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Trieste

Posted by Jim St. George on July 9, 2022
Posted in: Europe, Italy. Leave a Comment

Trieste’s Unity of Italy Square after a summer storm has passed through. The other two sides of the square are at least as grand.

This trip is all about four weeks in southeast Europe – Slovenia and Croatia – and then four weeks in Scandinavia – Norway and Sweden – but we decided to elbow in a little corner of Italy while we were in the area. Trieste was once one of the great cities of the Austro-Hungarian empire: the fourth city, it turns out, after Vienna, Budapest, and Prague, and the most important seaport the entire empire. Since it was annexed by Italy after World War I, though, it’s become a bit forgotten. It is Italy, but it’s not really Italy, at least not the way Naples or Florence or Rome are really Italy. Still, as the capital of one of Italy’s 20 regions, Friuli Venezia Giulia, we wanted to give it a try.

And … meh. The food wasn’t as good as it is in the rest of Italy. Heck, it wasn’t even as good as the food in Slovenia. It didn’t have that same historic imperative you get in so much of Italy. And while it’s right on the Adriatic Sea, you got little sense of that from the city itself as it’s largely cut off as far as tourists and pedestrians are concerned by all the industry and port services. I felt like taking city officials on a trip to Barcelona and showing them what you could do with a great city if you opened up the sea.

Mark on our balcony one evening

There were a couple of noteworthy experiences. The Unity of Italy Square (formerly the Great Square) is said to be the largest sea-facing square in all of Europe. The three sides not facing the sea are built up with massive imperial Austrian buildings, truly awe inspiring. The problem was that it’s so big they really haven’t filled it up with cafés and restaurants and all that stuff that would make it appealing. In fact on a hot sunny day – pretty much the norm this time of year – you want to avoid the square because it’s so inhospitable. Still, it’s beautiful to look at.

And then there’s the Miramare Castle, some four miles up the coast from the city center. It was built by Archduke Maximillian of Austria, the younger brother of Franz Joseph, the guy who ruled the empire for 68 years. When you’re the Number 2 guy in that situation you don’t have so much to do. For a while he was commander-in-chief of the imperial Navy, and later viceroy of the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, but his liberal politics angered his brother/emperor and he was dismissed from both jobs. So instead he built this really beautiful castle and park starting in the mid-1850s just north of Trieste.

Miramar Castle, home for a while at least for Archduke Maximillian and his wife Charlotte

Sadly for him, he didn’t really get to enjoy it that much. While the castle was still under construction in the early 1860s Emperor Napoleon of France offered him the title of Emperor of Mexico. He eventually took the job and moved to Mexico City but – once the U.S. Civil War was over – U.S. officials had the leeway to enforce the Monroe Doctrine blocking European powers from intervening in the Americas. By 1866, in the face of U.S. pressure, France withdrew its support for Maximillian. Ultimately he was captured by the Republican forces under Benito Juarez and executed. His wife Charlotte, who had gone back to Europe on her own to plead their case in both Paris and the Vatican, was considered mentally unstable and not told of her husband’s death. Instead she spent the next 60 years living in insane asylums.

OK, but back to the castle. Beautiful location, right on the coast and really wonderful restoration work with the wall paper and furnishings throughout much of the castle authentically Maximillian’s. One small section of the castle had been renovated in the 1930s by some Italian Duke who had been given the property and was somewhere between depressing and hideous. Fortunately the bulk of the property retains its historic presence. Oh, and the park surrounding the castle was huge, beautiful, and peaceful. All in all a worthy morning’s outing.

Otherwise there wasn’t a lot to do in Trieste. We tried to find good restaurants but the cuisine of the region just doesn’t match the rest of Italy. We did laundry – that’s always exciting – and did some shopping to prepare for the remaining seven weeks of the trip but all in all it was less exciting than we’d hoped our one stop in Italy for the year would be.

Next it’s on to Croatia: one stop on the beach and another in lake country before we start a two-week boat/bike trip in Split.

Very near the main square is this canal that runs from the sea to … nowhere as far as we could tell. Just a couple hundred meters before it just ended. Not sure what it was all about but it was at least pretty.

Nearly every item on every menu we saw was seafood. Most of it was beautifully prepared and presented but ultimately not that good. This was an exception, a great seafood mix.

Here I am at a sidewalk restaurant waiting for lunch


This was a classic Trieste restaurant. Had a good reputation, good reviews, nice setting … and bland food. Beautifully presented but kind of flavorless. There was a family of four sitting next to us, parents and two young adolescent kids. Those kids were not going to try a damned thing at the restaurant. They were, however, determined to show their parents and anyone around how completely bored they were with the whole thing. How fun!

OK, the food wasn’t great. But espresso in Italy is one of the great treats on earth.

A street scene on the way to dinner one evening


A lot of sailboats in the harbor


The view from our balcony our final morning. Neither ship was there the night before but when we saw these two tied up in the morning we realized the old town area would be swarmed with hordes in a couple hours. Seemed like a good time to get the heck out!

Bohinj

Posted by Jim St. George on July 5, 2022
Posted in: Europe, Slovenia. 1 comment

Beautiful Lake Bohinj

Our last stop in Slovenia was two nights at Lake Bohinj. A quick drive from Bled, Lake Bohinj is a little deeper in the mountains, a little higher in elevation, and fully twice the size of Lake Bled. It is, in fact, the largest lake in the country, situated in Slovenia’s largest national park. OK, it’s the only national park in Slovenia. It may not be quite as beautiful as Bled, but surrounded in mountains as it is it’s a pretty good stop for a couple days.

What else to note about Bohinj? Definitely another good lake for swimming: even Mark went in a few times. Given that nearly all our beach time over the years has been in oceans and seas, we were both amused to note how much less buoyant fresh water is than salt water. Who knew?

Mark sent me a selfie while I was quite a bit further up the lake to show that he indeed was enjoying the water

We did one really good hike, some four miles up into the mountains to a gorge and the Mostnice waterfall. Now to be honest the gorge was all but invisible; there were times when it was apparent that there might be a stream down there somewhere but you could never really see it. And the waterfall was, well, decidedly modest, a creek running over some rocks. The hike itself, though, irrespective of the anticlimactic destination, was beautiful: some 90 minutes of alternating open fields with views of the mountains and then deep in forests. And the entire outbound trail utterly on our own; we got out pretty early and had the trail to ourselves. On the return there was the occasional hiker headed in, but we had it to ourselves going in.

Mark headed up to the waterfall. Or perhaps I should say the “waterfall.”

OK, one weird thing about the hike. When you leave the little town by the lake headed north, the road on both the paper map the hotel gave us with the trail marked and on Google Maps was labeled Stara Fužina, Old Fužina. Fair enough. But literally every other road up there, every time there was a fork or alternative road, was called Stara Fužina. Literally every road. Bizarre. It’s as though some local traveled outside of the region and got confused with all these roads using different names. Solution? All roads use the same name. As we passed through a little village along the way you would see an address, like 96 Stara Fužina. How is that supposed to distinguish it from all the other 96 Stara Fužinas? Damned if we know.

So that’s Slovenia. Great food, really good wine, beautiful lakes, great hiking, friendly locals, lively little capital. Nothing not to like. It’s funny to think that little more than 30 years ago this was a sad Communist, significantly dysfunctional place. Glad things got straightened around for our visit!

Tomorrow morning we’re off to Trieste where we’ll have lunch in the little northeastern corner of Italy. Now that’s exciting.

The view from our room. These were pretty much the first real clouds we’ve seen in our week here. Not at all unwelcome as opposed to some of the 90 degree days we’ve had.


We would lie on the pebbles at lakeshore reading and these cute little duckies would just swim right up to make friends


The couple hikes we’ve done in the region have been remarkably well signed. Little danger of getting lost here.


Sometimes the path was straight and open and sunny and reasonably flat


And sometimes winding and forested and cool


Grand vistas


And here I am at the apex of our hike. I’m literally like 10 yards or less from the waterfall. Yeah, that’s a pretty lame waterfall.


And the food! Our first night we were really struggling to find a decent place and decided to give Pri Lovcu a shot. I ordered lamb and asked if I could have vegetables instead of potatoes. So they served these elegant and perfectly grilled veggies. Nice service!


And the appetizer: a little trout carpaccio with trout roe. Really didn’t expect anything this elegant but we weren’t complaining.


One last shot of the hike to Mostnice

And a final early morning view of Lake Bohinj from the far side

June in New York: All About the Music

Posted by Jim St. George on June 28, 2022
Posted in: Uncategorized. Leave a Comment

Our niece Molly is staying with us for much of the summer, doing an internship in Brooklyn. Here she is with Mark ready for Opera Night.

We got back to New York at the end of May to spend a month in the city and quickly jumped into whirlwind of concerts, shows, operas, and parties. The lineup included Broadway, the Metropolitan Opera, local concert venues, and two big parties in our loft. Warning: lots of pictures here!

First up was Melissa Etheridge, a lesbian rocker especially big in the ’90s. We’d seen her once before and loved her power and connection to the audience. The show was at City Winery, a pretty modest venue with maybe 200 people where you could have dinner and drinks with the show. Mark in particular was blown away, just kept talking about how much he loved the concert.

Melissa Etheridge performing

We last saw Melissa maybe 10 years ago and to be honest she aged during those years. Thank God we didn’t!

Just three days later we saw a Neil Diamond “tribute band” – a bunch of musicians covering maybe 15 of his songs. Part of the fun for us was that the show was at Joe’s Pub, part of the Public Theater that is right next to our building. No easier commute in the world! The show wasn’t exactly what I was expecting; no one was trying to look or sound like Neil Diamond. They were just performing his songs. And just like at City Winery you could enjoy dinner and drinks during the show. Very civilized.

One of maybe a dozen performers doing Neil Diamond

The various performers were a mixed bag, some pretty good, some not so great. This kid though hit it out of the park. He did one Neil Diamond song that I’ve never been that fond of but he turned it into an absolute show stopper.

And then the very next night was a Slavic music concert right in our own home. Mark’s piano teacher Gena Raps has been a professional musician since she graduated from Juilliard … a while ago. On top of that she’s the queen bee of a coterie of classical musicians who still love to perform. A group of them had performed a concert of Slavic chamber music in a small venue while we were in France, and Gena suggested they repeat the concert in our apartment. They had friends (like us) who hadn’t been able to see the first concert because of scheduling conflicts and on top of that they wouldn’t have to charge admission. It was a beautiful and amazing evening.

Carol Wincenc is an old friend of Gena’s and widely considered one of the top flutists in the world. Here she is performing with Gena on the piano and one of her students. When I learned the student was still in high school I was seriously impressed.

Van is another of Gena’s old friends. She was the lead cellist with the New York Philharmonic for years and tells fun stories of parties at Leonard Bernstein’s.

A couple days after that it was off to Broadway to see MJ The Musical, a show about Michael Jackson. This was definitely more in the category of guilty pleasure than high art. Basically a lot of dancing and fun music with a story that was … a bit of a mess. Totally fun but not the sort of thing you absolutely have to see.

Michael Jackson (not the real one – he’s dead) in yellow taking bows. The dancing was really the highlight.

Next up was the Metropolitan Opera. Our Canadian friends from Boston Marc & David were in town and Marc in particular really wanted to see Akhenaten, a Phillip Glass opera about the Egyptian pharaoh who tried to reorient ancient Egypt from polytheism to monotheism. Today arguably his family is better know – one of his wives was Nefertiti while his son was Tutankhamun, known more familiarly as King Tut. At any rate, the opera was unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. The music was hauntingly minimalistic, the staging included a lot of juggling and some unexpected nudity (at the Metropolitan Opera!), and the entire experience was surreal. The lead, Akhenaten, was a countertenor, the highest male voice and similar in range to a mezzo-soprano. They used to get that range by castrating young male sopranos – it was a thing; they were called castrati – but that’s not considered kosher anymore. I couldn’t believe he could sing in that falsetto with so much power, since one of the defining characteristics of opera is that the performers are never amplified. We loved it and Mark’s piano teacher – who has strong opinions on these things – loved it, but that was not a universal opinion. Definitely unusual.

The cast of Akhenaten taking bows, including the conductor in black

There was still more. The next week it was back to Broadway to see the revival of Music Man, starring Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster. Again a lot of fun but Sutton Foster in particular seemed miscast as a singer. We saw it with our friends Michael and Megan, both professional musicians who confirmed that she just wasn’t up to it. Fun though.

Trouble in River City – Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster take their bows after finishing another show of Music Man

And finally, one last blow out before we left New York for an eight-week European vacation: A return to Opera Night at 62 Cooper Square. We did this once, last year, and were eager to try it again. Basically we work with the afore-mentioned Michael and Megan who have a “stable” of opera singers that they bring together to perform. We invite friends, hire caterers, and have a fabulous party. And they didn’t disappoint. Maybe 10 singers doing various arias from famous and sometimes less well-known operas. Lots of time for mingling and socializing. It’s exhausting to host but also amazing, both to enjoy the music and the creative combination of new and old friends that show up. It’s not the sort of thing I want to do too regularly but once or twice a year it’s pretty special.

Two of our favorite performers at Opera Night

And finally, after all that, we’re done with summer in New York. Now we’re off for eight weeks in Europe: four in Slovenia and Croatia, then four in Norway and Sweden. But there are a lot more pictures from New York so here they are.

The month was entirely about music. Here we are after dinner celebrating Ajay’s birthday with Nina & Noah, his sister and brother-in-law, and friends Stuart and Hiro.

Ajay was a classmate in graduate school and we’ve been close ever since

Mark and Molly just outside our building

One of the highlights of the month was an overnight trip to visit our friends Adam and Steve at their lakeside home in the northern reaches of Westchester County. Yup, turns out God actually did create Adam and Steve.

There is a great bike path up the west side of Manhattan along the Hudson River. The park runs all the way from the southern tip to the very northern end of the island. So here I am as far north on the island as you can go. Sadly it’s really the only nice ride you can do, but it is pretty nice.

One of my favorite spots in Manhattan. Lots of those old piers that made New York wealthy from trade and shipping and all that have been converted into parks, including this perfect little spot for reading and lazing away a beautiful morning.

Here I am with Van & Alina at our Slavic music concert

Mark with our art consultant Lowell, his wife Courtney, and daughter Boe, also at the Slavic concert

One of the great pleasures of going to the opera is that you can reserve a table at a restaurant right in the opera house. You have dinner before the opera and then at intermission your dessert and wine or champagne is waiting for you. This is seriously civilized.

Mark with Judy and Gena at the Metropolitan Opera

Ours was the final performance of the season of Akhenaten and at the end Philip Glass himself came out. It was a pretty special moment.

Michael can’t put on Opera Night without including a swan…

Both my trainer and Mark’s came to Opera Night. Here I am with Gio. You can tell which one is the trainer.

Opera night performers

Our fabulous friend Dakota

Opera night

The opera performers

Our month of music included dinner with Gena at Peter & Thea’s Upper West Side apartment. Thea is a composer, a native Scot who has been knighted by the queen. Seriously. Peter was the founder and for some 30 years the music director of the Virginia Opera Company.

Me and Molly at Lafayette, our favorite French bakery and café<

One day while I was off at the gym, our friend Seth dropped by with Betsy. Paul on the left there was staying with us for a few days. They were all classmates of ours in graduate school so they had a little, mini-reunion for a bit! Oh, and since Seth was the one who first suggested we get a piano, he’s directly responsible for all the fabulous concerts we host.

As we were going to the opera to see Akhenaten, we ended up with this eerie vision of Mark’s shadow on some woman’s coat

Was I talking about music in New York? Just an ordinary street scene in Greenwich Village.