthcare in Serbia. Useful, but you should still make sure you have travel insurance!

All public transport is free except minibus A1 to Airport (400 dinar) and E minibus lines. Buses, trams, trolleys and even BG Voz city trains are free.

Taking photos of police or military personnel is not recommended and may lead to you being arrested. Frankly, it’s wise not to do that in any country, in my experience.

How much will I spend each day visiting Belgrade?

Across three full days in the city (including a day trip), we spent;

4300 dinar on transport. This was a taxi from the airport and a bus back to the airport, public transport in the city itself is free. £122.61 on eating out, desserts and coffees. £41 on activities, which was two zoo tickets and two football tickets. £4.46 on one souvenir. £22.34 in the supermarket, this came out of our at home food budget. £37.40 on toiletries and medication I wanted, including shampoo and conditioner as there was none in our air b n b.

We spent a total of £274.96 which did include £14 on a taxi we ordered that didn’t accept the job and never refunded us either.

How expensive is travel and accommodation?

We flew from Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina to Belgrade for £64 between us, and paid £28.50 for our flight back to Luton. Accommodation cost £100 for four nights and that was the lower end of the accommodation, we could have gone for something a bit more expensive-but we had cooking facilities, a washing machine and the apartment was spacious enough for two of us for a short time.

If we’d flown direct from Luton, our flights and accommodation would have been just £170, between us. Super cheap!

What should I see when spending 48 hours in Belgrade?

Whilst we stayed for four nights, we had one day trip, a late afternoon arrival and an early flight home, so we were only spending 48 hours in Belgrade itself. I think that was enough time to get a good look at the city, but not necessarily enough to do it justice, so I’d recommend 72 or 96 hours if you can.

Day One

It’s a travel blogger cliche, but we started our first morning in Belgrade with a free walking tour. It leaves at 11am from Republic Square, and whilst you don’t need to book, it’s recommended. As with all tours it’s customary to tip afterwards, I tend to do around £10 per person in local currency.

The tour was good, and if you don’t have a lot of time, want to hang out with other people or don’t feel as confident navigating a new city alone I’d recommend it, but the more free walking tours I do, the more I realise that in some cities, I’d prefer to explore in my own timeframe. If you like a walking tour, do it. If you don’t, skip it.

The tour left us in Skadarlija, Belgrade’s version of Paris’ Montemarte. Skadarlija is known as a bohemian area with plenty of gift shops, cute cobbled streets and a good selection of Kafanas, which are cosy, chilled restaurants serving good food, drinks, and usually with some sort of musicians playing to entertain visitors. We decided to eat at Dva Jelena (The Two Deers) a 180 year old Kafana, trying some Serbian food with absolutely massive portions.

After a good feed we wandered through Dorcol neighbourhood, part of the old town, filled with street art (and where my friend was born-not relevant to anyone else reading this but pretty cool for me!) I enjoyed street art spotting, it’s always one of my favourite things to do.

Our next stop was the church of St Sava, as I’d been told they’d recently finished their moasics-and I’m so glad I went. The church was absolutely beautiful, as you can see from my photos.

We then set off back to Revolution Square to get the tram back to our accommodation, as we had very exciting evening plans-tickets to see a Red Star Belgrade match. J and I both have season tickets for our team, Burnley, so we’re pretty into football, and we’ve made a pact to see more sport abroad. Tickets were only £5.61 each and we got them online the night before, so the game was pretty accessible to tourists. Unfortunately, though, the city had other plans for us-there was a protest, public transport stopped, and we arrived back at our accommodation, where we needed to drop shopping and my camera, after the game had started. I’ll always be really sad we missed it.

Day Two

Our second day in the city started out a bit more relaxed, as we headed to a park near our apartment so J and I could run. Well, he did a proper run, I did a run 5, walk 3, run 5, walk 3, run 5 couch to 5k ‘run’. It was still nice though, and the first time I’ve ran on a trip-it won’t be the last.

I felt like I’d seen the bits of the city I really wanted to, as sometimes I can feel like returning to the same part is a bit of a waste of time, and we’d spotted that Belgrade Zoo had some really cool animals (white lions and a white tiger, for a start) so we went there just after lunch. The heavens opened, so we sat in a cafe inside waiting for the rain to stop, which luckily it did. The zoo was really quiet, likely because it was a midweek afternoon, and we saw most of it quite quickly, but failed to find their white tiger, their hippos and a couple of other animals. We were amazed at how closely we could see the beautiful white lions, who were hanging out in an inside enclosure next to a floor to ceiling glass window, so we really got to appreciate how majestic they were. Gorgeous cats.

If you do go to the zoo, be aware that their website makes a big deal of how you can’t take food and drink inside, and there’s plenty of places to get all the food and drink you need. That is-a blatant lie! We walked the whole zoo and I was really really hungry, and there was nothing open for food. I had to buy some not that great snacks at their gift shop on the way out, as I felt a bit woozy!

After the zoo, we walked to another Kafana, SFRJ, which had been recommended by my friend Ljudmila. She told me that the views over the river were amazing (she was not wrong) and that they had lots of Yugoslavia bits and bobs all over, a bit like a small museum. It was really cool, the food was good (more massive portions) but I do wish we’d reserved a table as we couldn’t sit by the window. Fair, but a shame, as the sun had started to go down and it was really pretty.

Once we’d been fed we walked up to Kalemegdan fortress, which we’d been through on our walking tour the day before. I’d read that locals watched the sunset from the park and the views over the river were beautiful, a great way to end our second day in the city.

If I had more time I would have liked to cross the river and explore new Belgrade and it’s brutalist architecture. J fancied hunting down Novak Djokovic’s restaurant, and I would have liked to just wander the streets more, seeing what I could find accidentally.

If I return to Belgrade, I’ll take a few hours to visit nearby Zenum, and just spend more time in coffee shops, looking around shops and seeing what the locals are up to.