Today we decided to go and explore the streets of Belgrade as it was a beautiful day and spring was in the air. We planned our tour with the help of our Serbian tour guide book and it would entail walking to Trg Republike (the main square of Belgrade) and then down the pedestrian street Knez Mihailova. We then would walk along the streets that once ran next to the city wall and are some of the oldest streets in Belgrade.
This lovely fountain is situated a block from our apartment on Trg Nikole Pašića. It is also where the cinemas are. We passed this fountain and crossed the street to pass the City Hall of Belgrade which had the most beautiful flowers in the garden in front of it as you can see below.
When you walk through Pionirski park you get to the Parliament of Serbia. This also used to be a palace of the King of Yugoslavia and is situated almost next to the City Hall with a lovely garden between the two buildings as you can see in the photo below. The building seen in the photo is again the City Hall but from the side.
From the City Hall we than walked to Trg Republike. This square is quite significant because it symbolizes a few things to the Serbian people. Firstly it has the statue of Prince Mihailo Obrenović which is the man that finally freed the Serbian people from Turkish rule. Trg Republike is situated 
where the main gate to the walled city of Belgrade used to be. This gate was called Istanbul gate and symbolized the Turkish rule over the Serbian People. It was broken down on the departure of the Turks from Belgrade and the stone form the gate was used to build the foundations of the National Theater. The photograph below shows the statue of Prince Mihailo Obrenović and the National theatre in the background.Trg Republike ironically, got its name to commemorate the fall of the monarchy and the beginning of the communistic Republik of Yugoslavia
From Trg Republike we then walked along the pedestrain street Knez Mihailova which is also named after Prince Mihaila Obrenović. The buildings in this street are quite beautiful and we actually felt like we were in Europe for the first time and it has this lovely drinking fountain.
Near the end of Knez Mihailova is the City library which is special in that it has some roman ruins in its basement. When we went down to the basement we came across a very "interesting" librarian who showed us the ruins but also insisted on showing us his books and taking a lot of photos of us. ;-D Below is a photo of a pipe dating from Roman times wow!Before we got to Kalemegdan which is at the end of Knez Mihailova we turned into Kralja Petra Street which leads to the Orthodox Cathedral and the cafe opposite it with the name "? Cafe" and then into the street that followed the city wall Kosančićev Venac.
The old cafe dating form 1823 has the following story. It changed owners a few times and at a certain point was called "At the Cathedral" (as it opposite the orthodox cathedral) but the church authorities had a problem with that so for the time being the owner had a "?" outside the cafe as he was thinking of a new name. The people thought it was the new name and the "?" stuck. We decided to try out this "? cafe" and had our lunch here. Below is a photograph of the cafe and the menu. Which was questionable...?
After we had our lunch of veal and mutton with potatoes we then continued on to Kosančićev Venac with its cobblestones. Walking along Kosančićev Venac (seen below left) we came across the site that used to be the National Library of Serbia. This building was bombed during world war II and a lot of written Serbain history was lost. The photo on the right below is what is left of this building.
Following the old streets we worked our way back to Knez Mihailova and then home. We had a lovely time. At firsts glance Belgrade does not have much to offer esoterically but when you look closely there are indeed some interesting and beautiful things to see.
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