Easter in Tuscany: Maranello and San Marino

Strictly speaking, neither of these two places are in Tuscany, but I can't change the name of the series just for one day.

The main purpose of this day was to drive to Maranello, drive past the Ferrari factory and go to the Ferrari museum. The museum was not nearly as large as the Mercedes museum in Stuttgart, but neither is Ferrari as big nor been around as long. For the automotive minded, though, it is a big deal, and one of the reasons to go to Italy.

There were plenty of nice cars on display (mostly race cars), and unlike many museums they were not roped off and you could walk around and get as close as you liked.

From Galleria Ferrari

From Galleria Ferrari

Unfortunately, the museum has followed the modern trend in musuems of "artistic lighting". In this case, it was in the form of deep skylights. The result, though, was a big enough contrast of light and dark between parts of the room and the cars to make taking decent pictures nearly impossible.

The rest of the day was spent driving to San Marino, mostly so I could say I have been to San Marino. There isn't much I can say about San Marino; it is at the top of a steep hill, and it was so crowded I was forced to park a long way from the center and didn't feel the need to make the effort to get to the center.

That was a good thing, though, because it meant I could stumble across San Leo on the way back to the hotel.

From Tuscany

I saw a castle on a hill in the distance and drove towards it. Up a one lane road, through a city wall, down the middle of a street market, and finally to a parking lot right in the middle. It was a really quaint little village with a castle on the hill above it. It had excellent gelato and nice views of the surrounding countryside. Definitely recommended.