San Marino

Dharyll, Justin and I went to San Marino for the day on Friday. We went on a whim, without really researching it and everyone was pleasantly surprised at just how cool this little town/country is.

Wikipedia sums it up pretty well: "It is a landlocked enclave, completely surrounded by Italy. One of the European microstates, San Marino has the smallest population of all the members of the Council of Europe. San Marino claims to be the oldest constitutional republic in the world: it was founded on 3 September 301 by Marinus of Rab, a Christian stonemason fleeing the religious persecution of Roman Emperor Diocletian. San Marino's constitution, dating back to 1600, is the world's oldest written constitution still in effect."

(Graffiti in Bologna)

There are nine castles sprinkled in around San Marino, we only went inside one but we could see another in the distance. The city/country itself is perched up on a cliff overlooking Italy, specifically the neighboring city Rimini. We took a train from Florence at about 9, stopped and switched trains in Bologna and Prato and finally wound up in Rimini, the closest town with a train station, at about 1. We grabbed some VERY quick lunch (italians like to linger over their food which isn't particularly condusive to tight schedules) and hopped on a bus for a 45 minute ride up to San Marino.

We tooled around for a couple hours and then had to head back to Rimini to catch the train. Trains generally stop heading back to Florence somewhere around 6 pm so if you want to head home, you've got to go pretty early. We got to Bologna about 15 minutes late which means that we missed the train that would have taken us to Florence. The next train was scheduled to come about an hour and a half later so we decided to explore Bologna while we waited. It was a little dark, a little cold and a little wet so it didn't seem as cool as it should have. We wandered for about an hour, found the guys some hotdogs (because that's what they've been craving.. definitely not as cool as peanutbutter, but whatever.) and headed back to the station to catch the train. Then came problem number 1. The train is not only late, it is VERY late. It wound up being an hour and twenty minutes late. Then problem number 2. The tickets we bought in Rimini were no longer valid because we missed our first train. This train, although it goes to the same place just a little later, would cost 4.50 more. Why? Who knows, but it put a bit of special icing on an already under-apppreciated cake. So I finally buy a ticket after debating about the likelihood of being caught without one (and subsequently getting another 50 euro fee) and we check the train schedule. Still no train. We sit around until 11:30 and then hurl ourselves onto the train before it comes to a complete stop. Problem number 3. What is supposed to be an hour train ride turns into a small lifetime and by the time we finally pull into Santa Maria Novella in Florence at 1:30 am, we're all a little tired and crazed.

The cool part was that on the train we sat with an Italian man who had a good hour long conversation with Justin about Coca-Cola (pronounced Hoha Hola in Florence), politics, the tragedies of late trains, and various cities in Europe. Justin said at one point something like "I have a pain in my train!" in Italian, trying to say that he was upset about the lateness. It was pretty great and made the whole mess worth it.

The Prato trainstation.
This cool sign... probably warning me about my imminent death.

Probably.

This sweet sign is at all of the train stations we've been to. It's pretty much saying that if I cross the railway lines I will wind up with only 1.5 legs. The train won't take off an entire leg... only half. You rock, disabled stick-figure man!

A shot from my train window on the way from Bologna to Prato.

A view of Rimini and the surrounding countryside from San Marino.

Ditto.

I'm going to take this opportunity to warn you that there will be many, many landscape pictures. Struggle through them, I know you can do it to humor me because really, the scenery was amazing that day.

There was a couple getting married while we wandered in San Marino. I thought it would be great to take their picture because as I've been traveling I started to wonder how many people have taken pictures with me in the background because I know I've got an impressive number of pictures with strange people in them. It would be a neat experiment to do a six degrees of seperation with them... track down the people in my pictures and then the people in THEIR pictures and so on and so forth until it somehow winds up with someone you know in the background of a random picture. Or something. It's a brilliant idea, trust me.

The Statue de Liberta in the Pianello, the square in front of the Government Palace. Given to the Republic in 1876 by Ottilla Heyroth Wagener it got her the title of Duchess of Acquaviva. Nice. I need to gift more statues...

Bassilica of Saint Marino... I think.
Castello Della Guaita/La Rocca O Guaita, the first tower and castle and the only one we actually went inside.
Battlements? I think that's what they're called. It's whatever the top part of the outer walls is called.
The boys pretending to shoot crossbows out of the arrow slits in the wall. It's hard not to do that when you find those little slits. Pew Pewpew.... pew! FIRE!


A second castle/tower that is either Le Cesta (the second tower) or Montale (the third tower). It's hard to tell on the map I have and since we never made it over there I may never know... or at least I'll never know without putting more than a half-assed effort into finding out. So that counts as never.

The inner courtyard.
The tower.
A looking/viewy/scope doodle. I just liked the way the natural and man-cut rocks mushed together throughout the castle and thought that this was a great example.

The view.

What it looked like from up in the tower looking down. It was crazy windy but beautiful when your eyes weren't watering.
This was one in a series of holes around the edge of the tower. Methinks it is for putting burning liquid down to stop any little.... disagreements between the people in the tower and the people outside.
A pretty heavy-duty door from the tower to a walkway around the outside.

And here's where my landscapes come back to haunt you. Beautiful, so stick with them.

Justin, eating a salmon sandwich from a train station vending machine. He likes to live dangerously. I don't. Which is why HE'S the one eating that thing. He already looks a little worried if you ask me.

This is where we had to wander around Bologna in the dead of night for an hour. I can't find the name of this fountain anywhere so it'll have to remain nameless. It was pretty cool and a pleasant surprise.

And lastly, a random statue of fighting mermaids. It's modern so not quite as cool as some of the other things we've seen so far, but it was still neat to see them around this little park we found.