Days 1 & 2: Home to Kosovo

It's been a difficult few weeks, so this is a trip that I wasn't sure we were actually going to go on. 

On Thursday, we had to say goodbye to the best cat ever, Heidi:

Needless to say, Thursday was not a very good day. By Friday morning though, we felt like getting away might be a good distraction and so decided to go ahead with our itinerary as planned. 

It's actually been a trip that has been fraught with difficulties right from the start, after Wizzair decided to change the time of the flights we originally booked to Kosovo back in October last year. What had started life as a 06.25 flight from Luton to Pristina on Friday morning and a return flight from Pristina to Luton at 11.10 on Monday morning somehow morphed into a 19.05 flight from Luton to Pristina on Friday evening and a return flight from Pristina which lands in Luton at 02.15 on Tuesday morning! Short of a full cancellation, I don't think it would have been possible for Wizzair to make a more dramatic change to our itinerary, and needless to say I was not terribly impressed when I received the email notifying me of what had happened. I had to cancel the airport hotel which I'd had booked at Luton for Thursday evening, completely change the booking I'd made for airport parking, and ultimately add an extra night onto my Airbnb booking, so that we didn't have to check out of the apartment at 10am on Monday morning and entertain ourselves for 12 hours in Pristina until our flight departed some time after 10pm. What a nightmare!

On Friday, though, everything ultimately went pretty smoothly with the journey. We didn't get stuck in traffic on the way down to Luton, the airport parking worked more efficiently then I expected it to and while flying Wizzair from Luton is definitely not as glamorous as some of our recent travel experiences, our flight did take off on time and the fact that we'd paid for extra legroom seats meant it was actually quite pleasant. It took just over three hours to reach the capital of Kosovo, and so it was just after 11pm local time when our plane touched down in Pristina.

I didn't know what passport control would be like, but it turned out to be remarkably relaxed. The security guards were remarkably friendly and smiley, welcoming us both to Kosovo. It was exciting to be in a brand new country, but arriving at this time of night and in the dark was not ideal. Uber and Bolt don't work in Kosovo, so I'd attempted to pre-book us a taxi using a local app called Etaxi, which I wasn't 100% sure was going to work. Matters were complicated by the fact that getting an esim to work in Kosovo seems nigh on impossible, so I didn't have any functioning data at the point we landed. Luckily, the airport did have WiFi and so with the help of that I was able to open the app and find out the number plate of the taxi we were looking for. After running up and down the taxi rank a couple of times, Tim managed to track it down. Phew!

The next obstacle was to actually track down the apartment we were staying in. The owner had sent me photos of the inside and outside of the building, which was very helpful. After a relatively short journey, the taxi driver set us down outside one of Pristina's main attractions: the statue of Bill Clinton.

As our apartment is located on Bulevardi Bill Clinton, this was a strong start! Before too long we had found the right place and retrieved the key. The apartment is quite spacious, with a large living area...

...as well as a kitchen and bedroom.

The best thing about it is that it is only costing us EUR 30/night!!!

It was close to 1am before we finally got to bed, so we weren't planning to make a very early start to Saturday morning. Unfortunately, the blinds in the bedroom turned out not to be terribly effective, leading to the rare result of me being awake before my alarm went off.

Tim went out to get some breakfast, after which we set off together towards Pristina's main bus station, which is only a short 10-minute walk away from where we are staying. This gave us the opportunity to admire the statue of Bill Clinton in the daylight.

Although having a statue of Bill Clinton might seem odd in a lot of places, he is effectively seen as a hero in Kosovo for his role in leading NATO's intervention in the 1999 war.

It amused us to see that Kosovo seemed to be hedging its bets and thanking Donald Trump too. Not quite sure what he's done to merit that!

We got to the bus station and found, as expected, that it was a bit chaotic. There's no central organisation of the buses, so you have to find the bus you need and buy a ticket once you get on it. Our plan for today was to travel to the town of Peja in the northwestern part of Kosovo. Luckily we did find an information desk, where a nice lady was able to direct us to the right platform for buses to Peja, and we found there was one waiting. We boarded it but the driver didn't seem to want to take payment, so we were a bit unsure what the system was. It eventually turned out to be that everyone gets on without paying, the driver starts the journey from the bus station and stops at various other bus stops around the town to pick up more passengers, then only once the bus has left the outskirts of the town behind a conductor starts walking down the aisle and taking payment. The trip was a bargain anyway; EUR 5 each for a journey of around 90 minutes.

The views as we made our way across Kosovo were beautiful and as we got closer to Peja, the scenery became increasingly mountainous. This shouldn't actually be a surprise, because when you look at where Peja is on the map, it isn't actually that far from where we're going hiking in the Albanian Alps in the summer. Even so, I was surprised by the amount of snow visible on the mountains.

Peja, also known as Pejë in Albanian and Peć in Serbian, is the fifth largest city in Kosovo.

That doesn't actually make it very large; with a population of around 82,000, it's actually smaller than Nuneaton.

It soon became clear that it is much more scenic than Nuneaton, though  

Peja might not have a statue to Bill Clinton, but we soon discovered that it does have a road named after Tony Blair.

This was leading off one of the main squares...

...opposite a war memorial for the 1999 war.

There's a river running through Peja and I'd read that there was a nice path alongside it, so we headed in that direction.

It did indeed turn out to be really beautiful. I've got no idea what these pink trees are, but I really loved them.

We were able to walk alongside the river for quite a long way. We had some amazing views of the mountains, plus the occasional mosque.

The water in the river was incredibly clear and a beautiful colour in the sunshine.

But the best bit was definitely the glimpses we got of snow on the high mountains above the town.

After a while the path we were following led us away from the river, climbing slightly uphill into the forest.

Now we were walking high above the river.

We passed a spot which is apparently the source of some famous spring water, but weren't brave enough to try it!

Then the path led us downhill again to a recreational area, set up for families to have barbeques. 

From here a bridge led us across the river...

...and we were able to walk along the opposite side of it for a short while, passing some white geese.

After this point the path came to an end and the river began to narrow, looking like it was turning into some sort of gorge.

We turned around to retrace our steps back towards the centre of Peja.

Once there we stopped in a cafe for a drink, then found a restaurant where we were able to sit outside in the sunshine and eat enormous pizzas.

Somewhat unbelievably, these large pizzas plus Tim's beer and my bottle of water came to the grand total of EUR 12  I think we can safely say that Kosovo is an affordable destination! And so far it's also turned out to be a very pretty one