Baron in Italy, Mon, 16 Dec 2019 | written by Simon
Jemma and Simon at a Castle, City, Mountain, UNESCO site in Europe, San Marino

With all the cold and the driving and various other worries, I wasn’t feeling great all morning. It took a while to cheer up, but San Marino has helped me a lot.

Firstly, we had to feed the Baron and I waited with that because San Marino has a good 10 cents cheaper petrol than Italy, which brought joy to my cheap soul.

Then it was the drive up Mount Titan, with great views up along the road. We parked half way through in a free spot and walked the last 20 mins up, enjoying the views on the way. It’s amazing to go up the street and in some thirty metres be at the level of the roofs from the previous street. And then it’s this amazing feeling that the city just disappears behind you, because you never see more buildings behind the buildings you just passed – only the vast space and some hills far in the distance.

But it’s the top that’s the most amazing. The view is just fantastic, uninterrupted and pretty much 360 degrees. Not to mention that you can literally see the whole country from up there! How crazy is that?

On the way to the top we visited the town hall – even got to sit in the parliament chairs! But it wasn’t too impressive, to be honest. Then we visited a church of San Marino that wasn’t particularly great either.

Finally we climbed up to the iconic towers/castles which stand on Mount Titan peaks, and that was worth at the effort of coming here. The castle themselves aren’t that amazing, but the views! Just the sheet placement of them on the sheet cliffs, and the views straight down a few hundred metres into the town… Incredible!

There was also a really cool path behind the second tower, just on a face of the cliff, with some chains and a very shaky ground. No better way to cheer up a Simon than to go explore something like this!

We only regretted not having bought some lunch to bring up with us – it would have been perfect to have some bread and cheese on the cliff. We tried to find something later, but there just aren’t any groceries the. All of the old town of San Marino is just restaurants, tourist shops, and novelty ‘museums’. No wonder, apparently tourism is 22% of the country’s GDP, probably half of it people who holiday Inn Rimini and get bored. Anyway, I found one shop that sold some groceries, but a 100g bar of Milka was €4.50! It’s easier to buy a gun in San Marino than chocolate – we’ve seen at least four weaponry shops on the way!

We decided to screw it and just leave the city, buying some food on the outskirts. That worked out well, and we had our lunch sitting by a stream near the border with a Italy (i.e. some five minutes drive from the centre). So we ended up leaving San Marino quite early, but that was great, as we still had some daylight for the drive through the Appenines.