Italy 2000: Day 5: Saturday, April 29: Udine

Saturday. April 29 - Udine

Today we plan to drive south, to the old Roman city of Aquileia and on to the
beach resort of Grado. The weather is slightly overcast but the sun promises to
break through. Before we get in the car, we stroll over to the Piazza San
Giacomo for the weekly market in Udine. We are quite surprised to see less than
a dozen vendors in the square--a far cry from other markets we have attended in
much smaller cities. But the produce is gorgeous and the cheese mongers are
pressing tastes of fabulous parmigiano on us......

Anyway, now we're off to Aquileia. I don't know if I mentioned before that the
Roman presence is very strong in Friuli; this area was a key outpost on the
frontier of the Empire. Aquileia was a
major city of some 250,000 at the height of Rome's glory; now it is a sleepy
town of 3,500 with the remains of a forum, port buildings, a market, and a
cemetery, as well as a very grand basilica with a stunning mosaic floor which
was just discovered at the beginning of the 20th century.

Diana gets her first chance to experience driving on an Italian autostrada; it
is a short trip and we pull into Aquileia around noon. The town is reasonably
crowded with tourists; we are not used to having much company on this trip,
except for groups of Italian schoolchildren on excursions. [We are constantly
being mistaken for Germans and we believe that there are few if any
American tourists in the Region.]

The basilica is occupied with a wedding when we arrive, so we do our walk around
the Roman excavations, which are in the early stages of investigation and the
suggestion of the extent of the city is more impressive than the site itself.
When we finally head for the basilica, we stop to watch the end of the
wedding--the bride and groom are being seranaded by a local Italian band. Diana
surmises that the bride plays flute in the band. Anyway, the whole thing is
very charming. The basilica itself is quite interesting--the mosaics are in
terrific repair and are filled with lovely designs and Biblical stories.

Leaving Aquiliea, we drive toward Grado--"the only south facing beach on the
Adriatic". Grado also advertises itself as the "Mitteleuropean beach resort"
and
is a magnet for Germans and Austrians who are looking for sun. We drive across
the lagoon into town, finding a not too seedy beach town with broad beaches
and thousands of cabanas lined up in neat rows. There are numerous hotels and
restaurants along the beach front and, after a quick look at the wide beach (not
too many people there since the weather is quite overcast by now.), we choose
one of the open air restaurants for lunch. Actually we end up at the second one
because the staff at the first one didn't deign to acknowledge our existence.

We shared a seafood risotto which Diana liked better than I did and then headed
to the old city center for a stroll. We visited the Duomo--some nice mosaics on
the floor--and walked around the narrow streets of the centro storico...a very
pleasant feature for a seaside resort. After a gelato stop, we headed back to
Udine.

I took a stroll around a different area of Udine...I found the student
quarter and some more nice parks--still a very pleasant city. We had dinner at
the same restaurant we had eaten in last night, La Tavernetta. It was again not
crowded--the waiter said that the period on either side of Easter is quite slow
for him. The food was again quite good--tagliatelle with a spicy tomato sauce
and a very interesting tongue salad with chickpeas and beans for me and the
barley with sausages and leeks (very delicious) and lamb chops for Diana. We
had a different red wine--a Merlot from the Grave region of Friuli--which was
delicious.

Tomorrow we are off to Trieste.

Jim and Diana