9-8 Mugge and Barcole

 Mugge is only 1km from the Slovenian border.  It would have cost us 210 E to drive into Slovenia for even one day.  We will have to rent a car in Croatia and do the Slovenian and Croatian sea towns another time.

Views along the road.

Paying one of the many tolls.

Just outside of the parking garage we saw these folks have lunch by the seaside before going back to work.

A couple of blocks away and you are in the center of old town.  This area is pretty small - so not much of a walk along the coast.  We saw no beaches.

A typical menu - except most have no English.  

Michael's pasta with squid ink

                                        

                                          My whole Branzini fish.  This time it was delicious.

The town is not so old.  It does have the narrow streets that are fun to walk around on.

We saw these on most of the doors.  It seems they are for sale.

the church and tower are enclosed by homes - no way to get far enough away to get the whole tower in a shot.

The town is quite small.  We did not see any grocery stores or fruit/vegetable stands.

Barcole is a suburb of Trieste.  Driving from Mugge to Barcole, our GPS sent us up some very tiny laned - actually 2-way streets.  At any moment it felt that we could end up at a dead end in front of someone's house with no way to turn around.  But we made it to our hotel in Barcole.  One of the strangest places we have stayed at.  It turns out that the teny, tiny parking lot of the restaurant next door was exactly where we were to park our car.  We got off the busy street, but then were stuck as a white car had stopped so that a man in a wheelchair could get into the car.  The car behind him was stuck behind that car.  Finally the white car and the car behind him had to back up so that we could get around them.  and into the area to park.  But we could not park until they had both left.  Needless to say we did not leave that parking spot until we had to the next morning.

A view of the restaurants outdoor patio - and the hotel next to it.  You can actually swim in the sea as there is a ladder at the end of this patio area to climb down to the sea.

The tiny patio area for the hotel.  Their were people laying out in bathing suits to catch the sun - even tho the sun was barely out and dark clouds threatened any moment.

Michael out on the patio - our room was one of those in a line to the right - like a motel.  Shortly after this it started pouring down rain.  We went through the hedges on the right and the short distance across the parking lot to the restaurant for our 7:30 reservation.  That is when restaurants open up here.

It was still raining the next morning after we had had our breakfast.  Michael had to load the car in the rain - but shortly after we left the Trieste area - the rain stopped.