Mister and Misses JRy: Italy: Trieste

We took a few more pictures of our hotel Villa Foscarini near Venice:

I could have stayed on this couch all day (as noted by the look on my face)

Next, we found an LDS meeting nearby. Funny thing: we met two sister missionaries there--one was a girl I knew from Preston! We took pictures and sent it to their families. Pretty cool. All during the meeting a little black girl was by Jeff and me. She was so cute, but a little brat at the same time. Her hair was in 5 or 6 braids sticking out all over her head;) It was testimony meeting, and another sister missionary translated for us. We understood more Italian than we usually do Hungarian...

We found out what time church started online and drove to the address, but no one was there. On the front gate, there was a sign (luckily in English as well) that said that the church was undergoing renovation and had moved. It gave directions to the current meeting house and so we started driving trying to find it. We drove around and came to where the directions said it would be and nothing looked like a meetinghouse. I was driving slow, looking around, when I saw a man through a second-story window wearing a white shirt. I thought, "I'll bet that's it." So we parked, walked into the building, went up the stairs and we came to a closed doorway. There was a sign in Italian on the door, but I didn't know what it said. After a few minutes, a tall black man opened the door and I asked him,"Is this a church?" He said that it was. Then, just to be sure, I asked him, "Which church?" He replied with an African-accent, "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints."

We were able to attend Sunday School and Sacrament meeting and I really enjoyed it. There were about 60 people there, two sets of sister missionaries (one of whom knew Josie), and about 20 black people.

A couple of the black people spoke English and were very friendly to us. One man, Sylvester, was about my age and really sharp.

After church, we went on our way to Trieste, Italy. We drove for a couple of hours and then we came around a big turn and all of the sudden I could see the Adriatic Sea! I hurried and stopped, backed up into a pull off spot, and we walked to the lookout point. The view was pretty amazing. There were sail boats drifting along and the shore was steep with cliffs. Beautiful place.

This picture is close to Sistiana, Italy.

This really was a beautiful place--we wished we had more time to check it out. One of our must-sees was a castle built on the cliff: Miramare Castle.

This is the way up to the castle.

Sorry about all the panoramas and pictures overall. It's impossible to capture what it looked and felt like with the castle, the rocks, the shore, the sailboats, the fish, oysters, color of the water, perfect breeze, etc.