Italy: Time for Trieste

One of several grand facades on Piazza Unita d'Italia, the gigantic
square at the heart of Trieste.

Our "Balkans" trip was all Balkan -- Greece and countries that once were part of Yugoslavia (Montenegro, Croatia and Slovenia) -- until we took a short taxi ride from Piran, Slovenia, to Trieste, Italy. And how could we not visit Trieste since we were already so close?  Trieste is Italy's least-Italian city. Slavic and Central European influences are almost as evident here as Italian, making Trieste Italy's one truly cosmopolitan city. It emerged from World War II as the Free Territory of Trieste and formally became part of Italy in 1955.

The areas of the city that we explored on foot centered around the gigantic Piazza Unita d'Italia, a plaza dominated by grandiose buildings from the late 19th- and early 20th-centuries, when the city was part of the Hapsburg empire. A lot of today's sidewalk cafes began in that period as Viennese-style coffeehouses. To the west of the piazza is a more-or-less modern city with a regular street grid punctuated by the Canal Grande.  To the east of the piazza is an older section of narrow, mostly pedestrian streets lined with cafes, restaurants and shops.

We stayed at the Grand Hotel Duchi d'Aosta, which is on the piazza and home to the well-regarded Harry's Grill. After dropping our bags at mid-day on a Friday, we set out to explore and have lunch while waiting for our room to be ready. We headed into the newer area and eventually stumbled upon a great lunch at a sidewalk pizza place on Via Rossini beside the Canal Grande. Back at our hotel, we found our room had a great view onto the piazza but had hardly enough space to open two suitcases, so we coughed up a few more euros and moved to a "junior suite," which had a bathroom almost as large as the first room, a sofa, plush chairs and still a great view of the piazza.

That first afternoon, there was a big demonstration outside a government building on the other side of the piazza. We went over and one of the protesters told us that Victor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, was meeting with Matteo Salvini, the Italian interior minister. The two, both notorious for anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies, were supposedly discussing building a wall between Italy and Slovenia. No, it's not just the United States that has gone mad. Significant parts of Europe are also falling for nationalistic clap-trap, much of it here (as in the U.S.) promoted by Russia, according to various intelligence agencies.

Other than getting to shout "no wall" in Italian (or maybe not; we don't know), highlights in Trieste included the small but fascinating Revoltella Museum and the huge Grotta Gigante, one of the world's largest caves.

The Revoltella Museum (click HERE) is in two parts. One was the palatial home of Pasquale Revoltella (1795-1869), an important businessman and financier in imperial Trieste. He was a major backer of the Suez Canal, which he saw as essential to rebuilding Trieste as a trading center, and he was a major art collector. Upon his death he willed his home and his art to the city, along with money to maintain and expand the collection. That expansion is the museum's second part, an adjacent building containing  modern exhibition space. So a visit here is a bit of a time warp -- you see many works that Revoltella chose himself displayed as he chose to display them, interspersed with his personal mid-19th-century furnishings. Then you pass into the newer part and you might as well be at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Even if you aren't interested in art, Revoltella's palace with its fountain and marble stairs is worth the price of admission, which was 7 euros.

The Grotta Gigante involved a 40-minute ride on a city bus, which we caught at Piazza Oberdan, about 15 blocks from our hotel. The cave (click HERE), which opened to the public in 1908, is mostly one large chamber with a total volume of 365,000 cubic meters, a length of 167 meters, a width of 76 meters and a floor-to-ceiling height of 98 meters (more than the length of an American football field). It is so tall that pendulums suspended from the top move ever so slightly near the floor when there is significant seismic activity almost anywhere in the world. Entry is only with a bilingual guide, who takes visitors on an 850-meter path, descending 100 meters underground (and then, there's the climb to get out!) at a constant temperature of 11 Celsius (52 Fahrenheit) year-round.

Trieste isn't a foodie destination like Bologna or even Naples, but it has a lot to offer. We happened upon a decent outdoor Greek place beside a construction site in the older part of town. We had pizza twice in Trieste, each time as good or better than we had last year during three months in southern Italy. One well-hidden Tuscan place is worth recommending: Enoteca L'Etrusco (click HERE). One of its Tuscan specialities is rabbit, which I had. L'Etrusco is on a pedestrian street called Via dei Capitelli. We were there during one of Europe's heat waves, and our orders were taken in the dining room, which was quite warm. The personable host persuaded us to move to a cooler, shaded outdoor table, even though it was threatening to rain. We were all set up outside, enjoying our drinks under a patio umbrella, when it started to rain. The host led us back to our original table now that the rain had cooled things down and the dining room was comfortable. If it's a choice between air conditioning and really good customer care, I'll take the later.

One unexpected treat in Trieste was stumbling upon a "late shopping" block party. Apparently, merchants stay open late, hire a band and serve food to encourage late-night shopping. We heard the brass band play "Barbara Ann" by the Beach Boys, "Drop That Bass" and a couple of other tunes that I couldn't put names to. This was in the newer part of town and we were walking back to the piazza after being turned away at a restaurant because our hotel had screwed up our dinner reservation. We ended up getting a sidewalk table at a big Chinese place on the harbor. Since we love Chinese food, this was a happy ending.

Here are some photos.

Those cameras are pointed at Matteo Salvini, Italy's
interior minister, who was the subject of a large
protest demonstration the day we arrived. We caught
only the slightest glimpse of him. 

Another view of the media scrum around Salvini.

Protesters wait for Salvini to emerge during a meeting with Hungary's Victor Orban.

The view from our room at the Grand Hotel Duchi d'Aosta. At left, police
provide security for a meeting between  Matteo Salvini and Victor Orban. This
was after the protest. To the right is a large sidewalk restaurant.

The Church of Saint Antonio Nuovo sits at the eastern end
of the Canal Grande. 

These lollipop-like trees are hollies that are kept
trimmed. We saw them in several parts of the city,
including this square well away from the touristic center.

I'm not sure what this sign is trying to say. Come back and shop in Trieste?
Abandon your Trumpian and Brexiting ways and come back into
the world of rational thought? 

The ruins of a Roman-era theater are a few blocks
from the central piazza.

Pasquale Revoltella's palace-like home
is part of the Revoltella Museum.

Too much is never enough. That might have been Revoltella's decorating mantra.

 "The Piercing of the Isthmus of Suez," 1864, by Pietro Magni
 (1817-1877), an allegory that shows Europe, left, holding in her right hand
the Red Sea and in her left hand the Mediterranean. Revoltella was
an important backer of the Suez Canal, which he thought would
benefit Trieste. This is a work that he commissioned.

A ceiling in Revoltella's home.

This storeroom at the Revoltella Museum is open to visitors.

"Emancipation of the Black Men," 1873, by
Francesco Pezzicar (1831-1890), a Trieste
sculptor.

Another work by a Trieste artist, this one is "The Kiss,"
1931, by Ruggero Roman (1877-1965). 

A view of the harbor from the roof of the Revoltella Museum.

A table for two on a pier at the harbor.

Mid-afternoon finds city streets quiet,
though there are a lot of people at the
sidewalk restaurant in the distance.

Most of Trieste's buildings date to the late 19th century and the
waning years of the Hapsburg empire.

That crane is on the waterfront. 

A brass band pauses between numbers at a late-shopping block party. 

No words needed for these warning
and informational signs about Grotta Gigante.

Stairways with strong railings make descent into
the cave a breeze.

Those are two tubes, each of which holds a pendulum that swings ever
so slightly in response to seismic activity even on other continents.

Slovenia: At the Sea in Piran

View of the seaside promenade just north of the Hotel Piran. Metal railings
at left are part of steps for swimmers to enter and exit the water. The awnings
on the right are a row of seafood restaurants. 

After Ljubljana, we took a two-hour bus ride to Slovenia's 47-kilometer Adriatic coast. Our destination was Piran, a seaside resort housed in buildings left by five centuries of Venetian occupation. A Venetian-style campanile overlooks much of the town, a warren of winding lanes, hilly streets and stone buildings both modest and grand.

Piran was a chance to chill after vigorous sight-seeing at our previous stops in Slovenia and Croatia. Even though ferry service connects it with Venice, low-key Piran seems like a place for Slovenes to build their summer memories. We did hear German spoken  a good bit, but that's true everywhere in Europe during high season, and we heard a lot of English, because it's the second language that almost all continental Europeans can speak. But mostly we heard Slovenian, especially among the many large family groups.

From the bus station, we had a relatively short walk all the way around the small harbor to our waterfront accommodations, the 100-year-old Hotel Piran, which combines the looks of a formal hotel from another era with genuinely friendly service.  We had a room with a fairly large terrace overlooking the sea and the public concrete "beach."

We arrived in time for lunch at one of the big seafood restaurants that stretch to the north from the hotel. That afternoon, we hit the beach. I hit it a bit too hard, putting a gash in my leg when I brushed against a rock jumping off a pier. Jane got bandages from the front desk and we later walked to the pharmacy in Tartinjev Trg (Tartini Square), the town's main plaza a few steps from the hotel, and got an antiseptic ointment and more bandages. Out of the water for the rest of our stay, I watched as over and over again people jumped where I had jumped and came out unbloodied.

The next day, our one full day in town, we made it up to the Church of St. George, a 12th-century structure that has become mostly Baroque over the years. We also made another climb to the remnants of a city wall east of the old town (there really isn't a "new" town here), and walked around the tip of the peninsula . From the harbor northwest to the tip and then east a bit, there are several access points for swimmers (ladders or steps into the water), most of them surrounded by sunbathers. When the water is rough on one part of the peninsula, it might be much calmer at another.

Piran is a salt-production center, and has been since the Venetians (13th to 18th centuries) were in charge. We didn't visit the salt production area, but we did come home with its fleur de sel as gifts. Conveniently, the salt works have a gift shop on Tartini Square.

At sunset, the place to be is the bar atop the Hotel Piran for the best views. Then there's a wonderful seafood dinner waiting for you somewhere in this little town.

Here are some photos.

Two structures, one green and one red, stand at the entrance
to Piran's small harbor.

We climbed to the city's medieval wall for this view, which shows how completely
Piran fills up its peninsula. On the right is the Church of St. George and its
Venetian-style campanile. 

Tartinijev Trg (Tartini Square) is the town's only large plaza. To the left,
it opens onto the harbor. To the right, shops and narrow streets plug it
into the town. The statue is of Giuseppe Tartini (1692-1770), an
Italian violinist who was born in Piran.

This looks like a more conventional beach
than the concrete beaches along the promenade,
though concrete might be more comfortable to
walk on than these rocks. It's on the north
 side of the peninsula. 

A harpist performs on a street leading
to St. George's Church.

Looking down from the garden at St. George's Church. The two
people are sitting on a bench.

The Svetilnik Lighthouse marks the northwest
point of the peninsula.

The medieval city wall looms in the distance in this
view from St. George's Church.

Visitors can walk along the surprisingly narrow wall. I'm sure much
of what we see is the result of 20th-century restoration.

View from our terrace at Hotel Piran. It shows
the seawall that separates the harbor area
from the swimming areas.

Sunbathers just below our terrace.

She's diving where I hurt my leg on a rock.

What's a seaside without a mermaid? 

A narrow street high in the town offers
a view of the harbor entrance. 

Slovenia: Everything in Ljubljana

Bubbles in the historic district.

We arrived in Ljubljana by train from Zagreb. The international crossing meant only that the train stopped long enough for passport control officers to give us our Croatian exit stamps and our Slovenia entry stamps. What we had crossed wasn't just the Slovnia-Croatia border, it was the Schengen Line, which encircles a number of European countries.

If you're within the Schengen line, you simply whiz across borders as if you were going from Indiana to Ohio. The effect is that there are no noticeable borders between Spain and France or Slovenia and Italy, but there is between Croatia and Slovenia, just as there had been earlier in our trip when we crossed by bus from Montenegro to Croatia. (Croatia was also the only country we visited that doesn't use the euro; its currency is the kuna.)

Another effect of the Schengen Line for Americans is that our automatic 90-day visas aren't good for each country, per se, but for everything within the line. If you're planning to be in Europe for more than 90 days, even if you're traveling among different countries, you may need to apply for a long-term visa while you're still in the U.S.

Once safely within Slovenia and the Schengen Line, we disembarked in Ljubljana, now home for much of the year to our friend Ray, who once lived full time, as we did, on Tilghman, Maryland, a little island in Chesapeake Bay. He's in Ljubjlana because it's an amazingly pleasant city ... and because his young twin grandsons, his daughter-in-law and his son are there.

Ray played tour guide during our four-night stay here, meeting our train and walking us to our hotel, Vander Urbani Resort, a small hotel in the heart of the historic pedestrian zone. It's in a restaurant district right on the Ljubljanica River, just upstream from the city's iconic triple bridge and practically in the shadow of  Ljubljana Castle, which overlooks most of the city. Visiting a place where you know someone leads to a much greater understanding of the place than we usually get when our only guidance comes from Fodor's and TripAdvisor.

Highlights of our Ray-guided time here included taking a funicular to the castle, walking in the old town, and hiring a car and driver to take us out of the city, to the northwest corner of the country and to Lake Bled and to Triglav National Park, Slovenia's only national park. It takes up about 3 percent of the country and contains, among other things, the Savica waterfall and Mount Vogel, a winter ski area and a stunning landscape in summer.

Slovenia is a prosperous country. About 75 percent of the population live in homes that they own, and most are mortgage-free. In the United States, by contrast, about 67 percent live in their own homes, most with mortgages. The streets of Ljubljana teem with BMWs, Audis and other luxury autos. A taxi is as likely to be a Mercedes E-class as it is to be a Volkswagen.

One spot Ray strongly recommended is the Movia wine bar. Movia is a major producer of Slovenian wine, but its wine bar sells the best wines of other producers as well. If you are a Champagne drinker, you may know that in the traditional method, Champagne bottles are briefly opened to clear the neck of sediment that collects during  bottle fermentation. This is called degorgement. The bottles are then topped off and resealed. Movia doesn't do that, and it turns opening a bottle of Movia sparkling wine into something of a show. The bartender unwires the cork, holds the bottle under water in a small pan or tank, and quickly pops the cork before pulling the foaming bottle out of the water. The sediment goes into the water propelled by the same CO2 gas that sends corks across rooms, and almost all the wine stays in the bottle because the water doesn't give it a vacuum to flow into. I think Bill Nye would love this place. And the sparkling wine is very good! As are almost all the wines we sampled here during two visits. Slovene wines, which are often not very expensive, tend toward secondary (non-fruity) flavors, a taste Americans usually associate with expensive European wines.

At Movia and elsewhere in Slovenia, wine lists have a category we don't see in the U.S. It's "orange wine," which is white wine fermented in contact with the wine skins and sometimes even the stems. The labor-intense process creates a wine with the freshness and acidity of a white, but with satisfying tannins like a red. Orange wines are generally a bit more expensive than similar-quality red or white wines. Food pairings are about the same as for white wines. A must-try for oenophiles visiting Slovenia. (As is Movia Wine Bar.)

We arrived by train, but we left by bus, to Piran, a resort town on Slovnia's 47-kilometer-long Adriatic coast. The bus depot is near the train station and we easily rolled our bags there when our time in this jewel of a city came to an end.

Here are some photos.

A view from Ljubljana Castle. Much of the way the city appears today
is thanks to the work of Joze Plecnik, who led a rebuilding effort after
an earthquake in 1895. 

Dragons guard both sides of the entrance
to the city's Dragon Bridge. There's another
pair on the other side of the river. 

A short funicular connects the castle with
street level far below.

The surprisingly simple courtyard of the castle.

The tower is the main point of  a castle visit.

A double-helix stairway means people going up in the tower  never meet people going down.

Quiet during the day, this street was packed every evening we were there.
To the left, diners have views of the Ljubljanica River. Look up
to the right and you might have a glimpse of the castle. Our hotel
was on this street. In the distance is the Franciscan Church, which
is mentioned in later photo captions.

Ljubljana's tree-covered Tivoli Park, seen here from the castle,
is a way to get out of the city without leaving the city. 

This building caught my eye on the train coming into town and I was
happy for the chance to photograph it from the castle. I assume it's
a residential building, covered with sliding panels to control sunlight
coming into the apartments. I think the panels have louvers
or slats to allow for ventilation, but that's just a guess.
Much more interesting than common shutters.

Lake Bled is one of Slovenia's most photographed places, with a small castle perched
dramatically atop a rock and deep clear water.

View from a window in the castle.

Bled Castle's beginnings are lost to time, but Romanesque
elements mean it was already old when its history began
to be recorded in the 11th century. It has been altered over
the centuries so there is no unifying theme. These frescos
are in a Gothic chapel.

The church on Lake Bled's island has its own "once upon a time" legend of a grieving aristocratic
 widow and an underwater golden bell that still rings. 

Before cellphones, I guess a lot of people who tarried
ended up spending the night in the castle.

I bet more Slovenes than foreigners visit and vacation at Lake Bled. 

Our next stop on our day-long outing with Ray and a very pleasant driver was Slap Savica, a
waterfall. A long uphill hike brings you to where water is endlessly draining from underground
lakes higher in the mountains.

Below the falls, the water goes
underground again (though
not at this precise spot).

A great disappointment was that we didn't encounter any of the region's White Fairies.
I don't think I would have been even slightly afraid.

A gondola takes us up Mount Vogel above Lake Bohinj in Triglav National Park. At the top of the
gondola, a sign said the elevation was 1535 meters, less than a mile but we were going higher.
The next leg was a chairlift.

A mountain biker carries his bike on the chairlift. I could
not see how it was attached to the chair.

, 

These are called the Julijske Alpe (Julian Alps).

Food awaited at the top of the mountain.
We had the sour milk with something I'll describe as a
barley porridge. Our driver recommended it and ate his
quickly. Jane, Ray and I weren't so hungry.

Bronze nudes of men, women and children adorn the country's
parliament building, which dates to 1960 when the country
was still part of Yugoslavia.

Ljubljana's most famous church is the Cathedral of St. Nicholas. Despite its posted hours for
being open to tourists, it wasn't whenever we tried to stop in. The Franciscan Church, shown here,
is almost as big, is right on the river and is more prominent in views of the city, partly because
of its pink exterior color. St. Nicholas is yellow and surrounded by buildings on three sides.

The ceiling at the Franciscan church.

Between us, Jane and I did all four
tastings, though it did take two visits.

During our first visit, there was only one other couple,
and this bartender had time to discuss the
wines, even those from other producers. On
our second visit, the place was packed, and
he was working by himself. 

This was my first tasting, the reds.

Important and unimportant figures from the history of Ljubljana are assembled
in this unique installation at the city museum. Visitors are allowed to walk
though the exhibit to see the items more closely.