San Marino

Robbie ended up with a few days off right around Easter and he had been wanting to go visit San Marino for a couple of months.  San Marino is a tiny little independent republic located right in the middle of the Italian coast.  Some friends of ours had been already and we had so many questions. Did we need our passports? Do we have to go through customs? Do they take Euros even though they're not a member of the European Union? As we tend to do, we didn't look too carefully into any of these questions before we left and figured we'd wing it once we got out there.

I'll admit that I wasn't too excited for this particular day trip.  I hadn't really heard of San Marino before and didn't know anything about it or what there was to see there.  By the end of the day, I was impressed and it actually turned out to be one of my favorite day trips we've done so far.

San Marino is the most famous for the three towers that sit on the three peaks of Monte Titano.

We parked and hiked up the mountain a little way until we got to the old stone walkways that led to the towers.  They were really cool and old looking, plus had amazing views in every direction.

Before heading inside the towers, we walked around a little bit and enjoyed some of the beautiful spring weather and scenery.  The trees and flowers were blooming and it made for a relaxing walk.

The first thing we came across was the Basilica of San Marino.  I don't think you're supposed to take pictures inside, but Robbie can't resist.

Then we walked back up to start the tour of the towers.  By that time, it was already kind of late in the day so we were only going to have time to see two of the towers.  I think why I liked these so much was because besides the ticket-takers at the gate, there wasn't anyone else around.  The towers were just open to explore, climb around in, and have fun without having to do any "tour" kind of things through it.

We took turns climbing to the top of the tower since it was too steep and narrow to bring Michael up in the hiking backpack and enjoyed the views from the top:

Room at the top of the tower

Narrow walkway around the tower

We had a little snack and played around a big in the courtyard of the first tower and then moved onto the second.

The second tower was set up a little more like a museum with various weapons, shields, and armor on display.  Some of the swords were bigger than me!

We climbed around on the tower of this one too, and actually all made it up at the same time with Michael.

On a clearer day, I think you would have been able to see all the way to the coast.  It was a really fun, laid-back, and relaxed day.  Sometimes it's nice to travel without a strict agenda and just see where you end up, and this was one of those days.

And, in case anyone was curious, you don't need a passport or to go through customs to visit San Marino, they do accept the Euro, but our cell phones only work in Italy so to use them in San Marino we would have had to upgrade to the European travel plan!