A Belated Ella Tili's Birthday Party Blog - Ella Tili's Ada Safari

For my birthday I invited Emma, Dina and Sylvia to Ada for a picnic and safari! Ada is quite a place with lots of children's play areas, sports facilities, a cycle path, and in summer a significant number of Belgraders swim from the pebble beaches in the man-made lake fed from the Sava River through filter beds.  

There is one area with benches and tables under trees with fire places close to hand.

Two Princesses on the swing!

The safari begins! A mad dash from one object to the next...achtung velo!

The clues led us to our final destination...

...ice cream and a late evening swim.

An extremely brave kitten! Lessons from Sigi on how to correctly handle and stroke a cat. 

A team hard to beat on their circular Hopovo Monasteries Hike-Bike

 The team decided to postpone November yet for another week end....

...and did so extremely successfully!

The circular walk starting at Novo Hopovo Monastery comes highly recommended. Cross the ditch at the end of the little valley (steep dirty trail for 10m!) to the right of the Monastery to reach the well heart sign posted trail. Follow it up all the way mostly in a small valley, until reaching the ridge where a few coffee places mark Iriski Venac (to your left, when climbing, the road can be heard, but not seen). Follow the path to the right and then left of the ridge road direction East, passing the Planinarski dom (good capuchino) and the big Partisan memorial sight. After a descent, spot the poster on the right sight of the road. From there, the trail, again well heart signposted, seems to return into the direction you came from, and climb up, but this is only to reach a beautiful ridge, leading all the way down to Stara Hopovo Monastery. There is a sign posted short cut leading to the spring some 200m away from the Monastery where locals come to fetch water. Reaching Novo from Staro you either follow the tarmac road as the locals do, or again continue on the well heart sign posted trail. Do not miss the well sign posted turn off to the right just ouside a Vikiendi settlement, but leading off the dirt track! Should take about 3 hours, it is 10km long. A map is despite the panels still very useful, as no directions are indicated!)

From Strazilova to Grgeteg Monastery

Crossing endless yellow Voivodinian fields, with hot coffee in our hands, we had reached Sremski Karlovski by train in a very relaxed way - ETs bike was guarded all the way by two police men, all included in fare, which was very cheap anyway! A taxi brought us up to Strazilova, where the morning dew had refreshed this beautiful and shady corner of Fruska Gora. All was deeply at peace. An elderly couple had rushed up behind us in their old yugo, heading straight for a table next to the car park. He laid the table including two napkins, got the rakia and yoghurt out, she had lit a cigarette, and finally the transistor radio was turned on - and that is how they must have spent their Saturday morning quite happily!

Up at Brankov's grave wide open views opened, and with great help from Nadia, a bed for Zwärgli had to be constructed!

Well, and then came the reward of pulling and pushing up ET on her bike (great thanks to Nadia helping pulling and pushing, too!!!): ET set off as fast as never before!

Well, it came at a price!

But not that is had put her off the adventure!

At the monastery's picnic table we shared our treasures, surrounded by autumn coloured forests and good views direction Irig Nadia and Mama enjoyed a good glass of Fruska Gora wine, and reloaded batteries.

After a final descent, we reached the Monastery Grgeteg. Very much due to its location on the tree line, and far away from any settlement makes it one of our preferred ones among the 16 in FG!

100ds of ladybirds, Glückskäferli accompanied us all day - a truly lucky day to the three of us! Thank you so much again, Nadia, it was a great pleasure to have you with us.

Autumn impressions along the Sava river in Beograd