Another country ticked off!!San Marino is actually a country surrounded by Italy. We've been to Italy several times before but not made it to the little Republic of San Marino.It was rather an adventurous journey.After saying goodbye to our French hire car in Nice we hoisted our backpacks and walked some 3 kilometres to the address we had for the Eurolines bus we had booked, to take us to Florence in Italy. Nice, being a rather unsavory sort of place late at ...

Ravenna is a city rather unique in the world. During the 5th to the 8th centuries it was the last capital of the Western (Roman) Empire. Its monuments, basilicas. baptisteries and mausoleums are very much intact and have the best examples in the world of Byzantine mosaics. We arrived late afternoon from the train and an already busy day in Rimini and San Marino, to find no tourist information office at the railway station. We had been counting on that to secure ...

 This part of Italy has some of the most picturesque scenery we have seen on this trip. The Cinque Terre coast is UNESCO World Heritage protected and has sensational walking and climbing cliff paths. The Cinque Terre is a magical part of Italy the name meaning five towns. A myriad of paths link the villages with spectacular views of cliffs, coast and cultivated, dry stone terraces. We spent lots of time hiking and did thousands of up and down steps but also en...

We had a two hour stop over at Pisa to see the leaning tower. We had seen this in 1999 but took the time to snap the obligatory photo. We then went to an ATM to get some money and discovered that Heather's debit card (which works on the Visa system but uses our money) was missing! Shock horror! We believe it dropped out of Heather/s wallet in Florence but are not quite sure. We are still waiting to finally be sure no one has used it as transactions take a lo...

Florence is a beautiful hilly city made predominantly of marble, in hues of white, green and pink. There is a light to Florence that is hard to describe. A softer, gentler sky.Known for its art and of course also as the home of famous artists, the most well know being Michelangelo. Again we stayed at a campsite that required public transport to reach the city centre. We are reasonably skilled these days for people who hardly ever used public transport before thi...