South of the Alps: Ljubljana and Trieste

I had a reunion with Mojca in Ljubljana.  She was someone I met in Abisko, Sweden last year.  We had some ice-cream that night while she walked with us around the city center.  Ljubljana reminds me of a smaller version of Salzburg.  Both have castles on hills in the center of the city with a river running through them.

The next morning, we set out to reach Trieste, Italy on bicycle.  The first 25km was flat terrain so it was really easy.  After that, we had to cross several hills while going south-west towards Italy.  After a few kilometers crossing the Italian-Slovenian border, we had the longest and best winding downhill ever - along the Strada per Basovizza,  while going do the cliff near Trieste.  We rode for almost half an hour.  There were nicely arranged orange-roofed villas and apartments on the hill slopes reaching all the way to the Adriatic Sea.  We then cycled for a bit before stopping by the Piazza dell'Unità d'Italia to look for the tourist information office and of course to take photos.

Next thing on our minds were to try out pizza in Italy.  We had pizza at the Bella Napoli, as suggested by the tourist information officer.  It was quite pricy at 7 euros but otherwise the pizza was really good.

Oh yes, we did cycle past the Miramar castle as you can see from the pictures above.  Its just a park with a nice little castle by the sea.  Afterwards, since we did not manage to find a hostel with available beds, we camped at the next town, Sistiana.  There we made a mistake of going down the cliff to the beach area where one cannot in principle put up tents on the beach since they close it at 8pm.  So we had to set up camp at a unused parking lot.

The next morning, we had an easy way to the stone beaches, and had a nice time in the cool water and the sun.  We continued cycling south towards Grado.