Un Paese delle Fiabe

This is a country from a fairy tale. San Marino was still gorgeous in this morning's early light. Looking out from our window yesterday evening, there was a haze over the hills, but when we woke up today the light was crisp and clear and we just couldn't stop wowing at the scenery. 

I can't resist showing you this again. This is more of the actual country of San Marino. 

Much of the land in last night's photo was probably actually Italy. Still lovely though.

After breakfast we went back up the hill and into the walled area of the town to see the State Museum, but we were a little early for its 9am opening, so we had a quick coffee across the way. (The breakfast coffee had been disgusting, but I couldn't say in what way. Burnt? Stewed? Just horrible.) Then we had a walk around the museum for the next half hour or so. Some of the exhibits had been found in the region, including some treasures (beautiful gold jewellery) from the single-digit centuries. Others were just collections from wealthy patrons in the past. It was a lovely modern museum, though: well-lit and well-laid out. 

San Marino house

One point that Lonely Planet had made about San Marino was that "some people" say it lacks soul. I can see how that could be the case. There is history throughout the buildings and the streets, but it is somewhat Disney-esque. It's difficult to tell the genuinely old buildings from any new or even newly remodelled buildings, such as the shops, of which there are many flash designer types, as well as slightly more ordinary souvenir shops. And a lot of witch/magic-themed shops, evidently harking to some part of the history, or perhaps just to a place on the mountain where the town is, called Witch's Pass. 

Together Stephen and I also visited the Museum of Curiosities, which had displays and exhibits of actual or replicas of things and people that would be in the Guinness Book of Records or Ripley's Believe It or Not. It was a bit of fun and sometimes genuinely interesting or even educational. Then Stephen went to do some

A 19th century design for a "bike" 

videoing of the town and people and I went to the Vampire and Werewolf Museum. The exhibits here were gloriously gory but each wax head or mannequin or hairy hand had a full explanation of their place in actual human history - the likes of Vlad the Impaler and so on. It was surprisingly informative and educational.

Stephen and I met up again at the hotel ready to catch the bus back down the mountain to Rimini, to catch our next train. Our journey for today was to Florence. This trip was through more lovely countryside. The first part was on the flat, and there were plenty of vineyards and farmhouses, whose design was changing as we came north. They seemed to be losing their adherence to a traditional style, and more willing to be modern. There were still buildings that were clearly centuries old, but they were taller now, and there must have been a change in the pitch of the roofs (rooves? they both look and sound wrong) because their image changed completely somehow, from being Roman to

Impossibly beautiful towns

European. Then we changed trains to come more inland through the mountains, and it was even more fairy-tale scenery. Forest-covered slopes and medieval-looking stone farmhouses, small villages alongside streams trickling down through valleys of green... I didn't know these could be real places, with real people living there. I'd assumed such scenes were just imaginative film sets for fantasy TV shows. And this scenery went on, and on, and on. We were only 3 stops out of Florence - 20 minutes away - and I realized that some people get to live there and commute into the city. (Suddenly the station car parks were full of cars, you see.)

Florence itself will probably be amazing, but our accommodation is a bit out of town, so we've only seen it from the taxi so far. To be fair, we can see the Duomo from our balcony, but only because we're on the 4th floor. We're in a very residential area, not unlike where we stayed in Japan last year: lots of apartment blocks. There is a park, and tonight we walked along the road to find a supermarket, just in case we need something, and there are a few shops and eateries around. But we bought breakfast stuff because there isn't a nice pasticceria or breakfast bar around. There's a grocery shop over the road that will probably have nice pastries in the morning, but doesn't seem to do coffee. So we'll have our normal breakfast for a few days. We had quite a passable pizza on the way home, at a small local pizzeria. 

We have used our down-time this evening to pre-book tickets in order to skip the queues to a couple of museums over the weekend. And there are a couple of others we'd like to see, too, so they'll be busy days.  

Our accommodation in Florence - a modern apartment.

I'll let you know how they go. See you then!