I’ve always considered myself a pretty positive person. I naturally see the good in most situations. I look for the wins, not the losses.

2016 has really stretched my ability to be positive. Dave’s cancer diagnosis earlier this year was a shock. I was indignant about the impact on our seemingly perfect life. It was of course, far from perfect, but in my positive way, I felt that we had, to date, been dealt a pretty good hand and I was happy about it.

Four months of chemotherapy and 15 radiation treatments later and I have learnt a lot. I wouldn’t choose to go through it again, and I also know that what Dave has endured has been far worse than any impact the experience had on me, but I also now really understand that from bad things often come good things.

I’m not going to get melancholy, but I wanted to point out the importance of making the best of any situation.

I have taken many pictures of this trip thus far, and some of them have been shared on this blog. As I loaded yesterday’s pics onto the blog site this morning I came across one that I particularly liked. I like it because we are both smiling (Dave tends to not smile in photos for some unknown reason!) But I also really like it for another reason. Can you pick the difference between these two photos?

It’s sort of like those games where you pick the difference between pictures. I always liked those games in magazines as a child.

The photo on the left was taken yesterday afternoon in our hotel room.

The photo on the right was taken less than a month ago in Canberra, also in a hotel room.

I am wearing glasses in both pictures. I wish they would make me look intelligent (rather than old) like they seem to do for other people 😉

But the obvious difference is Dave. As you can see he now has dark hair, rather then no hair in the right picture (or they grey hair he had pre-treatment) He has eyebrows in the left picture. He has eyelashes in the left picture. He has a dark five o’clock shadow in the left picture and most importantly, he has a bright smile in his eyes.

I love that smile. Even when there isn’t one on his face, there has always been a smile in his eyes. And now that the big C is behind him, that smile in his eyes is even brighter.

As I said in yesterday’s post, On Tuesday, when we arrived in Trieste and had eventually parked the car we visited a supermarket. I have since discovered that there are many supermarkets in Trieste, but the one we visited was a particularly large one.

We took Steve’s advice in his blog comment and found a shopper with a similar demographic and followed her. We didn’t buy everything she bought (no need for fresh meat or pumpkin) but we did get some similar items. She got soap, I bought hair conditioner. (how did I manage to bring two small bottles of shampoo with me?) She put a litre of milk in her basket, Dave chose a kid-sized chocolate milk. I grabbed the same pre-made salad as her and we also selected three bread rolls from the self-service bakery. I’m glad I watched her weigh and label the bread bags, I wouldn’t have realised the need to do that by myself. Dave also chose a Kitkat. The lady we followed did not choose any chocolates, but hey, some things are just needed! Our total bill was just over 10 Euros. Her bill (we followed her through the checkout) was over 30 Euros.

When we returned to the hotel room we enjoyed our salad, bread rolls, (Dave plain, mine olive), Kitkat, and milk. I also enjoyed an Italian orange soda form the mini-bar. The salad was amazingly good. Croutons, tuna, boiled egg, lettuce and  bonus separate sides of olive oil, salt and white wine vinegar. No dodgy premix dressing here! The salad was 2.40 Euros. Not bad value!

Bek – look at the milk. It is called ‘Alex’. Dave says please show Alex!

Yesterday we walked. And we walked. And we walked. 18,756 steps to be exact. 12.28 kilometres. 37 floors of stairs. Three hours and 34 minutes of ‘fat burning’ exercise according to my fit bit. Which is lucky, cause I have been eating well 😉

We saw so may sights. We walked up hills, and we walked down hills. (This is a hilly city – my legs hurt!!)

We visited the Museo De Henriquez. A huge two story museum containing war artifacts from the Trieste region. (The local version of C.E.W. Bean). Dave, of course loved it, but can I say I really enjoyed it too. Even with my aversion to museums 🙂

We saw churches and motorbikes and roman ruins and amazing Adriatic views, and markets, and salami shops and interesting Italian cars. And hills. We saw hills!

We had a lovely breakfast in the hotel which included parma ham, the best yoghurt I’ve ever had and a reasonable (read not great) coffee. For lunch we went to buffet da Pepi a legendary Triesteian food institution serving all sorts of boiled meats with bread and sauerkraut. The eastern European influence could definitely be seen here.

Dinner was a little less exciting. We tried to go to a recommended place by the water. When we saw no one was in the place, we decided to walk on. We ended up in a small seafood trattoria. Not terrible, just not wonderful. I had prawn and pesto lasagna and Dave had grilled fish. We had a side of broccoli. Those green vegetable cravings are continuing 🙂

Gelato on the way home. Bacio and chocolate flavoured this time. Apparently Trieste is known for its chocolate Gelato, and I can see why!

We are off to Turin today. It’s 550kms away, so a big drive. As long as we can find the car park where we left our car we should be fine 🙂

I wonder if Turin is hilly or flat. Did I mention Trieste is hilly…