10-8-17 to 10-10-17 – On the Road, Rimini and San Marino – Lover of Wine – Travel along on our adventures

OK, the last several days have been RELAXING. I admit, we haven’t done really any tourist things…we have relaxed, traveled some, eaten some and had some wines. We left our Agratourisim place, which was really out in the country between Bologna and Moderna, and headed to a foreign country – yes a different country from Italy.

Espaliered fruit trees with irritation coming across the top and down the rows.

Along the drive we snapped a picture of the espaliered trees along the road. It seems most of the fruit trees(apples and pears) are espaliered along rows with the irrigation at the top. I guess to make picking the fruit easier or something, but we have seen these a lot.

Our drive took us to Rimini – a coastal town on the east coast of Italy where we stopped for lunch. Not only did we stop for a really lovely lunch, but wandered into a couple of shops and bought strange things – a night light (which we have looked for in several places and never found), a knife to be able to cut snacks, fruit and other things when we have supper in our room (seems the little Swiss army knife isn’t good enough or strong enough) some fantastic grapes (funny the things you pick up along the way).

Janeen looking at the water under the bridge in Rimini.

Here we are before getting our lunch in Rimini.

After lunch we headed west to another country – specifically to Republic of San Marino. Yes, this is a small country all of 61 square Km (24 square miles) right smack dab in Italy. Seems this place was a City State during all the history and never got incorporated into Italy. It has the claim of being the 5^th smallest country in the world! We had heard about this from Rebecca Ponzi (who we met at the Stoller dinner in Oregon prior to IPNC and is related to the Ponzi Wine folks of Oregon) and who it turns out has an olive oil company in Italy – where we are going to connect with her in a couple of days.

After we got checked into our hotel we walked around with the specific goal of getting to the tourist office so we could get a San Marino Visa stamp in our passports! Doesn’t do much good but it is proof we made it to another country (this makes our 5^th so far on this trip). After that we just sort of relaxed with a bottle of wine in our room with some cheese (using our new knife!) and crackers. Today, Tuesday, we set a goal to do laundry and to get Janeen a hair appointment. We accomplished both!

Just some of the buildings in San Marino not far from our hotel.

Just one of the sites we saw while walking around at the top of San Marino

Stork Sculpture made of various things – car parts, trash cans, electric hair dryer and other metal stuff.

Here we are outside the tourist office after getting our “visa”

This overlook is not at the top of the mountain but close.

One of the municipal buildings in San Marino

I don’t know what’s in the bottles but for 3.50 euros I was tempted to find out.

We got a kick out of this crossing guard. While there wasn’t much traffic, he was there to make sure pedestrians got across the street safely.

Just one of the various “strange” museums in San Marino.

Several things – we have now been in Europe for almost a month (OK, it’s been actually 28 day so far) and several things are clear. 1) It’s nice to have my computer so we can listen to our own music (along with my Bluetooth speaker); 2) not have an actual agenda so we can do things like come to San Marino and do laundry and get hair done 3) be able to communicate with all of you via this blog 4) drink really good inexpensive wines and eat really great foods 5) discover new things every day 6) and drive a car we are actually keeping. So, while we still have 3 more months to go (and I expect several more countries) it’s nice to be here and see this part of the world I would never have expected to visit.

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