Day 15: Trieste

I suspect Trieste is our most-visited city. We might not have spent so many days here but it's a late-night return on a Sunday so we keep using the local airport for our returns home. Today's flight had been moved forward by several hours, which isn't a bad thing, as our recent return home at 04:00 from Prague prior to a working day gave us cause to rethink our strategy. So we started today totally at leisure, since we've been to Trieste so many times before and were therefore not in a position to have to get a day's sightseeing in. We dropped our suitcases off at the train station and headed to the main square for a coffee with a view:

We took a quick stroll past some landmarks which were already known to us ...

... in the direction of the the public gardens.

They were established between 1854 and 1864 on lands acquired from a benedictine monastery.

There's even a lovely little waterfall in there:

Around the corner we found an Esperanto plaque. I've lost count of how many we've seen on our holidays this year!

We decided to look for lunch and headed in the direction of the sea, which brought us en route to Clare's favourite building, the orthodox church:

The James Joyce bridge had somebody posing with the statue and a building looking resplendent alongside the bright sky:

We passed by the canal ...

... and finally reached the sea:

And after an uneventful few hours we arrived back home. Getting in at 22:00 probably would strike most people as still late when the alarms are set for 06:00 the following day, but it's still an improvement on the 02:00 that we had originally lined up.