Yet Another Country Visited…..San Marino….. Tick

Life is more enjoyable when you have someone to share your stories with

 

A couple of hours spent ambling around Peschici, a drive through Rodi Garganico, a drive around the Lago di Vareno and the Lago di Lesina completed our very enjoyable time in Puglia.  Whether you want to call it Puglia or the anglicized Apulia, it is definitely a province in Italy worth visiting.

 

 

The autostrada along the east coast from Lesina was sent from heaven.  We really had forgotten what a non pot-holed road surface felt like.  There we were, effortlessly gliding along smooth roads from the border of Puglia, across Molina, across Abruzzo and into Marche.  Eileen wasn’t rattling like she has been for weeks; she was silently cruising north across provinces.  The scenery was lovely too; smooth undulating hills, mostly agricultural and almost always a view on our right to the Adriatic Sea.

 

Camping Calypso at Cupra Marittima was not the best pick for a campsite.  It was a bit of an old-fashioned family holiday camp full of bungalows, kiddie playgrounds and curiously split in two by a busy railway line.  We tried to get to sleep to the sounds of loud (bad) entertainment coming from the central stage and the trains thundering through the campsite.  The train track is not in a cutting, or above us.  It runs at ground level behind some thin plastic fencing between us and the beach and must be the main line up the east coast of Italy.  We managed to sleep though most of it, but I do know that there was a 1:23am train, a 1:27am goods train and another one at 1:30am, plus plenty of others through the night.  The biggest shock was when I went for my morning shower, a train shot past the wall behind me and in that early, half-awake moment, my heart jumped and for a moment I wondered what the hell had joined me in the shower!  I swear, even the water drops jumped on the white tiled walls!!!

 

Driving for a couple of hours or so, on Tuesday, got us to the Renaissance city of Urbino, way up in the valleys at the northern end of Marche.   It sprawls over two hills and the Piazza della Repubblica sits on the saddle between them. The roads up to the centre are incredibly steep, heart-pumping steep and they’re cobblestoned.  If it had been raining, I think we might have needed ropes!

 

 

The views over the surrounding hills and valleys are wonderful and the blonde stone buildings made us think of Tuscany.  And, despite numerous university students wandering back and forth to various buildings, the whole place had a mellow, hushed, peaceful feel to it.  The university claims to be one of the oldest in the world, founded in 1564.  Its other claim to fame is that Raphael was born and lived in Urbino and his 15thC house is now a museum.  It was a lovely place to while away a few hours and to enjoy a nice lunch in Piazza Rinascimento watching young people with bags full of books passing by.

 

 

From Urbino we drove across country, up and down hills, wiggling left and right and for half of the journey watching the prominent peak of San Marino coming in to view.  When we finally got there, we didn’t attempt to drive Eileen up Monte Titano to the historic city, but checked into Camping Centro Vacanze about 5kms away and checked out the bus timetable for Wednesday.

 

The small bus arrived on time at the campsite gates and we hopped on board for a run around the base of the city and then up to the Porte San Francisco.  It was funny to think that we were in another country, I love these little independent places.  This one claims to be ‘the oldest’ and then also claims to be ‘one of’ the oldest republics in the world; both of those sentences are written on the same information leaflet…..!  But it’s pretty darn old, having set itself up as a republic in 1243.

 

 

It’s a fascinating place and we walked all over it, from the middle to one end and then right along to the other end which is a desolate tower on a craggy peak with panoramic views in all directions.  We could see Rimini on the Adriatic coast and inland a patchwork of fields and hills and valleys.  The lay-out is a zigzag of roads in a very narrow format, it has to be the skinniest city we’ve ever been to and so it was fairly easy to cover the whole place in the five hours we spent there.