Today’s Travel Tuesdays post is all about Trieste. When we were in Trieste last May, both Chris and I commented that in many ways, Trieste seemed a bit triste, melancholy, which is how the travel writer Jan Morris actually put it in her book. The architecture was monumental, but not outstanding (IMHO); they seemed to think of themselves on a grand scale, without a trace of self-aware irony (their “grand canal”, for example, is only 2 blocks long).

So maybe it’s not so much of a surprise today to be reviewing my photos and realizing that our best memories of Trieste were all from unexpectedly serendipitous moments.

For example,

1. We happened to arrive in town just in time to take in the sunset by the water:
   

   Sunset, Trieste, May 2015

2. While walking near the biggest plaza in town we focussed more on some unexpectedly interesting jelly fish instead of the buildings:
   

   Jelly Fish Photo #2, Trieste

3. Our vacation apartment was unexpectedly huge and decorated with pop art, which was fun. It also had one of the few tiny balconies in the building, so that was a nice surprise:
   

   The Friendly Tourist standing on our balcony, Triieste

   As a side benefit, our favorite coffee spot in town turned out to be the one on the ground floor of that same building – very handy.

4. Speaking of coffee — which is a reasonable thing to speak of, since Trieste is actually famous for its coffee — we stopped at a randomly picked place downtown one morning for a coffee. While the coffee was good, what was more interesting was the street performance happening down the block. Forget what you know about dancing in the streets —  these women were ballerinas:
   

   Ballet Dancers on the streets of Trieste

5. In the late afternoons we stopped at different cafes for an afternoon drink of some sort. One day we stopped at a place that was in a part of town that wasn’t too touristy. We had a lovely drink as we watched people walk by on their late-afternoon errands:
   

   Aperitivo reflection at a cafe in Trieste

6. On other days we’d go to a pedestrian-only tree-lined street near our hotel, which had many cafes at which to stop and have a beverage or a bite to eat. At the end of that street, we stumbled upon this  interesting two-faced fountain:
   

   Two-Faced Fountain, Trieste

7. During the day, in addition to monumental architecture all over town, we would occasionally come upon the random Roman ruin:
   

   Roman Arch, Trieste

   

   Roman Theatre, Trieste

8. Trieste was known back in the day as a place where writers hung out (in the cafes) to write. One author from Trieste had the pen name Italo Svabo. Svabo in Italian means “Swabian” as his father was from Schwabia (southwestern Germany). That just seemed like an odd coincidence somehow, since we had just spent 3.5 years living in Schwabia. So one day while when we ran across a statue of Svabo, the Friendly Tourist couldn’t resist a photo op:
   

   Two Gentlemen from Schwabia

9. Now there were a couple of serendipitous food things that happened to us in Trieste as well. One story is too long for today’s post, so I’ll do a followup tomorrow about that. However, as a sweet way to round out today’s post, let me tell you about discovering the presnitz. You see, as we walked back to the hotel from that cafe in #5, we just happened to pass by a bakery advertising a local specialty called presnitz. It’s a pastry log filled with nuts and sugar – very tasty. The shape of it can vary, but most often it’s done as a spiral log of some sort.So I found it serendipitous to discover that for this post, where I am sharing 9 marvelously unexpected moments from Trieste, the presnitz we’d happened to buy that day was shaped like this:
   

   Trieste Pastry

Enjoy.

P.S. More from Trieste coming tomorrow…