Day 9
A Day At The Beach
Wednesday, August 28, 2024
Buongiorno,
Today we decided to go to the beach. Ironically, easier said than done in Italy. Especially not in the context of what we are used to in New Zealand.
Previous experience has taught us that many of the best beaches are private. You have to pay to rent a spot (usually a lounger or umbrella) and spend the day.
In New Zealand we take Ōhope and Mount Maunganui for granted. Anytime you want you can wander down and go for a swim. All you have to do is find a place to park your car. What’s more, the beaches in New Zealand are very clean. While we all could (and we all should) do a better job of keeping them clean, compared to many overseas beaches they’re spotless. Oh, and our beaches also happen to be breath-takingly beautiful sand beaches.
We were keen to explore and see what we could find, especially given the heat and humidity.
In Trieste, we are incredibly close to the border with Slovenia. So we fired up the Hyundai and popped over the border. Along the way we found an area, above the Italian town of Muggia, that provided a view of the entire Gulf of Trieste.
The village of Muggia was historically rich in salt, a source of great wealth. The village of Trieste wanted the salt mines (and the wealth) for themselves, so many battles were fought over the salt mined in the 14th century.
The roads in these old European towns are hilarious. So, so narrow, cars and bikes parked randomly, variable surfaces. Some of these scooter riders must have some skills to keep it together on the cobbles, especially when cobbles are wet with rain.
Grandma does not always enjoy these narrow roads. She is worried that Koro is too far to the left. And to be fair, Koro is still getting used to a manual gearbox. Neither of us are fully trusting of the laissez faire attitude of the other maniacs on the road, especially at intersections.
On top of that is not knowing where you are going. The old roads are not laid out in a nice grid pattern. Sometimes Googly might tell us, "turn left", and we reply with, "which left, there's two choices!". There's higgidly piggidly little lanes going in all directions.
We made it to the beach without too much drama. Only two unscheduled U-Turns.
Um, yeah, about that beach part. It was all concrete. Apparently, there is only one small sand beach along all of the Slovenia’s 46km of coastline. Most of the beaches are concreted like this one was.
But, boy, do the locals make the most of it. They don’t care, this is what they got, so they make the most of it and rock their budgie smugglers and their G-Bangers along the concrete promenade. Topless sunbathing? Yup, why not? We’re at the beach!
To be fair the water was crystal clear and warm and really nice to swim in. No waves. A bit like swimming in a salty lake.
Sunbathing on concrete was a bit different, but we enjoyed ourselves. And the weather was stinking hot. So hot and humid there was lightening and rumbles of thunder in the hills. While the sun shined.
The concrete beach had a couple of short concrete jetties. These had stainless steel ladders down to the water. Kids are kids all over the world. What kid doesn’t like jumping into the water with a big splash? They were loving jumping off the concrete jetty, making as big a splash and as much noise as possible, then swimming to the ladders to climb out and do it again.
After sun-baking for a while we drove a little further, this time North along the coast road and back to Italy. Just North of the border was Boa Beach. We found a park and went to look for something to eat. Boa Beach was much longer, but still all concrete. Again with steps down to the water, which looked to be over your head from the moment you stepped off the last step.
Lunch was awful and expensive. Typical of beaches all over the world. We'd had enough sun and needed a beer and a rest, in that order.
One of the best things about exploring old cities like Trieste is deciding to walk up what looks to be a dead end alley, maybe a metre wide, then at the end you take a left, a right, and burst out into yet another wonderful piazza filled with people enjoying conversation and food under the stars. We did that this evening and were rewarded with a little Spanish Tapas restaurant. Something different for a change.
This evening has been the hottest night so far. When we sat down to dinner the temperature was 27C and humidity 65%. By 9:00pm the air was like a hot wet blanket. While the temperature had dropped to 26C, the humidity had increased to 70%! We’d left the air-conditioning in our room on full bore, so when we got back to our room it felt like walking into a fridge - heaven!
Love to you all from Grandma & Koro & Buzzy Bee.