San Marino

Today we woke up to construction work at our AirBnb in Venice. We made our coffee in the Moka, had a quick breakfast and then headed out for a brand newcountry -San Marino!

The drive from Venice to San Marino only took three hours and it was quite picturesque with rolling hills and countryside for miles in our view. The entrance into San Marino was quite lackluster though since there was only a small road sign to announce the fact that you had entered into a different country. We didn’t even get our passports stamped.

We were greeted by the father of our Airbnb host who showed us around the flat and gave us some suggestions along with some cake, a lemon, and some discount cards for San Marino. When he left, we made a quick lunch of a packaged mix of chickpeas and grains (or ‘cereals’) as they call them here. And when we were ready to head out, it started pouring rain.

So, I decided to get a little workout in while John decided to take a nap in the rain (weird right?). When the rain cleared, we finally headed out for the day. Our Airbnb was at the bottom of the mountain in San Marino but was a convenient 15 minute (very steep uphill) walk to the cable cars that would take us up the mountain to old town San Marino.

The cable car ride took less than one minute and we got a great view of the country along the way. When we arrived we were overwhelmed with the beautiful views, even though it was overcast. We walked around the very small town and checked out two of the three towers. The third isn’t available to view.

The first tower, Guaita, was stunning! We were able to get even better views of the country and we explored every inch of the tower. The second castle, was a bit dull though. It was basically just a museum of the old weapons they used to use there. But, the views were still magnificent.

After exploring, we went to dinner at the Ristorante L’Arengo. They had a vegan menu so of course we got everything that was on it. We got a bread basket, salads, creamy mushroom pasta, seitan and potatoes with grilled vegetables, and three flavors of sorbet. The potatoes were the best part of the meal but, the seitan we could have lived without to be honest. But, it was awesome to have a whole vegan menu.

After dinner, we headed back to the cable car to ride down to our Airbnb and now we’re back and getting ready for tomorrow when we head to Montesilvano for a restful beach day.