A Rainy Day Trip to Trieste

A rainy day today for a quick road trip to Trieste – at least the time in Trieste was quick because the arrival time was later than expected.

But a rainy day is a perfect day to get a desperately needed haircut and try my Italian language skills to get what I wanted, or at least to practice.  During the course of this experience, I spoke in Italian with 3 Italians, a Ukrainian (who cut my hair) and in English and Italian with a man from Iraq, who learned his English in Norway! What can I say, even with pictures, I got sort of what I wanted – but a huge improvement over what I had going in – and paid 30 euros more than I expected.  Guess I need more practice!

Maybe I should not have been surprised because when I tried the same thing in Spain a few years ago, with even less knowledge of Spanish, I got a good cut but double the price that I expected.  That time it was because I kept just saying yes to everything, not clueing in to the fact that each yes cost more.

Meanwhile, back in Trieste.  It rained all day, sometimes quite hard, so hard in fact that the policeman told me he

didn’t think that there was a hop on hop off bus that day! So we had a coffee, a haircut, a wander around and some extra driving to figure out what turned out to be easy parking on the waterfront, and then it was time to head back to Rovinj.

In Trieste, everyone I asked for directions or help was very nice and eager to help.  I asked someone at a bus stop for the direction to Piazza dell’ Unita di Italia and three people chimed in, all with a smile, and luckily all in agreement!

I also liked the fact that it felt like a real city, and that not everyone spoke English well, good for me to practice speaking Italian.  And although I speak Italian, I think one could get by without speaking Italian.

With only half a day there, I have the impression that Trieste is a city that deserves more time and would be a great place to spend at least a long weekend.