Day 4: Pristina

Having discovered the joy of burek in Kosovo yesterday evening, we decided to start today the same way

After breakfast we set out to see the sights of Pristina. There are not necessarily a huge amount of sights to see in Pristina, so we weren't expecting quite as scenic a day as those we've already had in Peja and Prizren, but I had made a short list of place of note from the Kosovo guidebook.

The first of these was just a few minutes' walk away from where we were staying.

This is the cathedral of Mother Teresa. If you think it looks pretty new, that's because it is pretty new! Construction started in 2007 and it wasn't formally consecrated until 2017.

As we walked through a small park on the opposite side of the road to the cathedral, we got our first glimpse of the next attraction on my list.

This is the National Library of Kosovo, which has the dubious honour of frequently being voted one of the ugliest buildings in the world.

Up close it is very odd; almost prison-like with all the windows seemingly covered in bars.

From a distance it looks slightly better.

Just behind the library, this more attractive building is the Church of Christ the Saviour.

Construction on this Serbian Orthodox church began in the 1990s, before eventually being halted by the war. It seems unlikely now that it will ever be finished.

A little further on, we found one of Pristina's most famous monuments: the Newborn monument.

This was first unveiled in 2008, on the day on which Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia. Every year, on the anniversary of independence, the monument is repainted with a different theme. This year's seemed very pretty

From here we walked down the capital's main street, Mother Teresa Boulevard.

Although around 94% of the population of Kosovo is Muslim, Mother Teresa seems to have a certain amount of popularity as a famous Albanian.

The boulevard itself is a nice leafy street and, best of all, it was pedestrianised. The traffic in Kosovo can be a bit manic at times!

At the end of the boulevard, we found ourselves in Skanderbeg Square.

Skanderbeg was an Albanian national hero who fought against the Ottomans. I think we'll find a square named after him later this year in Tirana too!

On the opposite side of the square was a statue of Ibrahim Rugova. He was one of the founding fathers of the independence movement in Kosovo and also the first president. Everywhere we've been seems to have a street named after him.

We passed the square which is home to Kosovo's parliament building. It wasn't very impressive!

From here we followed a series of smaller streets into the older part of town.

The Ottoman part of Pristina is definitely not as well preserved as Prizren, but we did find some attractive mosques.

The difficulty was often seeing them (and getting photos of them) across the traffic.

We saw the old clock tower, which was more or less the final thing on my list of sights, and then headed back to the more modern part of town.

We sat outside at a cafe for coffee and ice-cream...

...then had another walk around before deciding on a restaurant for lunch. I decided to be brave and try a local dish, which was essentially flat meatballs in a cheesy sort of sauce. I had to scrape off the odd mushroom, but otherwise it was pretty good!

We finished the meal with crepes and coffee, before heading back to the apartment for an afternoon nap.

Our flight home this evening is at the very antisocial time of 23.55, landing in Luton at 02.15 on Tuesday morning, so I'd booked the Airbnb for an extra night. I think that's been a good decision, and has meant we haven't had to spend the afternoon searching Pristina for more sights in vain   We've really enjoyed our trip to Kosovo, though; it's probably not a country which is high on most people's bucket lists, but there are actually some really beautiful places here. And visiting a new country has been a good distraction, which is what we needed this weekend.