From Falconara it wasn't far to San Marino, so we stopped by some caves that were inland called the Caves of Frasassi. They were huge and quite interesting, though we came away and had to buy a book to learn more about the caves because our guide only spoke Italian. We found out afterwards that we could have paid more for an English audio guide. I was a bit peeved at this because the ticket girl never told us our guide did it in Italian and never told us about the audio guide and neither did our live guide when we started the tour, also I don't see why we should pay for the audio guide just because we don't speak Italian. From the caves we had an interesting run through some lovely mountains and valleys on quieter back roads to San Marino. We had booked a hostel in San Marino and had no real problems finding it. The person on reception didn't speak any English and indicated that we owed double what our confirmation email said, we pointed this out and he indicated we would need to wait until the manager came in and directed us to our room, that turned out to be a private double room with ensuite, we had booked a dorm, so that was why our bill was double. When the manager arrived it was sorted and we moved into the dorm. We didn't know when we booked this hostel that it was above a night club and being Saturday night, at around eleven, after we had gone to bed, the band started playing VERY loud, we could feel the building vibrating. Fortunately it was good seventies and eights rock music, but it didn't finish until around 2 am. We didn't get much sleep and to make matters worse, when I went to check on the bike in the morning someone had stollen our tent, walking poles and tarp off the bike. We had left them on because we were tired of carting everything upstairs and back down again, also we were told how safe San Marino was and the bike was parked away from the entrance to the night club, the other side of the building. Never mind, we went into town to have a look at this city perched on top of a mountain. The views from the towers were incredible and the city with its narrow streets and old buildings was like walking back in time, it was well worth the visit. It had been a cold day and on returning to the hostel the manager said that it would snow that night and at around 5.30 pm it did start to snow and snow until by morning there was around 10cm of snow covering everything, it looked beautiful, but we had to leave before it started snowing again. So after shoveling the snow off the driveway to the already cleared road we made our exit. We had some more snow on us as we headed to Lucca via the coast, but fortunately despite it being very heavy snow, it didn't last long and the road soon cleared its white appearance. We are now back in Lucca near Pisa and expect to be here for all of January and February, we have decided it is pointless pushing on through the winter. We are heading up the Leicester in England for Christmas to spend it with my sister and family. How cool is that? We managed to get to England in time to see my mum and now we are spending Christmas with my sister! We will probably post the odd blog while we are in Lucca just to keep you up to date with what we are doing. Have a great Christmas everyone and an enjoyable and safe year in 2012.