Day 60: Grado to Aquileia and back

June 11, 2022

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Grado is one of just a few places on the trip where we will sleep two nights in the same spot. The reason is that we are shuttling back north to the point where we interrupted our planned itinerary to shoot down to Grado. The shuttle can only go tomorrow, so we got today to hang out around Grado. Our reaction to that was to plan to high tail it out of town, back across the causeway and to the archeological site and ancient centre, Aquileia.

As sometimes happens on tour, you wake up to find that a market has sprung up in front of your door. In our case, the market was blocks long and was mostly comprised of sellers of clothing and other dry goods. The sellers were quite surrounded by active buyers, making for an exciting environment.

Dodie thought maybe these looked speedy enough for cycling.

Italian handbags are famous, but maybe these are not the one the movie stars buy.

good looking individually wrapped oranges.

Unique tomato shape. Does anyone understand the label?

This lady was selling olive oil from Sicily. Beyond that, she would indicate to customers exactly where in Sicily a particular oil came from.

I would like to bring home an EU flag, but we have been reluctant to add the weight. The PACE flags are very popular here. The Canadian flag is a weird one to be seeing in this market.

To go back out on the causeway we passed through the centre of town, and caught a bit of the ambiance of the old section.

There are scads of what we might call cafes here, though they are commonly called "bars". We have a hard time getting around that terminology, and have yet to patronize one. Gelato can be had at generalized "bars" or at specialized gelato cafes. So far we have stuck to the specialized gelato places. By the way, the per scoop price is 1.50 or down to 1.30!

Typical "bar" or cafe. There are dozens and dozens of these in the town.

Scott captured on of these picture frame photo ops further north, while I saw and ignored it. This time, I went for it, but also shot to the side.

Grado has an active fishing industry in addition to the tourism.

Lots of fishing boats like this, but we did not spot any fish market.

Back on the causeway, and the restful hues of the lagoon.

Aquileia was a major centre in the Roman world. Read about it:

The Aquileia site, according to the TI handout, has 17 points of interest. These include very early Roman sites (pre-300 a.d.), and Christian stuff starting from about 300 and extending to modern 1200 a.d. buildings and artifacts. Of course in the early years, the Christian sites were also Roman, so there is not a big distinction between the two.

One of the first things we saw upon arriving in town was a field in which excavations were still ongoing. A huge amount of work and expertise has already gone into this place, and it was amazing how much they were able to show us.

The primary focus for us and all the other tourists at Aquileia was the Basilica, dedicated to the Virgin Mary and the saints Hermagora and Fortunatus. It's a big building, begun right after 313 a.d., which is when Christians became legally able to build churches. The site was destroyed four times, but each time rebuilt over the previous structures. It makes it a little confusing about which age or century one is looking at in and around the building. Archeologists have in at least one case, shown an original mosaic floor, and suspended about three feet higher, a subsequent floor.

It's probably safe to call the interior about 4th to 5th century, although there are shiny new bits from the 5th, 9th, 11th, and even 15th century!

Probably the first thing one notices is the floor, which is protected by plexiglass, so you walk a few feet above. It's all typical Roman style mosaic, from the 4th century, and of course every bit of it has been described and documented.

The Basilica, with the bell tower/watch tower behind.

Lots of designs that seem good for adapting to modern logos, flooring, wall paper?

This fishing scene is much talked about and interpreted in the various documentation.

The next big attraction in the Basilica beside the floors are the frescoed walls.

The whole impression of the Basilica is so different from that of a Renaissance Baroque painted church, or any other "modern" church. This feels significantly more ancient, evoking something so old it is hard to connect to. Dodie described it as more historical than religious.

There are also carvings in the interior, and I happened to picture four carved women. Perhaps these are the four virgins of Aquileia, I have read about elsewhere. They also seem like quadruplets, and hey what is that electronic gizmo over their heads (this was shot high up, telephoto).

The frescoe theme continues in a big way in the Crypt of Frescoes. This is a fairly small room, totally covered in frescoes. Of course again, each square inch has been described and analysed. There is no way for a casual visitor to follow it all.

I find it amazing that I am permitted to get this close to these antiquities, and to, if thoughtless, touch them.

If you really want to study these ceilings, start with this?

Another crypt is called the Crypt of Excavations. It is joined to the Basilica but extends beyond the walls on one side. Here there are more floors, including the one suspended above the other. There are bits here from a first century Roman house, and from church versions from the 4th century.

Thee is a further floor suspended there at the back.

The peacock mosaic was part of a floor but has been mounted on a wall. It is heavily used in advertising for the complex.

We had started our day fairly early, but still had encountered a fair number of tourists who were part of tour groups. We rather missed our (usually German) touring cyclists, though. No worries, before long they began to arrive in force. That's more like it.

You might be glad to know (if you ever hope to finish reading this entry) that I am glossing over some other stuff we saw. But here is a bit of coverage about that bell/watch tower. Dodie took a miss on climbing it, but up I went. I think I counted 152 steps. No idea how that compares to other towers around. At the top, I could look down and see Dodie. Can you?

In front of the tower, replica of the famous wolf of Rome, with Romulus and Remus. The original sculpture has been housed since 1471 in the Palazzo dei Conservatori on the Campidoglio (the ancient Capitoline Hill).

It would have been loud if these had started ringing

The day had been very hot, and Dodie became quite dehydrated. She also felt fairly ill from too much gelato I had forced her to share! Yet we were still sitting with a map detailing 17 sights to see, and we had been to four or five. The remaining sights were mainly pre-Christian Roman ones, something Dodie had really wanted to see. There was no signage for these things, just the map, and poor Dodie tried to follow it. But she really was weakened and just wasn't up to it. So I voted for a return to Grado. Now Dodie feels she has really missed out. Oh well, next time!

Some shore birds were waiting for us as we returned along the causeway, and we also cruised some new to us streets of cafes. Dodie, now mostly recovered, offered to wait while I would go and jump (or wade) into the Adriatic again. I did that, but without a bathing suit on hand just waded. A rogue wave did come and make it rather more of a swim than I had anticipated!

Here are some people near the public portion of the beach. Without being too politically incorrect, I will observe that an awful lot of the sun bathers not only looked like seals out on the breakwater, but could have weighed in similarly. We think that young people here are very sleek, but when they hit about 30-40 years old the pizza, gelato, and pasta kicks in, with unfortunate results.

We have been having some email problems, thanks to our provider from back home, Shaw. We have been on the phone to them twice. They seem to say yes, their system has been broken, but it also gets crabby when we unsuccessfully try to log in too many times, and then it locks us out, but without saying anything! Dodie apologizes for comments or emails not yet responded to. I will be trying to restore her systems a bit later tonight, and maybe she will catch up over the next few days.

What gave Meaning to Life today? Ancient Roman Mosaics and Frescoes

Today's ride: 30 km (19 miles)
Total: 3,383 km (2,101 miles)

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Jacquie GaudetIt took me a while to get used to bars being open in the morning and serving things other than alcohol but it helps to think of them as coffee bars. I suspect the European usage predates the North American by quite a bit.
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2 years ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesYes we realize we need to get over the term "bar". But fortunately we left Italy before we starved.
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2 years ago