They were watching Dora's children, Eva and Daniele.  
  


Since we were visiting and spending most our time out with Dora and Marco, we didn't get to spend a lot of quality time with my aunt and uncle, but Zia Carla didn't seem to mind and hadn't changed a bit.  She was happily watching over Eva.



Eva apparently was a big eater, and tended to eat everything and anything put in front of her.



After freshening up, Dora and Marco came to take us on a little adventure to Trieste.  They spent a little quality time with the children before we started on our journey.



Trieste is on the Adriatic side of Italy and a large city just below the border of Slovenia (former Yugoslavia).  We stopped along the way at one of the many vista points to view the coastline.



It was very pretty and being so nice, many sailboats were out taking advantage of the beautiful day.



Dora and Marco wanted to show us a small castle/villa in Trieste, so we parked near the mare (sea) and had a close up look at the hundreds of people trying to beat the heat at the very rocky seashore.





The castle/villa was originally built by an Austrian, as the area used to be part of Austria.  The design reminded us so much of the buildings we normally see in Vienna, it was easy to see where the influence of the architecture came from.



It was so warm and beautiful it reminded me of California, of course the palm trees helped a lot with that too.



The Castle/Villa was quite stately.



Keith was busily looking over the edge, trying to spot more of the large jellyfish we had seen near some of the sunbathers, or maybe it was the topless sunbathers he was trying to find ;)



Believe it or not, I got a great picture of Dora and Marco!



Dora usually pulls a funny face for pictures, and funny enough, so does my mother. I think it must run in the family.

We soon made it to Trieste, which is a very large, grandious city, from very obvious Austrian heritage.  This is one of the very large squares, which at night time is beautifully lit with blue and white lights shining up from the ground.



We had a cocktail at one of the many bars surrounding the piazza which also came with some little sandwhiches and bar snacks.



There was a beautiful mosque in Trieste, which I don't know anything about but I did get a photo of.



There were many churches and piazzas (go figure in an Italian city) and many welcoming cafes where people were enjoying dinner.

Dora and Marco had decided to take us into Slovenia to dinner at a restaurant Marco's father had recommended that specialized in fish.  It was just inside the border, about a 10 minute ride, and we arrived just as the sun was setting.  Going through the border was a little strange, first we had to go through the Italian border and show passports, then at the Slovenian border they just waved us through.



The restaurant was up on a hill and had amazing vantage points of the harbor, looking back at Italy and also down the Slovenian coastline.



We let Marco and Dora choose and sampled 3 different seafood pastas, all with completely different sauces.   For the second course, we had two types of fish each prepared differently.



The fish were served whole and then the waiter would de-bone and de-skin them at our tableside.



The food was absolutely fantastic and quite reasonable for what we ordered.  Of course we had to try the local wine and liquor, which was a bit liquorish tasting, and poor Marco had to drive us all home, as we slept happily away, full from our fantastic meal.

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