Down to the Sea

Having soaked up the quietude and grandeur of the mountains, we decamped on Friday. On the left in the image below, J and K are making our final climb up to the car from the chalet's hidden valley. (Their figures provide a nice sense of scale.)

 

From the Carnic Alps, it was east to the city of Trieste, the farthest flung corner of Italy, on the Slovenian border. In its heyday, Trieste was the single seaport for the Austro-Hungarian empire. We'd wanted to visit ever since reading Jan Morris's mesmerizing travelogue, Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere. The obvious Habsburg influence in the architecture and cuisine was fun to see after Vienna.

J enjoyed this little playground in a piazza.

Not to mention the gelato that soon followed!

 

We bumped into James Joyce, who lived here for a time while writing Ulysses.

We spent the hot afternoon strolling around, and wandered the streets again after dark, when the rest of the inhabitants came out in force.

In the morning, J and M set off to climb the big hill in town for some views. Pro-adventurer that he is, J took the hundreds of stairs like they were nothing.

 

Then we were on the road again, rounding the Bay of Trieste west to pay a visit to the castle of Duino, where M's poet Rilke passed numerous visits and conceived one of his masterpieces, the cycle of poems that bear that castle's name: The Duino Elegies. M greatly enjoyed being back on the poet's trail, once again in a place where everyone knows who Rilke is.

 

The castle is open to the public, so we spent a few hours wandering through the rooms and grounds. The setting is a rugged stunner, and throughout our visit a mad wind was howling -- very appropriate considering the substance of the first Duino Elegy, which came to Rilke thanks to weather much like this. ("A wind full of infinite space gnaws at our faces....")

(the castle library)

 Rilke was present in every room.

From Duino we continued along the coast toward the Gulf of Venice, arriving in the little town of Quarto d'Altino, where we settled into a residence-style hotel, our base for exploring the floating city. J was thrilled to find his very own sofa bed awaiting him.