Tea?

We wandered into a bar on Saturday with the intention of procuring panini for lunch. We had a look at the selection and decided on a slice of pizza each instead.
"Prego" said the barman.
"Due pizza, per favoure", I replied.
"Two?", pointing to both of us.
"Si".
"Alle tavola?"
"No, al bar" (because we are tight asses and don't want to pay the extra to eat at a table).
"Okay", he replied, picking up the pizza slices to go and heat them up. "Blah blah blah" he said to the bar lady, who then proceeded to put tea cups and a selection of teas in front of us.

"Hmmm, looks like we're having tea!" I said to Marito, "I didn't think I ordered tea...oh well...tea's good". We drank our tea, ate our pizza and paid the nice people. The only thing we can think of is that the barman thought we were English and knows that all the English like tea, so when we thought he said "two", maybe he was saying "tea". Who knows...

We went on to do our grocery shopping and there was a giant mortadella sitting out in the deli section. Diameter - about that of a steering wheel in a small car; length - about 2 m long....coool.

Delicious Truffles

Italian's love their festivals and street fairs, there seems to be one on in Trieste every few weeks. In Trieste there is a pedestrian street called Via XX Settembre, a beautiful street with trees up the middle, and an abundance of gelatarie and bars along the sides. We have been to two "mostre" on this street, one was in celebration of Carnivale and the other to flowers, called "Viale in Fiore". Anyway, regardless of what the festival is about there are always chocolate stands with chocolate in all shapes and sizes. For some reason there are always chocolates cast in the shape of tools...chocolate wench...I mean wrench, anyone? Being good little foodies we alway like to sample the goodies...at Viale in Fiore it was truffle time...we tried all of them, "uno di tutti" seemed to work here.

Strada Napoleonica

We went for a walk along the scenic Strada Napoleonica (Napoleon Road) today from Villa Opicina to Prosecco. Villa Opicina is a village above Trieste, located about 3 km from the border with Slovenia. I say above because Opicina is at an altitude of about 350 m and only about 3 km from the sea, leading to great but slightly stomach lurching views of Trieste (which is at sea level) and the surrounds. The bus ride up to Opicina winds along some pretty narrow bends, which the bus drivers take at sensible controlled speeds (ha!).

According to legend, Strada Napoleonica was built by Napoleon's army, but really it was designed by an engineer chap called Vicentini. The Strada is quite popular with the locals for an easy weekend walk or jog (in lycra of course, the Italian's seem to love running in fancy outfits). The sheer cliffs along the walk are used for climbing and have anchor points in place so you can just show up with your equipment and away you go.