The low point of the trip

Every trip has one, a low point when you just wish you were back home.  In my experience it often happens after a couple of days of heavy sightseeing and a spell of over-eating. It can hit you at around 16 or 17 days into the trip, usually when the weather's kind of crummy.  Today fits all of that, plus I'm bummed out about the loss of my purse.  We spent this morning searching to find a replacement but there's nothing at all like that bag in all of Trieste.

You know how it is when you have something in mind when you go shopping; you can never find it.  I liked that bag so much that I'm now planning to make a trip back into Venice on the day before our plane leaves to see if I can find the little store where I bought it.  If you've ever been to Venice you'll know how hard that will be!

But back to the low point. I'm beggining to wonder if the low point comes about three days before your flight home (no matter how long your trip). This is the time when your mind starts drifting to all the things waiting for you there. The people the involvements, the unfinished projects.  Maybe if we had come for a month, it would hit about day 26. And if we'd come for two weeks, it would be day 11. What do you think?

It might also have to do with getting bored with the clothes in your suitcase and kicking yourself for bringing too much of the wrong stuff and not enough of what you really need.

In any case, we took a bus this afternoon up to a little town above Trieste in the rain and found there was nothing to see.  We did have a nice homey meal though in a little family run joint.  Roast chicken and potatoes and spinach and grilled veg.  Yummy.  Just what we needed to boost our spirits.

The other spirit booster is the wine here, which is very good.

Yesterday we took a plastic water bottle into one of the wine stores where you can buy it by volume.  We got a half litre of nice white wine for  1 euro and 70 cents.  We find that you can even do this in the supermarkets here. Look carefully at the photo above to see that Cabernet sells for 2 Euros a litre. Come to think of it there are benefits to being here in Italy.

By the way: Tomorrow we will make an exciting excursion to an ancient Roman site called Aquileia, a very important city around AD 10. In fact it was the fourth largest city in the empire.  Now it's being excavated and is the place to go for amazing mosaics.  The floor of the church has an original 4th century mosaic floor complete with pagan symbols and portraits of the roman dignitaries and household life.  We take both a train and bus to get there so it will be a long day, and hopefully there will be some sun instead of rain.