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Mauro picked us up this morning about 7:30 and we drove closer to Udine where we met up with his wife Sandra. Here we distribute ourselves between the two cars and drove closer to Trieste, taking a series of smaller roads up the hills above the city to a very modern church which looks out over the ocean and the city. After a few minutes taking in this view, we got back in the cars and drove to the border with Slovenia. As Slovenia is also part of the European Union, there is no stop at the border ( much to Joshua's dismay) and we drove right through adding one more country to our year's tally.
In Slovenia, we drove through the countryside until we reached what looked to be a conservation area. After a short walk, we reached the visitor complex for the Skocjan Caves - a huge cave system that goes for many kilometers underground. We were just in time to join the morning tour (you can't enter the caves on your own).
Photography and video are not allowed in the caves, though it would be difficult to get a decent picture anyway as it is fairly
dim. The start of the tour begins with a short passage through a man made tunnel, before entering the natural cave.
The first part of the cave system in known as the silent caves as there is no river in this part. The connecting series of passages opened to larger and larger sections until we were in a massively big cave with the ceiling at least a hundred meters above us. These are by far the largest caves we have seen in our travels, dwarfing those in Vietnam and New Zealand. There were numerous stalactites and stalagmites with one dating back 250 000 years.
After this first section of caves, the path steeps down sharply as it leads to the Murmuring caves, so named because of the large river at the bottom of them - a river that flows all the way to Trieste in Italy.
The river in the Murmuring caves is far above the river which carved them over the centuries. The cave is eerily lit and way down below you can see the original walkways from the early days of cave exploration in the 1800s. This river enters the caves a short distance away
and flows out again from the caves though a hole further down the cave. From time to time, the river from outside has brought in debry which has blocked the exit of this water, causing the cave to fill up. Marks on the walls indicate the water levels reached in 1826 and again in 1965 when the cave filled with water.
We left the cave though its natural entrance, suddenly brightly lit ravine. The group followed the pathway to a cable car that was to take us out of this gorge, but unfortunately the cable car malfunctioned, and the guides were radioed to take the path up instead. As there we several elderly people on the tour, this took some time and we opted to take an alternate route that led us up to view of the gorge and an upper observation area.
After a picnic lunch near the ticket office, we headed off again, this time to the town of Lipica.
Lipica is famous for the horses that are bred there. Many of Queen Elizabeth's horses come from here. Though I know nothing about horses, they are indeed impressive looking animals and we ended up take
many photographs.
After crossing the border back into Italy, we stopped off at the rather austere looking Mathematics wing at the University of Trieste. Mauro pointed out that it was a good example of Fascist architecture, having been build in the time of Mussolini. The facade in particular, has rather powerful images that remind me of some of the images of have seen of Soviet era public buildings.
From here we headed down to the waterfront and to the Piazza Unita D'Italia - a massive square that is flanked with Austrian style buildings. This part of Italy was in Austrian control for most of the 1800s and many of the streets and squares look more like those in Vienna than the rest of Italy. After exploring for a bit, we stopped at a cafe and had coffee.
On the way out of Trieste, we got a bit lost but ended up in a very old section of the city. We took advantage of where we ended up and visited San Giusto, and the ruins of an old church there.
Our final stop in Trieste was the castle of Miramare and its grounds. Build in the 1800s,
this castle sits at the edge of the sea and has been restored and decorated with furniture and the look of the period. One room room in particular caught my attention, having been designed to look an feel like a ship's stateroom, looking out onto the water. After touring the castle we visited some of the extensive gardens and then left just before the gates closed for the night.
On our way out of Trieste, we stopped at the place where this morning's cave river from Slovenia exits. The force of the water as it leaves the rock it incredible, a hint of the pressures that must build up inside.
Our final stop was the war cemeteries of Redipuglia. Built on the side of a long hillside that was fought fiercely over during the first world war, the huge wide staircase leading to the memorial captures the sense of the scope of the battle fought here.
Back in Udine, Mauro went and picked up their children, Elena and Fabio and we all went to a large brewpub for dinner before heading home from our very full day.
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