Finally it was time to leave climber’s paradise and head for sailor’s paradise: Croatia. Unfortunately, the wonderful European train system stops abruptly near the border between Italy and Slovenia, and we found ourselves needing to spend one last night in Italy before catching a bus to Split, Croatia, where we would be meeting up with the boat and its inhabitants. The town is called Trieste and is the seat of Roman civilization, or something like that, and really quite pretty.
Unfortunately, this makes it quite a destination for Italians and thus pretty expensive. After being quoted prices like 220 Euros (~$300) for pretty generic hotels, and it being too late at night to get out of town to find camping, Nelson suggested we think about sleeping in a park. I wasn’t sure how safe that would be until we came across a dozen or so German girls (literally girls, 12-18 years of age), who had also been unable to find affordable accommodation and who had decided to bunk down on a patch of grass in a piazza. We decided to join them, thinking that by being older and a bit more muscular we could provide them with some protection for the night. Boy, were we wrong! They were definitely the ones who kept us safe. They organized everyone to put their packs in the middle and sleep in neat rows around them, and to have two girls at a time stay awake for one hour shifts to watch over the bags and everyone (they wouldn’t let us take a shift). A few times I woke up to drunk men getting a bit too close to the group and five girls getting right up in their faces and scaring them off. And when the police showed up in the middle of the night, they charmed them into letting us all stay until daybreak. Phew! In the morning we learned they were girl scouts who had just spent a week hiking in the mountains in Slovenia. I was pretty impressed.
We spent the next day checking out the town.
My definition of an 'old' building has definitely changed! This is an ampitheatre built in the days of the Roman empire.
This is a real live drawbridge on a castle.Nowadays they just have a red an white bar across the entrance to keep out unwanted visitors.
Okay, now an 11-hour overnight bus to Split!
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