Our days have fallen into a pattern. Breakfast, sightseeing until 1PM or 2PM, late lunch, more sightseeing, crash in room, and have breadsticks for dinner. Today is no exception.
Our hotel, Palace Suites, an adjunct of the Continentale Hotel, is centrally located and most things are easily walked to. The one exception would be the cathedral complex which is located on a high bluff. We decide to do the lower part of the city in the morning. First up, the Roman amphitheater.
Amazingly this amphitheater used to be outside the city walls on the seashore. Due to the silting up of the harbor it now sits in the middle of the city.
Next we wander down by the waterfront. The Piazza del Unita d’Italia is the largest piazza on a waterfront in the world. Important, I guess, if you are into being placed in the Guiness Book of World Records for something. (Much like Baker, CA’s largest thermometer) It’s an impressive space celebrating Trieste’s reunification with the rest of Italy after WWII.
Even with its ancient Roman ruins, the city of Trieste mostly looks like a prosperous late 19th century city.
We’ve been walking around looking at things for quite a while now. We stop in at the Tourist Information center and find out that the cathedral is closed for the sacred Italian lunch until 3:30PM. So we figure it’s time for a little lunch and a little siesta for ourselves.
The obligatory food pictures –
After lunch and a little rest we decide to go up to the cathedral. It is really up high and we decide to take a taxi due to my bad knee and John’s unoperated hip. We get up to the Cathedral of St. Justus and there are a lot of cars there. We go in and there are a lot of people and kids in some sort of scouting get-up. So we go to sit down to see what’s up. Then the Bishop arrives and we sit through a mass with singing and celebrated in both Slovenian and Italian.
The Bishop seems very sweet and at offertory time the kids bring up baskets and baskets of local produce. He examines each basket and smiles and talks to the kids.
Luckily for us, all the lights are on in the cathedral highlighting the fabulous mosaics from the 11th century. When mass is over and everyone heads for the door John and I hot foot it up to the front to take a look and snap some photos before anyone can turn out the lights and yell NO FOTO at us.
Now here’s a thing we didn’t quite think through. How are we going to get back down to the hotel? It’s dark out now and we are not going to be able to find a taxi. Luckily we strike out (down) in the right direction and slowly make our way down the steep streets to the lower part of the city.