This isn’t really a car obsessed country like Monaco, but there are a few cool interesting cars.

Like a lot of garages in the UK, the workers have some project cars, and these were round the side…. The 1920s looking one has US plates, and the car behind I think is a Lancia from the 1960s. Top is a cool 90s Ford Escort Cosworth, the rest of the vehicles are having body repair.

There is also a McDonalds above the garage, which has closed down! Where as McDonalds seems to be the only restaurant that can withstand tough trading conditions in hospitality, here it seems there maybe no love for MaccyDs. I found a pretty good Italian pizza place for my dinner on my first evening staying at SM.

Not all the cars are exotic or vintage, further down the hill was a dealer specialising in microcars, these are tiny cars with a 2 stroke engine, which if the regulations might be the same as the UK, they can be driven with a motorcycle licence. I think I saw some of these in France years ago, but now these look crude and plasticy and worse when you consider electric car technology has matured, they shouldn’t be using lawnmower engines in small cars now.

Outside of the city centre, houses here are luxurious enough to have a driveway or even gates to put your vehicle in. Some have a ‘Batcave’ style underground car park underneath the apartment blocks.

This early model Fiat 500 with RSM plates might be the coolest car in San M.. no wait, actually there is in someone’s front garden in nearby Rimini, Italy.

1. Planning visit to my final tiny country – 2. Flying to Italy for the price of two pizzas – 3. Getting there from Bologna via Rimini – 4. City of Rimini – 5. Walking from Rimini to San Marino – 6. What sort of mini country is this – 7. Serraville, San Marino’s northern town – 8. San Marino’s only youth hotel – 9. Castles in the sky – 10. Safe up the top – 11. The tall centre of community of San Marino – 12. novelty shops, post office and passport stamps – 13. The government buildings and plaza – 14. Automobiles – 15. The three towers – 16. What I didn’t see & finishing up

Here’s San Marino’s government offices, known as Palazzo Pubblico della Repubblica di San Marino

Here is the back, plus the office cars

This iconic building features on stamps, and a lot of the brochures shows this place.

There isn’t a king or a president or prime minister. Instead, a local council votes on two leaders known as a “Captains Regent”, both will serve for 6 months. This happens on April and October of each year.

This is one of the oldest democracies in the world. Back to AD301 in fact.

This country has a football team that always loses, and is sometimes takes part on Eurovision.

There is also a really superb view of the south west side of the county from up here.

1. Planning visit to my final tiny country – 2. Flying to Italy for the price of two pizzas – 3. Getting there from Bologna via Rimini – 4. City of Rimini – 5. Walking from Rimini to San Marino – 6. What sort of mini country is this – 7. Serraville, San Marino’s northern town – 8. San Marino’s only youth hotel – 9. Castles in the sky – 10. Safe up the top – 11. The tall centre of community of San Marino – 12. novelty shops, post office and passport stamps – 13. The government buildings and plaza – 14. Automobiles – 15. The three towers – 16. What I didn’t see & finishing up

There are quite a few gun shops here, with swords, knives and other weapons.

A shop that sells nothing but rubber duckies

Model car shop. Its worth mentioning, that a lot of these shops are open only part time, as we are still in the pandemic. This toy shop has a sign up saying they shut at lunchtime.

The office to get your passport stamped is on this street I believe, but I didn’t find the actual place then. For 5 Euros you can get your passport stamped with an official San Marino entry stamp, meaningless but kind of cool.

I did manage to get postcards with the stamps pre-attached with government buildings and the Pope on. This is on my next chapter. There doesn’t seem to be a stamp museum, or at least not like the one in Liechtenstein.

Also, I noticed from Google’s streetview above, there are some classic cars on some kind of event. I think these tiny streets would be heaps of fun to drive around.

1. Planning visit to my final tiny country – 2. Flying to Italy for the price of two pizzas – 3. Getting there from Bologna via Rimini – 4. City of Rimini – 5. Walking from Rimini to San Marino – 6. What sort of mini country is this – 7. Serraville, San Marino’s northern town – 8. San Marino’s only youth hotel – 9. Castles in the sky – 10. Safe up the top – 11. The tall centre of community of San Marino – 12. novelty shops, post office and passport stamps – 13. The government buildings and plaza – 14. Automobiles – 15. The three towers – 16. What I didn’t see & finishing up

So I’ve got to centre of this little nation. There is a few similarities to the other small countries I’ve been. Like Malta, this is a Catholic county, but also these posters are interesting, not just for events, some of these contain obituaries put up my families whose loved ones have passed. I’ve notice all of these are 90 or close to, and one over 100. there are also anniversaries of deaths of previous years. Nice these people have a long life and close knit way of updating the community.

This is a special sort of entrance, with some smart dressed (not visible here) policemen or security or soldiers, I’m not sure which.

San Marino’s tourist shops, cafes, bars and convenience stores for locals are all set on this steep roads that run parallel around the top part of the city centre.

An overhead view shows a better angle of this place.

1. Planning visit to my final tiny country – 2. Flying to Italy for the price of two pizzas – 3. Getting there from Bologna via Rimini – 4. City of Rimini – 5. Walking from Rimini to San Marino – 6. What sort of mini country is this – 7. Serraville, San Marino’s northern town – 8. San Marino’s only youth hotel – 9. Castles in the sky – 10. Safe up the top – 11. The tall centre of community of San Marino – 12. novelty shops, post office and passport stamps – 13. The government buildings and plaza – 14. Automobiles – 15. The three towers – 16. What I didn’t see & finishing up

I couldn’t find any crime statistics of this country, but I would bet this is a very safe place against crime and war. For a start, you are on a hill, its easy to spot any invaders from a long way.

A drive in bank! Never seen this before.

These small petrol stations don’t take up much space and have just two pumps. I saw some like this in Valleta Malta.

Police station. With some nice trees, and round the side is a tent for Covid testing.

Ok, so we are nearly at the top. You know what? this would be a super little place for a proper motorsport event, with all these twisty road and nice scenery. In fact, I wonder if there is a way of scraping Google Streetmap data so this could become scenery for a PC game maybe?

1. Planning visit to my final tiny country – 2. Flying to Italy for the price of two pizzas – 3. Getting there from Bologna via Rimini – 4. City of Rimini – 5. Walking from Rimini to San Marino – 6. What sort of mini country is this – 7. Serraville, San Marino’s northern town – 8. San Marino’s only youth hotel – 9. Castles in the sky – 10. Safe up the top – 11. The tall centre of community of San Marino – 12. novelty shops, post office and passport stamps – 13. The government buildings and plaza – 14. Automobiles – 15. The three towers – 16. What I didn’t see & finishing up

As you go up and up this mountainous mini nation, you get glimpses of the castles at the top. In fact its a silhouetted in the clouds.

At the time of writing this, the UK is reaching the climax of the negotiating a deal with the EU and it all still go wrong. Meanwhile, Europe has some little nations which aren’t part of the blue and gold star bloc which seem quite happy without it.

So walking up here was tricky, as a lot of the time there is no pavement, you have to walk in the road, so had to regularly glance on my left. Traffic and tourism is pretty quiet, seeing as I visited between two lockdowns.

There are very few buses, and I didn’t see a single taxi. There is no train, oh wait – there was one once, but it was bombed by the British – by accident, during the WWII when they want to destroy a military target in Nazi occupied Italy. Sadly some people died.

This main highway goes right up to the centre capital of the country at the top.

Sunlight peeps over the rock at the top

1. Planning visit to my final tiny country – 2. Flying to Italy for the price of two pizzas – 3. Getting there from Bologna via Rimini – 4. City of Rimini – 5. Walking from Rimini to San Marino – 6. What sort of mini country is this – 7. Serraville, San Marino’s northern town – 8. San Marino’s only youth hotel – 9. Castles in the sky – 10. Safe up the top – 11. The tall centre of community of San Marino – 12. novelty shops, post office and passport stamps – 13. The government buildings and plaza – 14. Automobiles – 15. The three towers – 16. What I didn’t see & finishing up

I like seeing live music. Christian praise and worship that’s modern, and traditional stuff. And also secular bands. Rock, pop, classical, funk jazz, reggae, I try to lean towards really most things that are positive and upbeat.

A picture or meme was often being shown on Facebook, of Christians worried about churches about putting too much emphasis on as an entertainment show. I thought I would explain what I think of this.

Quite a few churches actually use a rented building used for another purpose. The big famous Australian church group Hillsong do this. Why? often there is a big decision whether to finance your own buildings, office space, audio/visual gear, seating, catering and other requirements. Or, just rent someone else’s, which often could have useful kit for a band or speaking event.

In this case for Hillsong, it works better to use a theatre, be within where young people spend time in central London. This seems a good step.

Hillsong does use some fancy lighting and big screen there. But, I haven’t seen any smoke machines the time I went. For the most part, I think this is probably just myth.

Lots of folks on the internet bash Hillsong, and I’ve seen some great things, and some not so good, along with other churches, because they are run by humans. I think do some overwhelmingly great things for the gospel like my experiences I wrote here, and have helped young people really grow ready for the Kingdom.

I wonder if those who are critics are taking the time to speak into the unbelieving world.

Israel’s Messianic Jews meet together in Kehilas in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Tiberias, Beer Sheva and other parts of the country, this community is can be very different, in terms of some who grew in an environment closer to Christianity and some closer to Judaism. Some from a no faith system at all.

My main congregation was King of Kings in Jerusalem, which the Sunday 6pm service was in English, and they had a Friday service in Hebrew. Still – on Sunday, we sang praise and worship songs often in Hebrew, with both true Hebrew, transliterated Hebrew and English on the projector screen. If I went to Jerusalem Assembly at the other side of the city, there was a pastor preaching in Hebrew and someone else translating into English. At one point there was FIVE languages there, as you could borrow a radio headset and listen to the teaching in Spanish or Russian or others. This meant someone else sat down was translating, and you needed to turn the channel on the radio to the one you wanted.

If I went to at least three others, I think like Shemen Sasson, all English speakers were given a headset when you head into the door.

A congregation in Tiberias (that’s Israel’s largest city in the Galilee) had a community of mostly Russian people so the words to the songs were in English, Hebrew and Russian. It was there I noticed that the Russian symbols for ‘Sh’ sound looks like the Hebrew Shin ‘ש‘ which I find intriguing.

Somewhere in Beer Sheva (a city I’ve not properly visited yet) was a congregation for Spanish speakers. This was a long drive but worth it for Spanish Christian volunteers who headed there every weekend. Only a few congregations are Hebrew only, such as Tiferet Yeshua in Tel Aviv.

I like all the congregations I’ve been to as they are also centred on Yeshua (Jesus) and involve all Jewish holidays, some are more stronger Jewish familiarity than others.

The Arab congregation I went to in Nazareth was quite similar, with Arabic for the locals, but English speakers were welcomed with the same radio units.

1. Buildings 2. Christian or Jewish? – 3. Meeting place names – 4. Languages – more soon…..

This is the youth hostel I stayed in San Marino. Its the one in the country, which is why its known as just Hostel San Marino. It also only had two other people staying there, as we are just after a first worldwide lockdown. The front is a restaurant which was not running. This is a pretty good place, clean and had a good kitchen you can use.

Strangely, there was a circus tent with some faint music playing. No signs or anything to show what it was used for.

This is about half way up Mount Titano, with you needing to go quite a bit further to get to the old city.

Going down the road a bit, looking to the right I can see the hostel, and ahead is back down the hill to Italy, a bit Catholic Cathedral, and the old city and castle looming in the distance.

1. Planning visit to my final tiny country – 2. Flying to Italy for the price of two pizzas – 3. Getting there from Bologna via Rimini – 4. City of Rimini – 5. Walking from Rimini to San Marino – 6. What sort of mini country is this – 7. Serraville, San Marino’s northern town – 8. San Marino’s only youth hotel – 9. Castles in the sky – 10. Safe up the top – 11. The tall centre of community of San Marino – 12. novelty shops, post office and passport stamps – 13. The government buildings and plaza – 14. Automobiles – 15. The three towers – 16. What I didn’t see & finishing up