Italy 2000: Day 6: Sunday, April 30: Trieste

[We are back home--safe and sound--but we want to finish our reports. We hope
to complete them within the week.]

Sunday: April 30: Trieste

The drive from Udine to Trieste was uneventful....Diana did the driving and got
her first experience with small town and narrow road driving when we left the
autostrada and took the shore route to Trieste. We took a detour into the small
and quite pretty beach town of Duino and wound our way to a dead end at the head
of the harbor. This necessitated some skillful maneuverings through narrow
passages and crowded streets on our way back to the main road.

The coast road to Trieste runs along the side of an escarpment called the Carso,
a 1500 ft high limestone plateau with many small towns, wineries, and grottoes.
The views over the Triestine Riviera are quite nice and the road descends
gradually to sea level as it approaches the large city of Trieste.

We found Trieste a little difficult to get to know at first. Arriving on a
Sunday, all of the stores in the business district were closed. There was quite
a bit of activity along the waterfront--there was a large street fair with
exhibits, food, and amusements; the waterfront stretches along the entire
length of the downtown area. We drove to our hotel--the Duchi d'Aosta--a very
nice four star (for which I had also received a nice travel agent discount),
located on the Piazza Unita d'Italy, a massive plaza surrounded on three sides
by large 19th century buildings and opening up to the sea. It could not be
called graceful at all, not even the fountain. It also had a strange painted
surface and lots of graffitti.

We set out for a walk around town and to find a place to eat lunch. Walking
around the deserted city was somewhat depressing, so we stopped a very crowded
pizzeria set on the Canal Grande, which juts into the center of town. Diana
ordered a pizza because they looked so appealing and I had the fritto misto;
the pizza was only okay, but my fried fish and squid were very nicely done.

After lunch, we got in the car and started to explore the downtown area on
wheels, to take advantage of the lack of traffic. We soon learned that
Trieste's traffic pattern takes some getting used to....there are basically four
major automobile routes--all are one way, in addition,there is the wide
boulevard on the waterfront.

If you miss your turn, you have to go around the entire traffic pattern to get
back to where you started. To complicate matters, there is a hill in the middle
of town, which has tunnels underneath it and a maze of streets on its surface.
To further complicate matters, if you get on a road that climbs to the top of
the Carso, you have few chances to turn around and go back. So we
unintentionally had a tour of the area on top of the plateau, circumngavigated
the downtown several times, and got lost on the hill in the middle of town,
where the Duomo and the Castello are located. But we did learn a little about
getting around town....

Trieste has a significant Jewish community, now about 700 people, but at the end
of the 19th century, it numbered about 6,000. The synagogue is one of the
largest in Europe and driving down the main street, we saw a banner advertising
an exhibition--called Yiddishland--at the Jewish museum. We drove past the
synagogue (several times) but it was closed. We located--with a fair amount of
effort--the museum, but we had an hour to kill before it opened, so we headed
for a very lively cafe on the main street, where we sampled the coffee and
Trieste pastries.

The exhibit was based on a French book, using postcards to document the Jewish
presence in eastern Europe. A group of about 10 people were with us to see the
exhibit. We had a chance to speak to the rabbi, who introduced the exhibit; he
was from a family of Libyan Jews who had come to Rome in the late 1950s. He
grew up in Rome and had moved to Trieste eight years previously. He was a
Chasidic rabbi, complete with full red beard and hat; it was quite
unusual to hear him speaking Italian....

Leaving the museum in the late afternoon, we made our way back to the hotel.
Trieste had woken up from its earlier sleepiness and the cafes and the
waterfront promenade were full of people. I took a walk to explore the old
city, just to the south of the hotel, and to scout out a place for dinner. We
ate at a small trattoria called La Piazzeta, an easy walk from the hotel and one
of the few restaurants open on a Sunday night. The food was unexceptional--an
unconventional lasagna and nice grilled fish for Diana and spaghetti with clams
and another dish of fritto misto--but it was a pleasant restaurant and we ended
the dinner with a conversation with our waiter about the relative merits of
Italy and the United States. The gelateria across the street provided me with
my gelato fix for the day and we headed back to the hotel for the night.

Jim and Diana

D's PS: Trieste reminded me of Genova, but without the seediness. Climbing the
hills as the town spread up and over the water, with the map not indicating
hills or the one-way nature of streets, was very frustrating for the navigator
(me). The driver thinks it's fun getting lost - this navigator gets anxious.
Since there was little traffic on Sunday, the Genova roar of traffic and car
fumes were lacking, making it more palatable to me. The restaurant menus have
things like goulash and sacher torte - the Austro-Hungarian influence. One is
conscious of the city's location and past - the Orient Express, the city being
part of the A-H empire, etc. but it's hard to tell yet about its current flavor.