Carl's Travel Blog: Biking Italy & San Marino

Well today against my better judgment (or perhaps as a result of it) I decided to break my streak of mostly studying on the weekends and go somewhere. I decided I had been in Italy long enough and it was time for a break so I decided to go to the next closest country....San Marino!

I decided that I would like to bike to my destination once again in order to save some money. Although I decided biking the entire 120 km from Bologna to San Marino would be a bit much especially considering the last 15 km (more on those later!). So this morning at around 9:30 (thats right I set an alarm to go somewhere!), I hopped on the train to Rimini which would bring me within 25 km of San Marino.

As I got off the train it was wonderfully sunny in Rimini (it is after all a beach town), and I had glorious fantasies in my head about how I would bike at top speeds to this little country and take in all the grand vistas along the way that everyone talks about.

Well reality proved to be much harsher. Once I was about 5 km outside of town I was enclosed in a low cloud cover that blocked basically everything more than 150 meters away from view. Before going I had looked into the geography of such a ride and I notice that obviously it would be uphill, but I grossly underestimated how tough and long it would be. About 10 km in I reached the point where it began to climb and did not stop for 15 km. This also put me right into the clouds so I could not even see where I was going (not sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing...could of been motivating or depressing!). Anyways after the long climb with several stops, cursing every time I got to a curve or out of the clouds only to find out that the road goes further up, and constantly wondering why I was still going up when I was sure there would be nothing to see at the end due to the clouds, I finally made it to San Marino.

Just as I expected I could see absolutely nothing, and I almost turned around right then and there and went back down. I told myself though that I might as well go have a look (if that was possible) at the historic city center, which was of course even further up, but this time I had to walk. I enjoyed walking around the shops and checking out city walls but honestly I was not overly impressed with the place, then something happened.....The clouds we were immersed in decended just enough for the city center and castle to be above the clouds and what a site it was!

I will not say much more (I will let my pictures do the talking) expect that I think this castle is probably one of my favorite three that I have visited along with Carcassonne and Warwick!