Our Balkan Week - Part 2 : Unexpected Kosovo (Prizren, Pristina, Peja)

Mallaury
20 janv. 2018
4 min de lecture

Remember, we were in a bus leading us from Skopje - Macedonia, to Prizren in the South of Kosovo. After 3 hours trip, we arrive by night in "the most beautiful town in Kosovo", also called "the Cultural Capital of Kosovo".

One day in Prizren

I guess the pic bellow is the view the most known from Prizren... and it sure deserves to be, the fortress in the back, the houses climbing up the hillside, the Sinan Pasha Mosque, the Stone Bridge - Ura e Gurit - and the café terraces along the river.

You obviously can not visit Prizren without climbing to the town's Fortress - Kalaja e Prizrenit. To do so, you simply need to follow a path from the center of the town to the fortress. Ask locals if you feel you need help. But the way is pretty well indicated.

We read on a website that this spot is just amazing to have a view over the lights of Prizren at night. Unfortunately we personally didn't have the time to make it... next time !

The Sinan Pasha Mosque gives a special look to Prizren skyline from the top of the Kalaja, and it is also worth it to enter in.

Going to Prizren, we had also plan to visit the Mahmet Pasha Hamam, but - tough luck ! - it was closed for renovation. We could only see it from outside.

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Three days in Pristina, the capital

Pristina is for sure not the most touristic city in the World... However, chilling there for few days is truly worth it. I would say that the city's main feature are its cafés, bars and restaurants. Food speaking, we had our first diner in Pristina straight after our bus arrival from Prizren. We met Lucie to eat at Baba Ghanoush which was advised to us as the best vegetarian restaurant in town.

Just ask for your way on the spot, everyone seem to know this place.

To keep on our restaurant list, we also ate the cute Dit' e Nat'. The mood is super chill, as in a lot of cafés, restaurants or bars, there's a big shelve full of books (also in English), smooth music, delicious vegetarian food, AND (bonus) A CAT.

As we asked for a restaurant serving traditionnal food (hard to get for us because mostly with meat, lot of meat), Lucie led us to Liburnia. It's completely another kind of ambiance, quite everything is made out of "old" wood, you can eat near by a beautiful oven, bref, you're not in the previous "hipster" places.

We also had luch at Sonder it seems to be the favorite lunch-place of the expats working in international institutions. The menu is based on healthy food (salads, sandwitched and smoothies).

If you want to eat indian food I advise you a small Indian Nepalese restaurant : Himalayan Gorkha Restaurant. It's hard to find it when you don't already know the place, the location is quite weird in a sort of selling gallery, however it's still on the huge UCK avanue.

We spent our evenings in several bars : Kafja e Vogel; Miqt Taverna ; Soma Book Station and some others I forgot the name. The street Fehmi Agani (where was our accommodation) is full of really cool bars with winter terrace where you're allowed to smoke and be near by a heater.

You need to try at least a shot of Raki the Balkan's brandy.

But, do not worry we did some stuff else than eating and drinking.

One of the coolest thing to visit in Pristina is the Cathedral of Saint Mother Teresa.

If the cathedral is quite beautiful, I have to admit that it's not that much my thing. However, thanks to Lucie (who told us) we were able to take an elevator to reach the top of the church, for only 1€ each.

From there you have a pretty nice view over Pristina. You can see the famous Kosovo's National Library :

This weird building is often mentioned as one of the ugliest one around the world.

From the Cathedral it's a 10 minutes walk.

Near by the Library is a Serbian unfinished orthodox church : Church of Christ the Saviour.

We kept on our way and reached the NEW BORN monument, symbol of Kosovo's independance.

The design of this monument is changed every year. This year 2017 they've decided to fall the letters N and W. At the beginning we did not understand the meaning at all, we were even kinda pissed that we were seeing it that way. But then we got to know that there were white painted letters on the floor what was writing : "No Walls". We guess it refers to the controversial wall that Serbia wanted to build in Mitrovica, a town in North Kosovo.

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One Day in Peja

We took a bus (again) from Pristina and head to the cute town of Peja for our last full day in Kosovo. And that was a really good plan !

The scenery is wonderful : the mountains all around, the proud mosque standing in the middle of a maze of lively streets, and the terrace of a café to have such an amazing view over it.

We enjoyed being in Peja to visit the Patriarchal Monastery of Peć (Peć is the Serbian name of Peja). The mood there is quite weird, specially at the entrance guarded by police officers who need to check your passports as if you were changing countries, crossing a border. I guess that in a way we were really crossing one. Inside the Serbian Monastry live only serbians, a small community.