Road Trip 2024

 DAY TWELVE Novi Sad to Sarajevo The penultimate day (day before last) of our travelling, we started by walking down the stairs from our castle and into town. Later in the day the French President will follow in our footsteps on his visit to Serbia! Novi Sad (New Town) rather surprised us with its wide public precinct and many squares with lots of attractive, and fairly new, restaurants and cafes. It also boasted many art nouveau style buildings, and most of there were in a good state.                Whereas, in other towns and cities the doors along the road would lead nto some sort of courtyard, often a garden (today parking) or a small restaurant, the larger doorways here led to narrow alleyways which both served as shopping malls and as passage to the next street and there might be three or four of these in one block of buildings.         Then it was on south and west towards Sarajevo. But first time to take in the scenery; first the usual yellow and brown fields of dying sunflower

 DAY ELEVEN Goodbye Romania - out with a bang Leaving Sibiu we used the motorway for the first time since arriving in Romania. So far, we had used a combination of main roads and country roads. Generally, both of these were of good quality. Only occasionally had we found roads which seemed to have had their top surface removed (Schotterpiste!), but twice, in relatively isolated villages (e.g. near to where the Harvest Festival had been) there were workers making a new surface to roads. Today´s motorway was of good quality with frequent small petrol stations with services - and free WiFi. After taking a detour to Hunedoara we saw how some of the towns have suffered from not being able to compete economically: fairly substantial iron and steel works, empty and rusting. The town looked rather run down too. However, when we arrived at our destination - Wow (for me at least). The area before the castle was modern and being improved, a couple of gift kiosks, a smart restaurant and a new hote