Blue Rock Thrush

Forgot to mention that I finally photographed the Blue Rock Thrush from the cliffs in Duino before I left for the US!

Alla Casetta Weekend

I'm doing this blog post from the US for Kristen who's back in Italy ahead of me. The photos (posted on Facebook) are all from my weekend alone up at Alla Casetta in the Dolomites...I had gone up there after Kristen left Italy for the US a few days before me. Since she's back in Italy without me I thought maybe this would convince her to take a trip up there for herself!

Enjoy the photos Kristen!

Alla Casetta Photos

Favorite Cities

1. New York
2. Portland
3. Trieste??

I was thinking about this today while walking through Trieste on my way to Knulp, one of my favorite bars (i.e., coffee shop...I always feel the need to clarify this) to work. The first two cities make a lot of sense, but does Trieste belong on this list? I think so and here's why...

Let's start with New York. First of all, it's where I grew up...well across the river at least. I've worked there, lived there, and spent far more time roaming the streets there than any other city. This really makes it MY city, and no matter where I live I'll always think of New York as my city. There's simply no other city like it in the world. Enough said. Sorry Philly (haha...joke for Kristen).

The second city on the list, Portland, should make Gayle and Jeff very happy...especially Jeff who grew up there. It's the city where we are moving this summer, and there's a reason for this. What Portland lacks in size and cultural diversity compared to New York it more than makes up for in charm and friendliness! Again, this is a city where I've now spent a lot of time. But I put Portland on my favorite cities list after my very first visit. What makes a city great is it's character, and Portland is full of it...tons of coffee shops, great micro-brew pubs, a good music scene, bikes and dogs everywhere, and an ample supply of cool neighborhoods all in the shadow of Mt. Hood make this city great. I can't wait to live there.

This brings me to Trieste. Size-wise it's far closer to Portland than New York making it a small city for comparison. Culturally it seems much larger than it is, thanks to the influences of Italy, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Former Yugoslavian countries nearby (Slovenia and Croatia are right here). Would I consider it one of my favorite cities had I only visited once? Probably not. Does it compare to other great Italian cities that we've visited like Venice, Padova or Bologna? No. But Trieste makes my list because I've really grown to love this city over time. Like all great cities, Trieste is alive with it's own personality. I've been listening to those street musicians in the photo playing amazing pre-Bop jazz all week and I've been thinking: "Man there are a lot of really good street musicians in Trieste!" It's one of the things that makes this city great.

Kristen and I have been spending a lot of time in Trieste getting away from Duino whenever we can, and it really hit me this week what this city has meant for us (for me especially) while living in Italy. The escape of wandering on all the pedestrian walkways, hearing great music now and then along the way, looking out at the Adriatic from Piazza Unità, eating cheesy Piadine da porta la via, or stopping for a coffee or an afternoon Spritz and Stuzzichini (free bar snacks, sometimes enough for dinner) has kept me sane after the tough times living surrounded by students in Duino. I don't think I would have made it through this year without having Trieste so nearby. For this, Trieste will always be on my list of favorite cities.

Looking for Blue Rock Thrushes

For the past week or so I've spent my mornings walking on the Rilke Path searching for Blue Rock Thrushes. These elusive birds are breeders (and maybe year-round residents) on the cliffs in Duino, and the only time you really stand a chance of seeing them is in spring when the males are singing. I'm trying to get a good photograph of one this spring, but so far I've had no luck. The birds are blue-grey in color and are amazingly well-camouflaged against the grey rocks and blue sky. We're lucky to have them here in Duino at all because ordinarily they are found on alpine cliffs far out of reach without doing a Via Ferrata.

Last year I hardly ever saw them...and Kristen never saw them. This year we finally learned to recognize their song so they have gotten easier to locate, but they are still really difficult to see. Kristen and I have had nice looks at them from the Rilke Path and while paddling in the sea below the cliffs. Getting a photograph is proving much more difficult because the birds like to hang out on the steepest cliffs. There are a few very safe places to climb down a bit, like the one here, so hopefully I'll get lucky and get a photo soon before they stop singing and vanish in the rock crevices for the summer.

Spring Feeding

I found this pair of Blue Tits sharing a meal together on the Rilke Path. The male is handing the female a caterpillar. I'm guessing this pair of Blue Tits must have a nest close by. Often with small birds the female does all the incubating and the male brings in food and feeds the female so she doesn't have to go very far from the nest. Further evidence that spring has arrived!

Ravenna

We finally made it down to Ravenna to see the city's famous mosaics and were not disappointed! Another interesting Italian city with a lot of history, no one knows for sure when it was first built, but by the second century BC it was definitely part of the Roman Empire. Later, Ravenna became the capital of the Western Roman Empire and eventually the Byzantine Empire's most important western city.

A beautiful city to walk around with lots of pedestrian streets connecting the many mosaic-filled buildings it's hard to believe that the city was in the poorest region of Italy for many years until very recently. Ravenna was once a coastal city of great importance, but for centuries the area had been silting up and the ports became marshes resulting in abandonment of the city. It's only since WWII that Ravenna has been restored to what it is today.

The reason tourists visit Ravenna is the mosaics. You can see historic mosaics in a lot of other places in Italy, but there's no place like Ravenna in terms of the quality of the mosaics or the sheer number of them. The closeup at left shows you how they are made, you can't appreciate the small details by most of the pictures I'm posting here. The grandness of the interiors shows well I think, but to really appreciate the mosaics you have to see them in person.

At first glance Ravenna may just seem like a nice city for a coffee as most of the buildings aren't all that interesting from the outside. Take the Basilica di San Vitale for example. From the outside it looks a bit like every other basilica you will see in every other Italian city. But that all changes when you go inside. The following pictures are all taken inside Basilica di San Vitale:

Some of our favorite mosaics were in the tiny Galla Placidia's Mausoleum. That photo above of Kristen looking up at the mosaics was made in this building. These are some of the oldest mosaics in Ravenna, dating back to the 5th Century. The gold cross set in a blue sky with gold stars in the ceiling of the mausoleum is a famous Ravenna image. The colors and details of the mosaics were amazing. One really interesting thing about this building is the way that it was lit inside. The only light coming in was through thin marble windows which created a golden glow on the colorful mosaics.

Another really interesting mausoleum was Dante's Mausoleum, not because it was as beautiful inside but because it was "the" Dante! Dante Alighieri, the famous Italian poet from the Middle Ages, is buried in Ravenna and you can walk back in time by entering his tomb. I really like this about Italy, that there is still such a connection to all these great artists and literary figures from the past...for example: right now I'm blogging in Caffe San Marco in Trieste where James Joyce wrote and yesterday we walked on the same cliffside path in Duino where Rilke was inspired to write his elegies.


Ravenna, the "city of art", is definitely on our list of must sees for anyone visiting Italy. I found Ravenna to be different than a lot of other cities full of antiquities that we've visited. For me, the art in the city held my interest more than other places (e.g., Venice) where I often grow tired of looking at paintings of Christ and the Virgin Mary. Maybe it's that I find mosaics to be so fascinating...I really like the intricate details in Italian mosaics the same way that I like paintings by Dutch post-impressionists like Van Gogh.




Here are some parting photos of the amazing art you can experience first hand if you visit this wonderful city.