Cervignano del Fruili

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Yesterday was a travelling day. We bussed from Budapest to Vienna (2hr 40min), picked up our rental car from the airport then drove 320kms to Lake Wortherse where we stayed in an Ibis Hotel at a Rest Place stop along the autobahn. It was a strange setup with a Marche restaurant and shop with the hotel attached looking out over the lake. It had a lovely view and was comfortable for the night.

Today with Neil as the driver, we drove firstly to Daniele del Fruili where we had a lunch of prosciutto and a platter. We had been here before and thought Neil and Karilyn would enjoy the town known for it’s prosciutto bars and old town upon a hill just before it drops down onto the plains. We had a wonderful meal of a plate of prosciutto each with dishes of buffalo mozzarella, parmesan cheese, peccorino, artichokes, olives, mushrooms, a pickle, sun dried tomatoes, figs, melon, bread and a glass of red wine. How good was it? Delicious!

Our next visit was to Palmanova, a star shaped town from the 1500’s built to defend the area from the Turks. It is a complicated shape of arrow shaped fortifications and moats with the town based around a huge piazza in the middle. See the picture for the shape.

We arrived at our accommodation at 4.00pm to a B&B called Agriturismo Villa Trovatore. It is quite lovely and has been beautifully restored to modern subtle décor. We feel very luxurious after some of our more basic accommodation.

We ventured down to Grado expecting to have a drink a dinner and watch the passing people traffic but it was wall to wall people and cars. There was nowhere to park close to the town but we did manage to get down onto the beach where there were 1000’s of people lying under umbrellas, sunbathing or swimming in a shallow sea. You could go out for a hundred metres and still be only knee deep in very warm water. It was pointless staying there despite the beauty of the area so we retreated to Aquileia where we intend to visit tomorrow. We found Ristorante Al Corallo which had been recommended to us and found it was an excellent choice. The owner who waited on us recommended the seafood lasagne which we all had with a salad and enjoyed very much. With it we had a local white wine. Also very good. He didn’t speak very good English, and my Italian is pretty awful but he was happy to try some English and correct my words. A nice man. Because we were from NZ and visiting he gave us a book on Aquileia in English. It will make interesting reading on the Roman history.

Back at the B&B we sat outside on a warm evening with no wind. Very nice.

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Photos

One of the entrance gates to Palmanova
These wonderful old gates still had the hinges and lifting mechanism from a few hundred years ago.

A very crowded beach at Grado
1000's of people lined this beach on the Adriatic Sea. It was warm and shallow.