Staying in Udine/Trieste area

I stayed in Udine a number of years ago after driving through the Grossglockner Alpine Highway and into Italy.

The city is circular, and was an old Roman city. It wasn't built for automobiles, and we found it to be very congested.
In the city center, we had a very hard time finding decent restaurants. It was easy to find bars and gelatini, however. I wouldn't want to stay there again.
Maybe someone more familiar with the area will chime in on good places to stay.
What are you interested in seeing or touring while you are there?

Thanks David. We're interested in most anything. We'll have been in Prague/Vienna/Salzburg/Innsbruck prior to arriving in Italy, so we wanted to continue with the Hapsburg theme and learn more about the Trieste/Udine area. We also want to explore other history, eg Roman, WW1, etc., so that's pretty broad. We'll have a car at this point so we're pretty mobile. We were thinking of finding an apartment (approx 2 wks) in the Udine/Cividale del Friuli area so that we're kind of central to a number of spots. I've got a number of travel and agritourisimo accommodation websites bookmarked, but was curious to other peoples experiences.

Susan:

Look closely on older listings and you can find Roberto (and possibly Ken) talking about great cities in Northern Italy to visit.

While I have not been to Trieste, the pictures are really beautiful. It would probably be a great place to stay, as you can catch some historical sites east of there (across the border.)

Thanks Dave. With the changes to this website, the search function is still not working. I'll go back through the pages to see if I can find their names.

George - Thank you very much!! I think I have that website already, but if not -- it's a keeper. I'll post a trip report when we return so that there's more info for interested posters.