This day-trip delivers as advertised, as it affords tourists to Belgrade an opportunity to visit locations outside the city that would be near impossible to do independently,
We were asked to present ourselves outside the entrance to our hotel 7:30 AM, and sure enough, the van with guide and driver was waiting for us even before the prescribed time.
Julia, our guide, was happy to point out significant landmarks in Belgrade as we drove to leave the city. She explained how one goes about exploiting the city's public transport system, as guidebooks still retain the outdated info that one can simply pay the drivers the transport fare.
The first stop on the tour was the Manasija Monastery, and the tour description correctly forewarned one of the necessity to bring cash for the monastery store.
The second stop was the Resavska Cave (entrance fee included in tour price), and the tour guide enhanced our experience by pointing out interesting cave formations that seemed to reflect animal and human figures.
A stop at the Lisine Waterfall was topped off by the driver offering an assortment of Serbian fruit-flavored Rakija that included a souvenir glass.
The tour ended with a well-selected stop at a countryside restaurant that served excellent Serbian cuisine, but which was ridiculously cheap. My wife and I managed to have a satisfying lunch for a combined total of around 11-12 euros.
On the way back to Belgrade, the guide and driver offered to drop us off at a requested restaurant, but the guide first called the restaurant to discover they were reluctant to accept patrons at the moment. The guide then called a second restaurant for us, securing a reservation, and even accompanied us to the premises to confirm that the reservation was being held for us.
As a former travel-agency owner, I can attest to the professionalism of the guide and driver.
A minor criticism is that on the way back to Belgrade we stopped at the "honey village," and were given tastes of different varieties of the local honey. The driver, however, took it on himself to collect some apples and wouldn't accept a "no" when the apples were presented as gifts. Reluctantly, we accepted the apples as to not offend the driver. However, our plans were to travel internationally within the following 48 hours, and fresh fruit is a contraband item for most customs authorities. If one is caught taking contraband into a country, often enough this info is entered into an international database. In the United States, for example, we enjoy the privileges of having SENTRI cards that expedite our crossings from Mexico to the USA that otherwise can sometimes take hours. We recall a couple at the USA/Mexico border with a couple of apples in their front seat, and their SENTRI privileges were revoked permanently, condemning them to wait additional hundreds of hours at the border crossing to reach their Mexican second home. So, in the future, tour participants should be allowed to politely decline items that could present customs difficulties.
