Trieste, our final Italian city

Tomorrow, we leave Italy for Slovenia. The past several days, we have been in Trieste, an Italian town that is only 5 miles from Slovenia and 20 miles from Croatia. On the Adriatic Sea, Trieste had been part of the Roman Empire and a Hapsburg port as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, as well as fought over by the Ottomans from the east, Napolean from the west, and Hitler and then Tito from the north. It didn't become part of Italy until 1954. Like most European cities, it has plazas, ruins, and a castle to visit. 

Roman theatre ruins (1st century AD)

Yesterday, we walked to Piazza Unita, Trieste's central square and the largest sea-facing plaza in Europe. However, there was a foot race in town and this plaza was the finish line, so we couldn't actually walk on the plaza. 

One race was a 2k, the other was longer

We strolled along the sidewalk at the edge of the water, going out on a long stone pier

and past boats in the harbor.

Lots of sailboats in the harbor

After visiting those Roman ruins, we walked up the hill to find the Castello di San Giusto, Trieste's 15th century castle and fortress. 

statue on the castle hill

While we were walking around the grounds, the bells tolled in the bell tower. Phillip and I decided, since the very loud bells had just rung, to take the opportunity to head up the stairs to see the bells before they rang again. Phillip made it all the way to the top and got pictures of the bells.

On first glance at the following picture, it may seem like it is a picture looking up a stairway towards a door. It is not. Phillip took it looking down the stairs from mid-way in the bell tower. That's a glass floor on a section of the stair way. And the arrow is pointing to me as I would not (could not) cross that glass to continue up the stairs. 

After the bell tower, we walked outside to the Lapidario area, a collection of pieces of ruins that formed almost a garden of relics and artifacts.

broken pieces of old statues

We walked back down the hill away from the castle, a much easier hike. Statues abound throughout the town, including this one of Irish author, Jame Joyce. He lived in Trieste from 1905 to 1920.

Trieste suffered some damage during WWII, but mainly to the shipyards and its nearby oil refineries. I didn't notice any statues or memorials to WWII, but did see several memorials for WWI. It appears to have claimed more Trieste citizens and had a greater effect on the city. 

honoring WWI soldiers, statue between Piazza Unita and the harbor

Today, we walked back Piazza Unita and found most of the race stanchions and barricades had been removed. 

As you can see by the cloudy sky in the picture, we have had off-and-on rain today. We only walked 8,000 steps today instead of the 11,500 steps a day that we've averaged since we got off the cruise ship.  With rain and the promise of more rain, I've gotten caught up on pictures and posts so I'll be ready when we get to Slovenia tomorrow!

More Tivoli and Bologna, Italy

 

Picking up where I left off in Tivoli.... After spending a few hours in Villa D'Este and its garden, we walked to Rocca Pia, a 15th century castle in town. It is only open to visitors on weekends, and we were there on Wednesday, so the best I could do was an outside picture.

walking around the Tivoli castle, Rocca Pia

Our third stop in Tivoli was the most breathtaking, the Villa Gregoriana. It was a park and waterfall, with ancient Roman ruins. The Park was founded in 1832 when Pope Gregory XVI wanted to contain the continuous flooding of the Aniene river. Its waters were channeled into a double tunnel dug into Mount Catillo, giving life to the Cascata Grande (the waterfall). The latter, with its 120 meters of jump, is second largest waterfall in Italy. Once the water diversion into a gorge was completed, Pope Gregory created the park, which today bears his name.

The remains of a Romas villa

We could walk into the ruins

The waterfall from near the ruins, looking across the gorge

Near a grotto, about 1/3 the way to bottom of the gorge

We walked behind these windows when we went up
on that side of the gorge

The waterfall close to the bottom of the gorge

At the bottom of the gorge

It was easy to get to the bottom of the gorge, but every step we took down meant we had a step back up to street level. Fortunately, park benches were available at each switchback on the climb out.  We loved seeing the waterfall from many different heights.

And, my reward was to visit a wine store! We passed this store on our first evening in town, but we didn't stop. Today, we stopped. In Italy, it is very common to buy "house wine," local good stuff, but not in bottles. It is in these stainless steel vats with measuring spigots and is sold by the liter. 

The store owner fills up a plastic bottle. I bought my liter of red wine from her, after tasting a few. 2.60 euros, under $3 for a liter (wine bottles are usually only 3/4 liter) of tasty wine! 

my liter of house wine, cup of it at my left foot

After Tivoli, we rode the train for two nights in Bologna, Italy. Bologna wasn't on my "must-see" list, but it was 1/2 way between Tivoli and Trieste, and it did have a UNESCO World Heritage site. Unfortunately, our hotel will be memorable for us because the bathroom had some kind of sewer leak or drain issue. We told the front desk after our first night, but it was never fixed and the smell only got worse. Shutting the bathroom door did keep it localized in the bathroom, but we did have to go in there during our stay. Bad reviews for them, which is a shame because the rest of the room was quite nice. 

Somewhere.... a sewer smell from in here.

We only had one full day to see Bologna, but that was actually plenty of time. Famous statue (Neptune), leaning towers (actually more common in Italy than you'd think), and the UNESCO-designated porticos.

Naked Neptune on one of the plazas

the leaning Asinelli and Garisenda towers on the Plaza of Porta Ravegnana

Bologna has 38 kms of porticos (covered porches/walkways) in the city center and 60 km in the town. It has the world's longest portico, over 4 km (2.4 miles), which we began to walk, but had to walk over 2 miles to get to the beginning of the 4 km measure, so we probably only did about 1/2 mile of this famous portico before we decided that seeing a fancy long porch wasn't worth it to us. We stopped and turned around right before the route would have involved a great many portico-covered stairs ending at a church. 

most porticos looked like this

some porticos were more ornate

We left Bologna this morning and took the train to our final Italian city, Trieste. It is near the Slovenian and Croatian borders. Three nights here in a hotel with no sewer smells emanating from our bathroom. I'm happy about that. Nice hotel with one English-language channel. That's one channel more than we've had since we left the cruise ship. Phillip is happy about that. 

Ground travel in Italy: Rome, Tivoli

A summary of our Italy travel: Rome: crowds, Tivoli: everything is uphill; train travel is wonderful; the USA has no real ruins. 

After the cruise to Europe, Phillip and I spent three nights in Tivoli, making a day trip from there into Rome. Thirty minutes on the train put us in the crowded city that is Rome. The masses of people reminded us of Paris, with lines for everything. We really weren't interested in spending time in lines, so we saw the outside of the iconic locations that interested us.

the Colloseum in Rome

Our first sight was the Colloseum, the largest ancient amphitheater ever built (started in 70 AD, completed in 80 AD). It is still the largest standing amphitheater. 

We walked to the Trevi Fountain, but didn't stand in line with about a thousand of our friends to toss a coin into the fountain. We were able to snake our way close enough for a decent photo.

Trevi Fountain

After the hike to the Fountain, we decided to get a Metro card and ride the subway to our next stop, Vatican City. Even though the Pope's funeral was April 26th and the conclave had not started yet to select the next Pope, the crowds were definitely still there. Significant portions of the plaza in front of St. Peter's Basilica were still cordoned off, awaiting the new pope's selection.

Arrow points to Pope's balcony

During our bus ride thru Rome from the cruise port, the driver mentioned the Circus Maximus, so we visited it as well. Not as spectacular as the Colloseum, but actually older, it was a chariot racing venue. Started in 494 BC and added on thru the centuries (Julius Ceasar added seats all the way around), it could hold 150,000 spectators for the races. 

Circus Maximus ruins

We took the train back to Tivoli, intending to eat dinner there. However, as we were walking from our bed and breakfast to a more commercial area, the skies open up and a strong storm moved in. I had our umbrellas with us, but the wind threatened to blow them either away or inside out, so we collapsed them and and just got wet. Also, the restaurants, most of which had their seating outside, closed as we walked up because their patio covers were in danger of blowing over. We ended up back at our room, wet and still hungry. Fortunately, we had snacks. 

The next day, with beautiful weather, we stayed in Tivoli and visited the UNESCO World Heritage sites there. We walked to Villa d'Este, a villa and garden completed in 1572.  The fame and glory of the Villa d'Este was established by its system of fountains; fifty-one fountains and nymphaeums, 398 spouts, 364 water jets, 64 waterfalls, and 220 basins, fed by 875 meters of canals, channels and cascades, and all working entirely by the force of gravity, without pumps. Unfortunately for us, the water was not running that day. The ticket lady said staff was working on it, but no fountains were working. We toured and took pictures anyway as this was our only chance to see it. Villa D'Este was spectacular even without the fountains working.

Artwork on the walls and ceiling depicting the hunt

Artwork on all the salon ceilings

An inside niche like the garden grottos

After walking thru the Villa's decorated salons and hallways, we went outside to the gardens:

Pegasus fountain

The Fountain of the Bicchierone

The Oval Fountain, visitors can walk behind the waterfall

The Hundred Fountains, a walkway where water would come out of those heads

The Fountain of Neptune

The Fish Ponds

More photos from Tivoli and some from Bologna in my next post. We are enjoying our traveling! 

Our Current Adventure: Cruising to launch our 2 months in Europe

Phillip and I are away on another adventure! We are currently in Tivoli, Italy, after coming to Europe on a 16-day trans-Atlantic cruise. Our plans are to spend two months mainly in the Balkan countries, flying home from Athens in late June. We will travel in countries that we have yet to visit: Slovenia, Croatia, and many more as we work our way south after our first eight days in Italy. 

The cruise to get here, on the Celebrity Constellation, was the smoothest trans-Atlantic cruise that we have been on. A bit of cool, wet weather on several days, but no storms or rough seas. The ship was ready for cool days:

blankets provided on the pool deck

We had an ocean view cabin on Deck 3, assigned, not chosen, but it was actually pretty great. Easy access to the casino, theatre, and the main dining room. 

All the cabin doors look alike as you walk down the hallways, but our cabin on this cruise was special. The hall carpet had a single patch of blue... right in front of our door! We never walked past our door on this cruise.

The only cabin with blue hall carpet

We had four port stops on this journey: Bermuda, Gibraltar, Cartagena (Spain), and Barcelona. In Bermuda, our ship docked at the Navy Dockyards, so we just walked a bit on the main road towards town, getting in 12,000 steps.

Not always a sidewalk as we walked

Interesting view thru a rock formation

We also went off the ship in Gibraltar, again just walking around town.  There was a cable car to go to the top of the Rock of Gibraltar, but I figured it would be crowded. I heard later that some people waited two hours in line for the $60 ride. And there was a monkey colony on the mountainside. We aren't big fans of monkeys. The cruise ship personnel officially warned passengers that these monkeys were known to steal from tourists. We were perfectly happy to miss the monkeys; greenery and a fort wall were good enough sights for us.

Our next port stop was Cartagena, Spain. Not really much to see. The town was setting up for a spring festival, with some of the children's areas almost ready.

Cartagena did have some good looking murals around town:

That's a real cat in the picture, posing for us

Phillip and I didn't get off the ship in Barcelona. The ship docked several miles from town in a commercial port area, requiring a bus trip to get anywhere off the ship. It rained that day and the prospect of a full bus of wet passengers was not appealing. We visited Barcelona for several days during our return home from Poland, so we decided to skip it this trip. 

Celebrity ships generally have decent entertainment, and this cruise was no exception. My favorite was Robert Neary who did a Neil Diamond tribute show. Pretty darn close to the actual Neil Diamond sound!

The production shows from the ship's singers and dancers were entertaining, especially the acrobatic-type performances they included:

Our disembarkation yesterday was uneventful. The ship docked in Civitavecchia, and we took a bus to the Rome train station, then a 30-minute train to Tivoli where we are staying for three nights. Our two months of land travel will now begin!