Firenze 2006-2007: Rimini and San Marino

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Rimini and San Marino

Friday was our last day of intensive Italian, and that meant we had a written final in the morning, oral final after that, and then a pizza party with our classes and professors in the evening. The tests went well enough. The dinner was amazing, it was a full on Italian meal with multiple courses, all the pizza we could eat and a lot of good times. After eating, we decided to go out to celebrate the end of our intensive Italian. About 30 of us went to a discoteca named Central Park in the Parco Cascine. Normally the cover is 16euro, but American students get in free. We had a good time there, and headed back to the villa way too late.
My train the next morning for Rimini was to leave Florence at 5:28am. John and I left the villa at 5:13am for the fifteen minute walk to the station. We made it to the station and bought tickets at 5:29am, and were on the train just a minute later. Had the train been on time, we would not have made it. All that said, it was pretty impressive that we actually made the train that early after getting only 1 ½ hours of sleep. About ten others missed trains to various places because of the late night and sleeping in, but we made it. We had to change trains about 2 hours later in Faenza, some small town I’d never heard of. A short ride after that, we were in Rimini and looked at taking the bus into San Marino. The next bus was not to leave for another hour or so, so John and I walked into the Centro of Rimini, looked around at the churches main streets and other stuff of interest before heading back to the bus station to get our bus to San Marino.

(One of the old entrances to Rimini, with a newer church in the background)

The bus ride took about 45 minutes, most of that was taken up by the bus slowly climbing up a long and winding hill that lead up to central San Marino. The country is very small and land-locked, and the portion that most people see is that old city that is perched atop a mountain with some serious cliffs and amazing views. We got there, walked around taking all the views of the surrounding countryside and ocean in the distance, and also looking around the many shops selling expensive stuff. San Marino is something of a shopper’s paradise as there is no tax there, so many tourists, as well as Italians, go there to shop. We then went into the first of the forts, or castles. We climbed around there for a bit, climbed up the tower for some amazing panoramic views, went to the second castle for some more of the same, but better views of the city. After that, we had lunch at a pizzeria, looked around the rest of the centro before heading back down to Rimini and the beach. We spent most of the afternoon on the beach in Rimini and walking around the port before heading back to Florence fairly early that evening. We had to go back through Bologna, so we stopped off there to have dinner before finally making it back to Florence at about 10, about 17 hours after leaving for our day trip.