We had two and a half days in Trieste. We took the shuttle there from the airport on our first day, and had a meal on along the canal. The next day, we were there for most of the day– but it was miserable, as I mentioned before, just pouring buckets of rain, cold, and windy. We spent that day running for cover, trying to figure out what we could do there in the rain, and looking for things we couldn’t find… Not our best day of travel. Luckily, on the final day of our trip, Trieste redeemed herself with absolutely gorgeous weather. Here are some photos from the first and last days there.
Waiting for our first meal along the canal… We were all so happy to be in Italy.
A beautiful Serbian-Orthodox church, Saint Spyridon.
I love boats. I am not sure why, but I just couldn’t get enough of them anywhere we went.
Here is the harbor. Trieste is a major port city for Europe, and imports 70% of mainland Europe’s coffee beans. There are five major coffee companies in Trieste, and it is home of the famed Illy Coffee. Antonio told us that they are a wonderful business that is family-owned and takes really good care of their employees. We ordered some tins of Illy espresso when we got home as a belated souvenir.The city of Trieste has an interesting history, having been built as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. You can definitely see this in the architecture.
Trieste is also known for having one of the largest plazas (or piazzas) in Europe, the Piazza Unità d’Italia. We spent a lot of time there on our last day, eating gelato and wandering around shops and people-watching. It wasn’t tourist season, so it was especially fun to see regular people going about their business.
We sat under the awnings on the left and had a very light lunch– a salad of arugula, pecorino cheese and walnuts, with a lemon olive oil emulsion dressing. Jeff and I each ordered a negroni, which were so strong that, with the the intense sunshine, mild heat, and general exhuastion at the end of our trip, made us want to just lie down on the sidewalk for the rest of the afternoon.
But we kept ourselves awake by having some espresso and walking along the sea front. All that color: blue sky, super-clean blue waters, the green hillsides and yellow sunshine– was exactly what we wanted to remember about Italy. What a beautiful and fascinating city!
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