the top of Trieste

Our last full day in Trieste brought some drizzly weather so we went through town to the hop on/hop off stop near the roman ruins. Trieste was enclosed by walls built in 33–32 BC on Emperor Octavian’s orders. The city developed greatly during the 1st and 2nd centuries.  The Roman theatre lies at the foot of the San Giusto hill, facing the sea. The construction partially exploits the gentle slope of the hill, and much of the theatre is made of stone. The topmost portion of the amphitheatre steps and the stage were supposedly made of wood.

From the roman theater ruins, we caught the bus to the stop at the top of the hill overlooking town, where the oldest churches are located.  There we saw St. Justus Cathedral, symbol of Italian Trieste during the Risorgimento, and named after the city's Patron, St. Justus. This church dates back to 1320: its interiors are decorated by beautiful Byzantine mosaics.some beautiful mosaics.

also on the hilltop were some more roman ruins (a few columns left from a temple dedicated to Zeus) and a fortress like castle...

after spending time up on top we caught the bus back down to the center of town and walked around, making an ill advised decision to have lunch at a pizza place that was awful- bad food and bad service... but we made up for our disappointment by having gelato before heading back to the main square and a bit of relaxing time before dinner.

We had dinner at Cittadicherso - and while it was reasonably priced with good food we liked the places from the prior two evenings much better.

we had mussels and risotto to start and then bronzino and scampi for mains

After dinner we headed back to the hotel to pack - we leave in the morning for Venice - the trip is a little over two hours by train. So Trieste had been on our lists as a place to visit for quite some time and we found it charming but in Michelin parlance not "worth a journey" - if heading to the Istrian peninsula or to Slovenia, it would be a very nice stop along the way - worth two nights with a full day in between to see the city sights.  That said, apparently the Barcolana regatta is quite the draw with more than 25,000 participants and many times that number in spectators.  From the number of tents we saw erected along the harbor - clearly a lot more than sailing goes on during the weekend of the regatta. So that may be a draw for some travelers and the very weekend to stay away for others--- just sayin....

Touring Trieste

On day two, as is usual, we woke up early. Our hotel included breakfast, so we went downstairs to grab a bite. After breakfast we headed out in the direction of the train station to buy our tickets for Bologna and for Venice. That handled, we decided to do an overview tour of the city by using the hop on/hop off tourist bus.

some photos from the walk to the station-

The first bus was more than an hour away from coming by the stop at the train station, we grabbed a cab and headed toward the marina (starting point for the bus) since the departure time was roughly fifteen minutes from the then current time.  The tour took a bit over an hour for the full circuit and when we returned to town we hopped off at the stop closest to our hotel.

the bus seems to have been transferred from elsewhere (the Trieste sticker seems to be laid over another former and larger decal- LOL)

we head along the waterfront where there are easily a thousand sailboats in the harbor...turns out the weekend will bring one of the world's largest regattas to Trieste - the Barcolana...

back in the main square after the trip around the city and suburbs..

a number of a great variety of lights - all of which were stunning!

We did a bit of research about "attractions" on Trip Advisor and made a reservation for lunch at a hole-in-the-wall place down an alley-like street about five minutes walk from the main plaza.
The walk to/from the lunch place -

the place we chose for lunch-

After lunch we decided to walk to the ruins of the Roman Teatro which once was right on the edge of the city but now is located in the center of the central city area.

After we made short work of seeing the Roman ruins, we walked a bit through the pedestrian area of town. Shops and restaurants line the maze of narrow streets.  Plenty of charming places to eat and/or sit outside for coffee or drinks.

back into the narrow streets of the old city- I spotted this very eye-appealing book stand-

then the main square - the location of our hotel - you can see at the waterfront the preparations for the regatta with many tents pitched for vairous functions-

in the evening we walked to dinner through the city -

The dinner place was called pepenero pepebianci - and was excellent!   This would be our best dinner in Trieste.  The meal was made even better because of the warm welcome and attentive service of the owner.  

we shared a plate of the locally made (in the village above town) prosciutto

then Phil had the white truffles on eggs-

and I had a stupendous zucchini flower dish with foamed burrata!

My main was the tagliatelle with the white truffles-

Phil had the large scampi

too full for desserts - we still made short work of the mignardise -

highly recommended!

off to sleep - planning for the next day's outing since our tickets for the bus work for 48 hours we can catch up with a few more sights by taking the bus to the more difficult (top of the mountain) locations - and see some more of Trieste before we leave the following morning...