Triste Trieste

I'm the sort of person that really took the whole, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all" lesson to heart, so expect this section to be brief.

Trieste sits on the Adriatic Sea, about as far east in Italy as you can get. The people there have highly developed brains that let them navigate their incredibly complex roadway system.

I thought Trieste was just horrible. It took us forever to drive around and find anything, even with a highly detailed map of Trieste. Of course it was super crowded and full of zipping Vespas everywhere. Maybe you could go there and have a great time dear reader, but I was ready to leave about 15 mins after arrival. Compared to the nice tranquil pace of Ljubljana, this was sheer hell.

We finally scored a hotel after Cheese satisfied himself pricewise. Checking out hotels was complicated by the fact that you had to illegally park on the sidewalk, abandon the car in the street or perform some other complicated maneuver to allow you time to run in and make inquiries. Now I love my dear pal Cheese dearly, but his insistence to invest a lot of time to save a few bucks on a hotel doesn't entirely jive with my "Now!" Arian nature. Add that onto the parking problem, and you can see me and Trieste just started off on the wrong foot.

We unloaded our stuff (from the street) and drove the 2 miles (one block as the crow flies) to our parking spot. One bathroom break later and we're ready to go exploring, and I believe I discovered why the hotel met with Cheese's price requirements. It was a House of Freaks:

The Tip of the Freak Iceberg

Actually, the Freak show that happened later in the lobby was probably the highlight of the evening. I must have been missing San Diego a bit, as I was determined to see the sun set against the ocean. We walked quite a bit through the town, and it just wasn't exciting. The food wasn't all that great either. (Excpetion: The Ice Cream treats we had rocked!) The following day, we tried to check out the old castle, but it was under repair. So we set off to leave and faced another hour or so of backtracking and cursing at the map. We finally found our exit and headed down into Croatia.