DAY 122

Thursday 10 November 2011

"Ciao, Piegaro"

Vowing to get a really early start toward Venice and actually getting away were two different matters. We had so many last-minute things to take care of, as the last folks remaining at L'Antica Vetreria, that the sun was way up before we spun outta there. Goodbye, beautiful Umbrian oasis; hello again to the road and living in the van. But unless you move away from paradise, you'll never find the paradise around the next bend.

We retraced the previous day's route up through Perugia (ain't stoppin' there!) and Gubbio toward Urbino, a town recommended by too many people to ignore. It wasn't different enough from all the other ancient Italian hill towns we'd seen to keep us there for long, just long enough to walk up and back down the extremely steep main road, check out the beautiful church which featured a number of manger scenes (but no El Caganer), and sit on the steps watching the pigeons. One club-footed pigeon who we imagined had walked all the way from Cinncinnati joined the others, a little late, but fought valiantly for his share of the rosemary bread. It's a university town teeming with students.

This photo is deceiving. It was much steeper. We swear.

Locals- we mean miniature models of locals, inside a church

We drove on towards our goal of country #18, San Marino. Never heard of it? It's only a speck, a large town and a small bit of surrounding countryside, known to Charles from his boyhood stamp collecting days. (Those tiny principalities literally used to live off their sales of stamps and coins. What do they do now that no one collects?)

The road there was misty and twisty and often beautiful with bright fall colors. We were relying on our GPS James Bond but were a bit puzzled when he said we were there but we had not seen any signs announcing it. We stopped to talk with two women picking vegetables from the field and they said No, it's farther up. The city or the country? We decided to trust  Bond and assume we had hit the country of San Marino, until a bit up the road, already bound for Rimini on the Italian coast and the route to Venice, we saw a sign that read, Republic of San Marino, 10 km. It was getting dark but we decided to nail it, so off we went.

San Marino

We found it, we were definitely in San Marino, in fact as we rounded a bend on the hilltop city and saw an official sign beckoning, Camper Park, 48 hrs -- never has a nation provided a nice park-side lot and invited us to stay two days for free -- we couldn't resist.

Not much there, a small bar (European "bars" serve coffees, croissants, sometimes sandwiches as well as drinks, and the whole family goes) where we got an espresso, but when we returned to our van we encountered another large camper pulling in, and when the driver strolled by and motioned that our lights were still on, we beckoned him over, chatted and invited him and his wife to dinner.

Realizing we didn't have enough dinner for five, we walked across the street to a small market and got a bottle of wine and a tomato and cheese pastry, and took it to their camper. Their spacious, luxurious, warm, well-lit, fully outfitted camper. (Sigh.) Jean Louis and Jacqueline were from Alsace, that region of France where some of Charles' family on his dad's side lived until WWI, that has forever bounced between German and French domination. We had a great visit and came away with much good road advice especially about Morocco, which they loved and had spent much time in. They provided very specific and valuable information, and even gave us their USB wi-fi stick, which was cheaper to reload than to buy.

We retired early, it was chilly but we were toasty under our new Ikea comforters (and Dian's mink coat, sent to Piegaro by her folks). Who's roughing it?