The interlude between seeing Andreas and Urs and the beginning of the cruise has been delightful. I took the train from Bern to Rimini — ok, a local train and two intercity trains but who’s counting. Meanwhile, Sue and Glorie, two friends from Portland, arrived a bit later by train….and no, it was not a coincidence. We explored Rimini, then spent two nights in the independent nation of San Marino, and began making our way to Rome’s port (Civitivecchia), with a night in Pisa along the way. I wrote this on the train and I’m posting it from the room in Civitivecchia
It was raining heavily as the train pulled into Rimini on Monday afternoon so I decided to take the bus rather than walk to the lodging. Of course, by the time I exited the train station it was sunny, but I already had the bus ticket. After checking in I decided to relax a bit as I had been on the go the entire trip, except when sleeping and for a couple of hours Wednesday afternoon (by now it was Monday afternoon). An excellent investment of a couple of hours. Then I found sorbet, walked out to the beach, and returned to the hotel a bit before Sue and Glorie let me know they’d arrived. We found a tasty spot for dinner where I had my first and so far the best of three prosciutto and melon dishes (the others were in San Marino and Pisa). We went back out to the beach so Glorie and I could touch the Adriatic. We did so with our hands, keeping our feet dry. Then more sorbet, a decision to meet at 5:30am to watch the sunrise over the Adriatic, and time to call it a night.
Five o’clock came early, but sunrises are rare treats and getting to share one in Italy, over the Adriatic, with friends made waking up less painful. There were just enough clouds in the sky to enhance the sunrise, but the horizon was otherwise very crisp and clear. The lighting was exquisite, first starting with pale pinks and blues, then bursting into the yellows and oranges. Not surprisingly, it was the reverse of a sunset, a phenomenon I’ve experienced just a wee bit more often.
After the first excellent European breakfast of the trip, we made our way back to the train station area where we bought round trip bus tickets up to San Marino. Yes, up to. Rimini is on the coast which is, by definition, at sea level. San Marino is not….somewhere we saw a sign indicating 1340 meters (4400 feet) though I have no recollection whether that was low, medium or high within San Marino. It should come as no surprise that we found a couple of caches while we waited for the bus. While waiting for the bus we met a father-daughter: they’re from Minnesota, Dad a retired critical care nurse, daughter graduated from nursing school in 2020 who is moving to San Diego to work at UCSD.
After an hour-long bus ride we were dropped off in a parking lot in the “lower” part of the city of San Marino (the country has a few communities, the largest of which is the city of San Marino. No, not confusing at all…..). At that time it was sunny, though with some ominous looking clouds on the horizon. Our lodging was about 300 meters away, how long could it take to walk there. Ah, but the 300 meters is horizontal, and doesn’t take into account the hundred or so vertical meters we also needed to travel. Several switchbacks later, we finally arrived, just as it started to rain. Unlike an Oregon rain — sometimes it seems we need an entire vocabulary to describe the nuance between mist, drizzle, sprinkle, rain, pour and torrential — the San Marino rain jumped immediately from a few drops to torrential. We tried to put our luggage under the small overhang at the front door of our B&B to keep it dry as we figured out how to enter.
We rang the doorbell several times with no response. I had a horrible sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach….I’d paid for the B&B back in December and hadn’t heard from the owner since then, hadn’t thought to check on details like check-in time or process. Oops. At least I had his e-mail and he responded promptly with the code and the information that check-in time wasn’t until 2pm but if the cleaning lady was done we could enter now. She was and we did.
The heavy door opened to reveal an intimate space at 2:00 (facing forward being 12:00) with two upholstered chairs on our right. A large dining table with chairs on one side and a bench on the other, with a long narrow kitchen behind was at 1:00. The downstairs suites, bedroom and bathroom, was at 12:30. At 12:00 was an interesting staircase. It opened near the chairs facing 9:00, made a right-angle turn to 12:00 (the stairs at the corner were all triangular, perhaps indicating that the building was quite old), then another right angle with triangular steps up to the upstairs suite. I’d assumed Sue and Glorie would take upstairs as it had a balcony, but orthopedic considerations led to the opposite arrangement. My upstairs bedroom had a queen size bed, a fabulous balcony, and a cozy bathroom with gold iridescent tiles that were about 1cm square. An amazing B&B, and at quite a reasonable price!
Alas, lack of attention to detail turned out to be a recurring theme. We were left a partially-eaten cake which was slightly moldy when we arrived and science-experiment-worthy by the time we left less than 48 hours later. Four rolls of European toilet paper is grossly inadequate for 3 women for 2 days, and despite our explicit request it was not replenished (fortunately Glorie and Sue had some with them). A soap dispenser works better when it contains soap, and it’s useful to have somewhere in the shower to place objects like soap and shampoo. There were other things….but still an amazing space, in a lovely location, and quite affordable.
We grabbed what I can best describe as an adequate lunch (mine was pasta with meat sauce and I shared a frito misto with Glorie — she got the squid, I got most of the shrimp and we shared the vegetables) a few doors away from our lodging. After lunch Sue decided to rest but Glorie and I took a bit of a walk Wednesday afternoon. We found a cache that had eluded us while we had our luggage, then couldn’t find a different cache (I just checked, and a few of our fellow cruisers also couldn’t find it). There was some shopping done that won’t be described further here. We saw the license plates SM001 and SM002 which had diplomatic corps markings on them. We also found some delicious dark chocolate sorbet which we brought back to the house after a quick stop at the “super market” which was smaller than the average gas station store at home. Poor Glorie had a computer catastrophe, the status of which is partially fixed as I type this, and we all turned in at a respectable hour.
Tuesday morning I woke up a few minutes before sunrise so I popped out to the balcony to take some pictures and freeze my feet on the cold ground. Seeing a sunrise is rare, but seeing it two days in a row may be a first for me. I could see some red-tiled roofs, a church, and vibrant green vegetation. It was spectacular enough to make freezing my feet worthwhile. I then returned to bed for important morning activities like Wordle and Quordle before admitting it was morning.
We waffled about what to do on Tuesday to experience San Marino without it being too physically demanding. I would say that we accomplished the first part of that goal extremely well, the second part not so much. We walked along the “three towers” trail to see some amazing scenery and I took one picture that just might make it to the wall of travel photos at home. We found San Marino’s oldest active cache (to match Liechtenstein’s oldest from a few days ago) and a few others then had a quick but disappointing meal at a snack bar. We made our way to the church — yes, my Pavlovian response occurred — and did the short cable car ride down and then back up.
As we were exploring the plaza near the top of the cable car I hear my name. Two Canadian women who were on my first Landsharkz cruise back in 2019 recognized me, in part because I’d decided to wear a geocaching shirt in honor of the event the “Oregon Travelers” hosted in the evening so the five of us all introduced ourselves. The Canadians invited us to drinks at 5pm which turned out to be a nice pre-event activity. Sue, Glorie and I then went to a different gelateria (the chocolate was outstanding but the strawberry disappointing) and had the decadent experience of eating it on the balcony at our lodging.
It was fun to see so many cachers at the event. Lots of hugs with people who joined the Landsharkz for a pre-trip excursion to Florence and San Marino, and promises to see them in 48 hours in Civitivecchia. We then went out to dinner with Dave Lyon and Dira where we got to see a spectacular sunset.
San Marino is definitely worth a visit, and two nights/one full day is about right. Lots of history — it’s the world’s oldest republic, established in 301 (CCCI in Roman numerals). Interesting terrain and beautiful scenery — both the human-made and the natural. That said, it’s not worth going around the world to visit this interesting country.
An aside about license plates as those are objects I’ve paid attention to since the summer I turned 6 and drove from Madison, Wisconsin, to Palo Alto, California. Most European plates are white metal with black letters. There’s an alphabetic indication of the country, and some countries indicate smaller jurisdictions with a coat of arms or specific starting letters. Liechtenstein is black metal with white letters. San Marino is white metal with blue letters. I’ll have to check to see if some of the other smaller nations have unique plates — Andorra, Monaco, Vatican City, etc.
Thursday we took the bus back to Rimini. While at the bus stop we met an older couple who currently live in San Antonio, have been to over 90 countries, and were part way through a 4-continent trip that started with a repositioning cruise from Ft Lauderdale to Europe and would include Asia and Africa. It took three trains to get from Rimini to Pisa, with transfers in Bologna and Firenze, though all went smoothly.
Our Pisa lodging looked almost like a dorm room with 4 twin beds. We arrived, checked in, set down our luggage, and made our way to the area with the tower. Yes, that tower. We took some of the obligatory pictures, found some caches, entered the church (Pavlov would be proud of my response), and climbed the tower. We had discussed what time to get tickets for and thought 7:30 would be great so we could see the sunset from the top. Two hundred forty-seven steps later, not including the few down to and back up from the “moat” we were at the highest level that the public is permitted. We were all happy to stop at each of the landings along the way, and noticed how the lean of the tower changed the difficulty of climbing (and later descending) the stairs. We were rewarded with spectacular views of Pisa — including lots of red-tiled roofs, the futbal (soccer) stadium, and the church. The marble used for the church and for parts of the tower was striped — one layer of white, one of dark gray, etc. — so I found myself referring to the zebra church.
Glorie and I started searching for one more item for a virtual cache. We interrupted ourselves when we met a lovely woman from Wales who spoke with an Aussie accent (so did her sister) and we had a delightful conversation with her that involved much laughter, with background music of a choir rehearsal for an opera. A perfect way to end the day, except for the subsequent imperfection of finding a taxi to return us to the hotel.
Today we all woke up earlier than planned so at the modest hotel breakfast — which seemed to be much closer to an American motel free breakfast than the delicious feast we experienced in Rimini. Learned that the Italian word for acetaminophen is paracetamolo which is remarkably close to the word paracetamol which is what it’s called in many English-speaking places. And that concludes your international English lesson of the day.
To sum up the travel itinerary so far: 7 countries visited including 3 new ones. France, Germany, Austria and Italy were “not new” and all had previous cache finds; Switzerland, Liechtenstein and San Marino were all “new” and all now have cache finds, bringing me to a total of 59 countries visited of which I have found caches in 56 (using the geocaching.com list of countries which is, shall we say, a bit quirky).
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