This pirate-looking ship was part of a regatta in Trieste, Italy. A regatta, for all you land lubbers, is a sailboat race. Every year, the city of Trieste hosts a huuuuuuge regatta where thousands of people come from all over the place to watch hundreds of sailboats race around in the Adriatic Sea.
I don't know about you, but when I think of a sailboat, I picture a small dinghy with a humble sail and just enough room for two or three people. These sailboats were far from that! They may have looked tiny way off in the distance...
But they were monstrous up close!
That sail is so big you can hardly see the boatmen! We arrived the evening before the big race so we got to see all the boats puttering about in the water, testing out their sails and racing skills. The best part was when the sun began to set and illuminated the sails as they sailed across the horizon.
The following morning was the main event and we arrived on the docks shortly before the race started. There were hundreds of white sails littering the horizon, anxiously scooting back and forth trying to get situated before...BOOM BOOM BOOM! The starting canons erupted and they were off!
Who's winning? I can't tell - there are too many of them! From where we were sitting, it looked like they were just creeping along, but as the winners started sailing back to the marina, we could see how fast they were really going. Remember that boat with the huge blue sail? Turns out that boat won! I had to get a picture with it before it sailed away.
The race only lasted about an hour, but that didn't stop the rest of the boats from having a bit of post-race fun. Some boats left shortly after the race to sail home, but many stuck around much to the amusement of all of us on land. There was even a boat full of musicians!
Apart from the regatta excitement, there wasn't much else to do. Well, maybe there were plenty of things to do, they just paled in comparison to the rush of the race! We checked out the town and found some nifty buildings that looked more like something you would find in a foreign, non-Italian country. This is probably because Trieste is actually located on the very edge of the Italy-Slovenia border. Slovenia was so close, you can walk there from Trieste! This is a huge statue in the main piazza.
One of the main attractions in Trieste when it is not regatta season is the aquarium so we had to stop and see the fish! We must have made a wrong turn somewhere, though, because we stumbled into poisonous snake territory! Oh no!
Don't eat me, Mr. Sandviper! I promise I won't taste good! Lucky for us, this was just the reptile and amphibian exhibit portion of the aquarium and there was a solid pane of glass separating us from the snakes. Whew!
We found a hill to climb with a nice fountain and even nicer view of the lower city...
The sun began to set on our regatta weekend so we headed back to the marina for a few more boat sightings when a strange creature swam up to the dock - a jellyfish!
Good thing we didn't go swimming in that water! Maybe we should have hitched a ride on a sailboat, though...
That's more like it! Ah, the sea life! Back to land-locked Siena for us (until the sea calls us back!). Until our next adventure, this is Flat Stanley saying, "Ciao, mateys!".
No comments:
Post a Comment