It was a day of catching up, making up for lost time. We made it up to the castle by late morning and again stopped for some sustenance at the cafe across the street from the castle after having ascertained it was indeed open. This is the view of the entrata from the cafe.
The day before, something sad happened. Actually it was a day of several strange occurrences but I will only tell you about this one because the site where it happened is behind that black car on the left.
Over there is the bus stop for the 42 which takes us all over the place and stops literally in front of our apartment building. Today it brought us back up the hill and saved us an excrutiating trudge but yesterday we took it to and back from Duino. Anyway, the day before yesterday, as I was walking dejectedly from the closed castle doors to the bus stop a little bird fell out of the sky and landed at my feet. It died a few minutes later only after another bird came to rescue it. It was very sad. A picked it up on N's insistence and put it in the green spot between the bus stop and the castle entrance. And just as he picked the poor thing up, the bus appeared. N and I tried like mad to keep the driver from leaving and luckily we all made it aboard without infuriating anyone. That's the day we decided to go to the Grotta Gigante-the second time we went and the time it was open. See pics in previous post.
The entry:
You probably can't see them but there are swallows' nests built here and there in the entry way. If you look closely at some of the pictures especially the views from the tower, you can see them flying all around. I tried to get them in the pictures but they are just too fast.
A walkway:
One of the gardens:
There inside this doorway we saw this strange creature that Nathanael thought was the smallest hummingbird in the world but on closer inspection we determined it was a moth.
The views were pretty spectacular. You can see the old castle on the rock in the distance.
An entry room.
From a balcony on maybe the 3rd floor:
Lots of music happens here in the castle and in Duino. This room had a piano I think but I only had eyes for the lamp. There were 4 of them.
I remember these marble eggs from our childhood. Ricky, don't these look familiar?
The central courtyard:
The tower:
From the tower after climbing a ways:
Down again on the grounds:
There was this great bunker, wonderful mostly for its natural AC properties.
We stopped in the castle's cafe and had some refreshments while waiting for our beloved coach, the 42 to take us right to our door.
Eggs
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