September 24 to 29, 2023, Ravenna, San Marino, and Cesenatico

As you all know: (1) Ravenna was the capital of the Roman Empire from 402 to 476, later the center of Italian power in the Byzantine Empire (which was of course ruled from Constantinople), (2) it is very very near the Rubicon - the  location where Julius Caesar crossed from the Roman provinces into Rome proper, beginning the end of the Roman Republic, and (3) San Marino is also in this area of Italy.  Wow, so of course, we had to see these places! 

Weighing how long the kids can make it on drives and where we wanted to visit, I selected a place in a town called Cesenatico, on the east coast of Italy and sorta in the middle between Ravenna and San Marino, another location we wanted to visit.   Also, the house had turtles, which I thought the kids would like.  So, we drove across Italy, through the Apennine Mountains (wow, literally through, the Italian highway engineers bored these fascinating car-tunnels through the mountains that just go on forever, for sure faster travel but sooooo disturbing to be in such a long tunnel, going down, down, down!).

Wow, we hit the jackpot at Cesenatico, the town was such a great find. Super walkable (like, proper sidewalks;  we didn’t realize quite how nice sidewalks are after a few weeks in the sidewalk-free parts of Tuscany we stayed in); great beach; and this very scenic harbor that cut into town, with walking bridges and the smallest-little $0.50 “ferry” which was really a sort of barge that got pulled from one side to the other, connecting the two sides.  The turtles were okay too, but they were sort of frantically hungry all the time and one snapped at my finger, so I ahead and left that dangerous feeding-the-turtles-job to the kiddos.

Yeah, Cesenatico is Insta-paradise, Katie and Luke in front a well-dressed Italian, striking his pose! 

Luke and Alex are very excited we are in this sweet city! Katie is waiting behind, waiting to strike.. :) 

First trip, we visited the tiny country of San Marino – Fun facts: San Marino is the 5^th smallest country in the world by population (Vatican City is the smallest, followed by the three Pacific Island nations of Tuvalu, Nauru, and Palau) with about 33,000 people.  During the Italian unification conflict, San Marino offered safe harbor to General Garibaldi who was fighting to unify Italy and, somewhat ironically, as a show of his gratitude, when Italy was unified, San Marino was allowed to remain independent (along with Vatican City). 

We drove the ~hour to our 6^th country on the trip, quite high up on a mountain and parked in the small neighborhoods on the outskirts of the high city, but still on the side of a cliff. Then we took a funicular straight up the last ~500 feet.  Beautiful! And Brrrrrrrrrr.. We hadn’t been cold since Scotland and we were unprepared for the wind and lowish temps!  We visited the outside of the Parliament building, took a million photos, considered getting our passports stamped (decided against it as the office charged 5 euros per stamp), bought and sent postcards, found an indoor “all about San Marino” activity, and walked along the defensive wall and castle locations. As we walked the defensive positions and looked down at the valley, we thought to ourselves, yes, if I were Napoleon marching into northern Italy, spreading the French revolution, I would get to the bottom of that hill and look up at San Marino and I also would decide that the proud and independent people of San Marino already had the revolutionary spirit in sufficient quantities and I would sign an agreement with them too, rather than try to overtake them!  Ahh, we all really enjoyed San Marino.  I believe that at the bottom of the funicular, Alex spied a little toy machine that sold Pokemon cards; San Marino was the start (or, restart, they took a long hiatus at home from this collection-obsessions) of the kids’ Pokemon card collecting hobby; they came with no cards, I think by the time we left Italy they each had amassed more than enough to play battles with one another.  Luckily, they had enough spending money to slowly purchase a few cards at each stop.

 

Doing the San Marino-thing, we bought postcards and sent them from this tiny country. 

Nice view photo!  (No Lukes were harmed in the making of this photo.)

In front of San Marino's national parliament building. 

For our second day trip, we planned a long day in Ravenna. Wow, another big hit. I had seen a lot of mosaics up until then and I have to say, they were not my favorite art form.  The colorful and creative mosaics in Ravenna changed my mind; I was snapping pictures of Jesus herding sheep and Justinian getting crowned Emperor like mad.  We all loved Ravenna, not very crowded, a very scenic City, and so much great history – Romans, Byzantines, Dante..  Ravenna won me over on mosaics (we have been joking that when we renovate our old bathroom, we need to have a mosaic done of our family, it would look amazing!)…. but not on Byzantine art.  I appreciate that it is different and unique to its time (the kids laugh and laugh about how all the artists ‘forgot’ how to make realistic art, like the Greeks and the Romans, until the Renaissance) but the style just reminds me too much of Flat Stanley, everyone in each piece has been smashed.

 

          Trying to capture these fascinating ceiling-mosaics - The one on the right shows Jesus stepping
          on a snake and a lion.   

          The one on the left below was just a stunning blue and in the one on the the right below, the
           image of Jesus being baptized in the center struck me for some reason.

Last day trip, we crossed the Rubicon.  No Caesar, I thought to myself, the Republic hangs in the balance, think about it before you cross!  We walked down to the Rubicon creek and onto the dry part of the river bed and thought to ourselves, yep, if I were the strongest and smartest general of the Triumvirate and I got to that little Rubicon (small creek), I would go ahead and cross it too…

They went right across that Rubicon..  The die is cast.