It is time that we leave Trieste – overall it is not really tourist friendly with most shops shut the time we have been here and not a lot of places to eat. I guess that most Italians eat pasta everyday so they would rather eat Pizza when they go out.

There is however plenty of mini markets and coffee bars – the coffee has been great and cheap.

We leave the hotel in about 1 hour and we need to get ourselves to the airport about 35 km away – so we are going to take a bus to the airport.

Our flight plan is Trieste – Rome with a 3 hour stopover and then Rome – Athens

We land at about 6:40pm in Athens so the time we get to the hotel about 8pm

I will be having a coffee in Rome when we arrive since the last time I was in Rome (7 years ago) I did not drink coffee.

Trieste is a hard place to find things:

• We arrived on Saturday afternoon and most shops shut.
• Sunday – Almost everything shut
• Monday – 50% of shops do not open

It is hard to find somewhere to eat, in our area we travelled around a lot of streets and found mainly bars and not restaurants. The restaurants you do find are generally pizzeria’s who may do some pasta dishes.

We ate at a pizzeria on Saturday night and that was good, but on Sunday night we wanted something different. We went down to the area where the Canal was and found about 3 places open. We choose one called “al Barattolo”

We choose one (pictured above) and Chris had a great seafood chowder (9 Euro) , and Pam ordered a Goulash with dumplings (Gnocchi) (8 Euro)

Pam’s looked a bit dry to me, but she said it was “OK”

Monday night we went looking again and a lot more bars were open but we ended up going back to the same place as last night since it was good and we knew the food was fresh. We popped into another place which looked good but had no customers and no cooking smells so we left it in place of something busier – especially with travelling to Greece tomorrow – we wanted to be well.

Chris had Grilled Squid (9.20 euro), and Pam a lasagne (6.60 euro) – Although the squid looks minimal it was lovely and with a bit of bread and wine it is all I needed.

Sometimes you do wonder about prices:

Tonight

• 1 Spritz Aperol (Campari and Soda?) 4.50 Euro
• 1 Vino Rosso (Red House Wine) 1/4 Litre – 2.50 Euro
• 1 can coke – 333ml – 3.50 Euro

So drink wine – it is cheap

This is the main square in Trieste – Palazzo Dell Unita – it was quite quiet for a Saturday we thought.

The view out or hotel window	Down near the waterfront	Just an interesting building
	Pam ejoying a beer – the nibbles were free	Chris enjoying a beer

The view from the promenade near Palazzo Dell Unita  

We arrived yesterday at our hotel – the hotel is nice and clean and tidy. It was easy to find from the bus station – about 5-10 minutes walk.

Quite modern in some ways with TV’s that can be used to check email and browse the Internet.

But outside it is pretty grotty – last night there were lots of young people drinking and when we returned from a restaurant there was a small scuffle and there is lots of litter out there.

We went out looking for a restaurant last night and wondered around and could not find anything – lots of bars with people drinking but no restaurants. We went back to the hotel and asked where they were and headed towards the old town.

We went past a small Ristorante Pizzeria that looked good – we went in and Pam ordered Taglietalle with Mushrooms and I ordered a pizza.

The dish’s were HUGE – look the the size of the plates compared to the fork. This was a massive meal of pasta for pam and my pizza was larger than the plate.

Pizza was 8 euro, pasta was 9 euro, 3 euro cover charge.

I had a great espresso in Trieste today – 0.95 cents and done properly – I had two of them and will return later for more.

Here is a forecast for the ash tomorrow at 12pm (lunchtime) – it is showing the ash cloud/no fly zone over most of Italy. We are suppose to fly from Trieste to Rome to Athens on Tuesday morning.

I have been following the EuroControl twitter feed at http://twitter.com/eurocontrol and their facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/eurocontrol – very up to date information.

It will be interesting to see what happens over the next 48 hours.

When we travel to have to put our cats into a Cattery, the one we use is called Cat Habitat. We asked them to send us photos of them if they get a chance and they sent us a couple of photo’s today.

Kahman – it is as if he sending us a message that he is not happy there.

Toot on the other hand seems content

Today we left Piran and are currently on a bus to Trieste in Italy.

Piran was a very nicr little place and in the end we had good weather with yesterday being warm and sunnny.

The bad weather returned today but i am not concerned as we got to see. Piran in full sun.

I never tried the coffee in Piran so I am hanging out for one in Italy.

We have three days in Trieste - it is not far from Piran and was cheap on the bus only costing 5.40 euro each