Sunday July 5, Prepotto to Gradisca d'Isonzo. Eighteen miles, our longest distance yet, but all on well-maintained trails, through vineyards, or on rural roads.
We had breakfast in the same idyllic garden where we'd dined the night before. Afterward, after a false start, we headed uphill toward Slovenia.
We had high hopes that S's birthday balloon would make it all the way to Trieste, but the hot sun had other ideas.
At the top of the hill, we had good views into Friuli. We crossed the unmarked border into Slovenia by cutting through the woods from an Italian trail to a Slovenian one. Then we headed south.
After a few easy miles through woods on the Alpe Adria, the rest of the day was dominated by rolling hills, vineyards, and church towers seen from afar.
The Pot Miru (Walk of Peace) is a 500km trail from the Alps to the Adriatic that links over 300 World War I monuments in Slovenia and Italy.
We passed peaches, plums, persimmons, figs, grapes...
Google Translate says "hip" means "right now" in Slovenian, but we liked the idea of shopping for titanium joints at the gas station outside of Dobrovo.
Math, art, and hiking united in metal and wood near Dobrovo castle.
The current castle was built in the 17th c. to replace the original 13th-c. castle. We paused here for lunch at an almost entirely empty restaurant. The heat wave was clearly taking a toll on the tourism industry.
A road sign let us know we about to change countries.
This border control station probably hasn't been used since 2007, when Slovenia joined the Schengen Area.
As I've noted elsewhere, we have a tendency to hike through places that have warning signs only at the end of our route and not at the beginning. Oh well.
We paused near the public water fountain in Capriva del Friuli to rehydrate, nosh on fruit jellies (Italy's answer to vegan gummi bears), and mimic metal mountain-rescue sculptures.
The day had been sizzlingly sunny until all of a sudden, just past Capriva, it wasn't. We zoomed through our last four miles and evaded the storm.
We arrived at our hotel in Gradisca d'Isonzo before 6pm, but hadn't read out hotel's fine print--check in on Sundays was only until 3pm. We were able to enter the lobby, but our attempts to call and message the hotel were futile. While S was outside looking for another entrance--maybe we entered the wrong door?--all of a sudden two people (mama and son?) entered the lobby from the restaurant door. I surprised them, and they surprised me, and I spoke no Italian but somehow conveyed that we had arrived late, and the mama was thrilled that we had finally shown up. Son was the chef, and grumpy papa was inside the restaurant. He took our passports in exchange for a room key (the only place we stayed where passports were held), and we settled into our second air-conditioned room of the trip.
After dinner, we walked around the old city wall.
Gradisca has changed hands many times over the centuries. Its fortifications date from the 15th c., built by Venetian rulers to defend the territory against Ottomans. Then the Habsburgs took it. You can never be too careful.
Ta da! 17 of the day's 18 miles, 1,760' up, 2,050' down, from Italy to Slovenia to Italy.
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