The port of Ancona

First impressions were grim – the port seems to have been on a steady decline since its founding by Greeks in 4thC BC. Many things contributed to this first impression – rainy and windy weather, travelling on the train through many tens of kilometres of dismal conurbation of the low cost seaside holiday kind, and then a few kilometres of semi-abandoned industrial plant and a functioning oil refinery before reaching Ancona itself.  Then the bad drag from the station for a kilometre past abandoned and seedy arcaded, filthy buildings with rubbish all around the broken footpaths, then up a huge hill to the hotel. 

Once we’d cooled off and began to contemplate the scene a little more calmly, the magnificent setting, typical of a Greek choice of location, was evident. And as we wandered around the port and the town a little, there was a sort of porty charm. Clearly there has been great mercantile wealth in the place - many very solid and lovely buildings are evidence of that. The Byzantine influence is also evident in some of the buildings. And of course there are small amounts of buildings from Roman times and even a tiny amount of the Greek walls of 4thC BC. But it is also evident that there is now little wealth with which to maintain the buildings in keeping with their original grandeur.

Our conveniently located hotel

Roman port buildings

The setting, as we leave on the ferry

 

The port itself is enormous and quite active. There was a very complicated arrangement for getting a ferry ticket issued, checking in and embarkation, more designed for trucks than foot passengers, and perhaps more logical for that purpose. I liked the security check – quick glance at the passport and a dismissive wave negating any requirement to put the luggage through the scanning equipment – fair enough I guess, as it would have forced the officer to put out a cigarette. But Mutton Dutton, the former PM cum surfie and Border Force would have been appalled.

The ferry has been great fun – huge, fantastically well-equipped and very comfortable and provided us a good night’s sleep. We woke up as we were passing Kerkyra (Corfu) and coming in to Igoumenitsa, where the ferry disgorged about 30 prime movers pulling 40 and 60 foot container loads. Then a little parade of small vans and then the motor bikes, and half a dozen passengers. We went up to the swimming pool and open deck area to watch the unloading and reloading, and found that the kennels on the ferry are on that level. The dog owners had their four-legged friends out of the kennels and were giving them their morning walk on the deck.  We are now running alongside another ferry down the west coast of Greece with land in sight pretty well all the way – mainland on the left and islands on the right – lovely. The sound of komboloia in use accompanies us.

Sitting area in our cabin

Vast lounges,. few passengers

Coming into Igoumenitsa at dawn

Leaving Igoumenitsa

Me and the dogs on the deck - can't see any dogs though

 

Recipe for a good city

220,000 people, buildings of four to six storeys, a mix of architectural styles well-blended, proximity to sea and mountains, and a town council that cares how the place looks. Trieste has all these things. We have no basis for knowing how the weighting applies to each element. Certainly however it is instructive that with, in our terms, a small population, there is plenty of life, a university, a huge hospital, and a good public transport system. Our nearest equivalent might be Wollongong. Trieste wins by quite a few lengths.

Chris asked about good food/restaurants and whether we had found some, her experience being that this was a bit hard to find. We found great delis, and from them ate picnics on our balcony on a couple of nights. There were huge numbers of cafes, but relatively few ristorantes/trattorias. We had two good Italian meals and one shocker Indian, but on the latter, what might we have expected really? We did have to walk about a fair bit to find the two Italian meals, so I guess finding good food wasn’t that easy.

We went to the Revolterra Museum of Modern Art (19^th century to now) and to a couple of other museums of prehistory and local history, and we took the tram/funicular up to the top of the Karst Plateau from where we had magnificent views of Trieste but also across to the Istrian peninsula in one direction and into the mountains of Slovenia in the other. And we poked around the antique shops of what used to be the Jewish ghetto. But the biggest pleasure was just walking about the streets, coming across odd bits of Roman stuff and seeing beautiful palazzo after beautiful palazzo. We covered a lot of the city over the several days and no where did the lovely buildings seem to run out. There were patches that were less grand or well off but on the whole the commercial buildings were fantastic. Here are some examples.

 

 

Beautiful cafes were plentiful too and we did go to a couple of the longer standing grand old ones.

And where there are cafes, there are also women with bored dogs….

 

And silly  and cranky dogs.....

 

 

A Saturday in Trieste

Everyone is out and about this morning and the city has a wonderful buzz.

We are still amazed, having come from Rome, that in the same country, one city can be so grotty and chaotic another so smart and clean and  orderly, yet very, very alive.

There is a bit of a party feel this morning, with a gypsy band, a few clowns, lots of children, a bride or two and lots of people just going about their Saturday morning shopping, coffee drinking, and general mooching.

So we mooched too - to the Teatro Romano

 And the veggie and flower market around the Grand Canal

Grand Canal

 ...and James Joyce was out walking too.

Verdi was lounging around amongst the dahlias and begonias

 And the locals were drinking coffee - there are huge numbers of cafés. The building in the distance is, appropriately, the Lloyd Triestino building. Apparently banking and insurance is now the economic mainstay of Trieste, rather than shipping, but there is still very large ship building at Malfalcone just down the coast near the airport. In addition, Trieste is the main oil tanker place for oil supply into Germany, Austria and Slovakia, which probably earns them a few euros. There is certainly evidence of euros being around....

 This afternoon while TK rested his broken arse, I set about breaking mine by going  up to the top of Giusto Hill, to find the cathedral with its 12 century mosaics and the castle and defensive walls which afford great views in 360 degrees across the whole city.  I found this arch on the way up.

And the mosaic

 Some views from the top....

So far, fantastic, and looking forward to a few more days here.