24 hours in Italy
For me, Evan, Italy has been #1 on my bucket list since I was old enough to chew pasta. Literally, I’ve been dreaming of Italy for so long that I think I put too much pressure on the country to be perfect. Spoiler alert- it was perfect! There will be no “skip to the bottom for deets” as I am so passionate about Italy, you must read the whole thing lol.
We managed to squeeze in one day in Trieste, Italy during our 2 week long roadtrip with our Aussie friends. Trieste is located in northeastern Italy. It’s a narrow strip of land between Slovenia and the Adriatic Sea. We paid $250 for an airbnb out of the city center, on the 5th floor (which for Americans means the 6th floor) with no elevator. But it was 100% worth it! While my Italian dream is probably not the same as everyone else, I sure lived it up! Top of my checklist was to drink as many Aperol Spritz as I could while sitting under a white umbrella at a caffe on a cobblestone street and watch the people (and my cares) go by.
Next up on the list was to drink delicious Italian coffee in a cafe and eat pastries. We found a local cafe near our airbnb and as my coffee arrived I actually teared up. Y’all- I cried ACTUAL wet tears while drinking a macchiato. I could not believe how delicious it was and that my life had finally brought me to my dream country. Some other interesting things happened at that cafe like- I couldn’t figure out how to flush the toilet or turn on the hand washing sink. We also observed locals coming in and ordering drinks at the counter. Seemed totally normal until they SLAMMED them down in less than a minute, left cash on the counter and on their way they went. Didn’t matter if it was a piping hot espresso, ice cold spritz, or giant glass of red wine. They drank, paid and were out the door in under 5 minutes. We later learned that it’s cheaper to do that rather than sit down and actually enjoy your beverage.
Our next stop was to eat delicious, fresh hand-made pasta. The original dream started when I watched a travel show when I was 8- this woman went to Italy and a little Italian Nona (Grandmother) taught her how to make pasta in her kitchen. We did not have enough time for this in Trieste as we were only there for one day. Here’s where things went south. We didn’t make a reservation for dinner on a weekend night, we should have known better. So by the time we were ready to eat, so was everyone else. Wait times were insane but we finally found a restaurant that had 1 table available on the canal. Long story short- I got the fresh hand-made pasta. Not the one I ordered, but I was still eating pasta in Italy so my heart was FULL.
Any trip to Italy wouldn’t be complete without some gelato, right?! By the time we were done at dinner, the gelato shops were about to close so we literally ran across the town square and barely made it in a shop in time. But we did it, we got our first taste of Italian gelato and boy was it fantastic!
We may not go back to Italy this summer as our funds are starting to run low and I would hate to go there and not be able to do the rest of the things we want to do. Anyways- below is the video where we spent 1 day in Italy. Did I mention that we didn’t get stamped into Italy? We pretty much snuck in!
