Italy Part 1: Trieste

So I kind of spontaneously decided to buy a ticket to Italy a few weeks ago, and I left the following week, May 12th. I landed in Rome and took a train to Trieste on the north eastern coast and border with Slovenia. Well, actually I missed my train because myflight was delayed so I (stupidly, because it wouldn't have made a difference) bought another expensive ticket, and THEN I went to Trieste. I got proposed to upon exiting the train station in Trieste...what charm those Italian's have! My friend Itamar has been studying a masters in International Business in Trieste this year so I stayed with him for a few nights.

The first night I got there we went to meet up with his friends for the best idea in the world...aperitivo. Aperitivo is the time between 6-9/930ish when Italian's go out for a drink (spritz, usually) and you get served a lot of food, for free. As we sat around with Itamar's friends I had the typical drink, I forget what it's called but some type of spritz with prosecco and and orange slice, while basket after basket of chips, bread, crackers, little pizza squares, etc came to the table. By the time it was was time to go get "dinner" I was pretty much full and could have bypassed dinner all together. We were in Italy though, so I couldn't do that. We went to a great pizza place and had a delicious perfectly Italian pizza.

The next day Itamar and I got coffee by his apartment and then went down to the beach to walk the boardwalk. The beach isn't much of a beach, more like a sidewalk that people lay on with rocks down to the water. The more we walked down the boardwalk the more topless women we saw...ohhh Europe.

At the end of the boardwalk was the Miramare Castle which we toured around for a bit. The Castle was beautiful and the history was marginally interesting, built for Ferdinand Maximilian who became the Commander in Chief of the imperial Navy. It also served as home for American troops from 1947-1954. After the Castle we went to get gelato and ate it in the Piazza Unità d'Italia,a gorgeous piazza that faces the water and allows for ample people watching :). We went to dinner then a party at Itamar's friends that night.

On Saturday Itamar had a going away picnic at a park near his school. We lugged snacks, beers, blankets, and two glass (3 liter) jugs of wine up to the party and, although the picnic was in a beautiful park and

was a lot of fun, no one even opened the wine jugs! In retrospect I guess we should have bought smaller bottles of good wine, but it was 3 euro per jug and we just couldn't resist...Jews. Had aperativo and went out with Itamar's friends again Saturday night around Trieste.

Sunday morning we got coffee on a rainy morning and walked to the train station, off to Venice!

pictures and part two to come...bed time for now :)