With Kev cleaned up we took advantage of our hotels beaut breakfast and its location (4th floor) to spy out across the bay to our impending nemisis the 200,000 plus person city of Trieste !
We both hate cycling through city's as you have little visual reference and often end up riding on winding roads with a a horde of vehicular traffic ready to eat you up should you or they make a mistake !
We eventually got off to a late start partly because of Kev's injuries and partly because he succeeded in locking himself out of the hotel as he tried to access our bikes in the hotels underground car park.
After finally working out how to get back in we both set off to the promise of some heavy afternoon rain but didn't get more than a few hundred metres before Kev raced into a pharmacy to purchase the two lorry loads of first aid supplies that he'd used up yesterday !
On the bikes again I had to slam on my brakes not long after when our return road attempted to channel us down an incredibly narrow and long road tunnel ! We somehow avoided entering and did a work around retracing our way back to the bike signs we'd followed to help us arrive in San Rocco.
This worked well for a short while until the Trieste direction bike sign disappeared at a busy round about leaving us both looking stupefied about how to enter Trieste and avoid the massive city flyovers & expressways !
As if to answer our prayers a Swiss father and daughter riding team came around the corner. After pulling them up we found out that they too were heading into central Trieste. Whether they liked it or not Kev and I were going to be attached to them like super glue !
Our Swiss heroes pulled over a couple of motorists and with directions in mind and a Garmin GPS set about cycling the 10 kms into Trieste central.
We cycled on busy roads, through roundabouts and tunnels on the outskirts of Trieste before finally entering the downtown area.
Trieste took us back to a discussion we'd with a woman cyclist a few days back who complained about it taking her 2 hours to get across Trieste ! We now realize how good at navigating she was - if Kev and I were left to our own devices we would gave taken a week to have crossed the city given its size and complexity.
Relieved to be somewhere near the sea front we took coffee with Mark and Christina (our Swiss guides) before setting off by ourselves to follow the road along the Adriatic coast and thankfully away from Trieste !
While the road surface was good the frequent road side memorials provided for some sobering moments as we worked our way along the coast.
We cycled through Malfacone getting a few spots of rain before finally talking the Aquiela turn off to eventually enter this delight of a town. UNESCO listed Aquileia is a former wealthy Roman port with high quality ruin's that attract visitors from far and wide !
We'd no sooner located our hotel than the heavens opened with a burst of monsoonal type rain that continued on and off for nearly 5 hours !
As for the patient Henley is still cursing but this time it's not about about his injuries which could have been far worse if his wheel had seized on road, but now about using his Nexus tablet to send emails - something's never change !
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