The flight through to Venice's Marco Polo Airport took us almost 18 hours, including the transfer in hyperdelic Dubai International. With the baby in tow it was not an easy trip. He is at the age where "Interactive" can be replaced by ACTIVE (in capitals). It was misty coming into Venice. The Emirates plane seemed to be floating endlessly down through a sea of grey, whispy cotton fluff. At the last second the mist lifted and we bumped down on the tarmac.

Although I have flown into Rome before, it was the first time I had encountered the efficiency of the staff in Venice. We were quickly through customs and on our way through light afternoon traffic to Trieste.

The previous 24 hours had been a mess. We were supposed to fly midnight on the 10th of November... which I thought was the evening of the 10th, not early am of the same day! A frantic phone call from the airport "where are you???" alerted me to my error. Living someway out of Jakarta making that flight was an impossibility. Fortunately the very, very efficient staff at Emirates managed to accomodate my error and got us on a flight 24 hour later. As I had planned for the later flight, this actually created no extra problems for us.

Trieste is located up against the hills on the edge of the Adriatic. Sparkling in summer, the sea is icey blue in November. Driving there in the van we could not help noticing the outside temperature guage was locked on 4 degrees centigrade... bloody chilly after the 32 degrees in Indonesia!

We checked into our Hotel on Via Roma and made a mad dash to our favorite restaurant on the Grande Canal. Although it was 2 years since we had been there the staff, menu and quality of the food remained unchanged.

The morning of the first day of the Trieste Espresso Expo was cold and grey. The "Bora" (a cold wind blowing down from Icey St Petersberg) was buffering the city at about 120kph! We were glad to get into the Espresso Expo Hall. We were at the Indonesian Exhibit with two other companies. Merdeka Coffee had been here before- with our 2006 effort being pretty succesful. This time around we were doing an espresso blend, the other 2 companies selling various greens from around the Island nation.

I had a brand new +4U Astoria to play with. This initially proved rather intimidating, as the machine is as similar to my old San Marino Lisa R as a bike is to a Ferrari. However with some guidance from Paolo and Jason (CMA) and Chartree (Zan from BX) I managed to get acceptable shots by early afternoon. The next 2 days were perfect!

The Expo was seemingly quieter than 2 years ago. I think this was for a number of reasons. 1/. Last time the Expo ran Fri, Sat and Sunday (giving 2 weekend days for visitors). In 2008 we ran Thu, Friday and finished Saturday. The weather and the current economic malaise also probably helped none. Still, we had a number of visitors from Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Greece, Albania, Germany, France ("you know what Merde means in French???"), UK, Holland, Sweden, Norway, Slovakia, Austria, Spain, Mexico, India... and Thailand to name just a few. The comments were generally very good and we hope to get some business out of the show.

Evenings during Expo events are normally taken up with dinners. This was no exception with several good meals enjoyed in good company with good red wine and the local speciality, sparkling Prosseco.

I would recommend a visit to Trieste either during the show, or at anytime. It is a true coffee city. Apart from Illy being based here, many of Italy's biggest green bean importers (Sandalj, Alberto Hesse, Cogeco and Demus) aslo are there. The cafes are numerous, the coffee good and the atmosphere genial.

To be continued...