After a wonderful couple of days at Cinque Terre, we got back on the road and drove to our next destination, which was actually another country: San Marino! The reason I wanted to go there was (as has happened before… ) one photo I had seen of the city of San Marino located on a 750 m high hill with great views over the surroundings – it looked magical!

Our hotel was right on top of the hill, and after dropping our bags we went to enjoy the views – they didn’t disappoint!

We enjoyed a lazy afternoon with wine and pizza on an outside terrace…

Then at sunset we walked we walked up to the Second Tower to enjoy views of the First Tower. That magical view I had seen in the photo…

As dusk fell, all the lights came on – magical! You could see all the way to the coast at Rimini…

The castle was beautifully lit, what fairytale views…

The next day we explored the city. First, we went to visit the First Tower, from where we had this great view of the Second Tower (yes, exactly the opposite as the photos above!).

And the other way around again, haha… We bought combination ticket to visit almost all the monuments in town. The Second Tower had an exhibition of  weapons, from medieval to modern day. It was interesting, but we found the obsession with weapons in San Marino a bit strange. There’s a lot of shops selling knives, crossbows and guns (from toy ones to real ones…).

I just couldn’t stop taking photos of the views…

Michiel on the town square…

We also visited the Palazzo Publico (the town hall), which had this incredibly beautiful Chamber of the Grand and General Council…

It was a cloudy day, but I loved the rays of sun peeping through the clouds, lighting up the hills around San Marino.

In the evening we had a really good dinner – what a great day! We were leaving the next morning, but when I saw that the sun was coming through the fog every now and then, I knew there would be some good photo opportunities. So we went back to my favourite viewpoint, and got treated to these views – a fairytale castle in the sky!

We really enjoyed our visit to this mini-country-on-a-cliff!