La Dolce Vita

In July 2012, I was in a study abroad program in Cagli, in the Le Marche region of Italy. For our free travel day, my instructor Cindy invited me to accompany her and her son to San Marino. San Marino, as one of the smallest independent states in the world and one of the oldest sovereign states, always intrigued me because of its land-locked location. How could such a small principality maintain its independence from the rest of Italy and build itself up as a financial center to boot? Of course I jumped at the invitation, despite other offers to Venice and Assisi, both of which I had already visited.

In the morning, we got into the rented car, plugged in the destination into the GPS device, and took off. We made a stop about 15 minutes from Cagli, to look at the green waters of the Candigliano River, through the Furlo Pass. A traffic light before a narrow Roman tunnel built through the mountain on the Via Flaminia, which goes through the Furlo Pass, bade us stop to let traffic from the other end through the tunnel. We meandered on roads unmarked on the navigator’s map, took many wrong turns, and stopped to take photos of cows in high meadows and fields of sunflowers all uncannily facing the water of the Adriatic.

We forged on and finally caught sight of Le Rocche, the rock on which the citadels of San Marino were built, jutting up from the low hills of Italy. The whole mountain is called Monte Titano. The white and blue flag of San Marino waved proudly as we entered the walls of the city-state. The road zigzagged up Le Rocche, and at the topmost parking lot we were met with the preparations for a music concert and a car show. As we entered the walls, we saw a sign for a museum of torture and, incongruently, a Chinese restaurant. The stone walls were rendered less harsh by green vines and trees, various flowers, and colorful banners strung across the narrow streets.

Standing on the ramparts of the Castello Della Cesta, I looked out on the surrounding countryside of San Marino and beyond the Italian coastal city of Rimini to the blue of the Adriatic. I paused for a moment to be grateful for the fact that I was in a new and beautiful place, very far and different from the low Western Pacific islands where I grew up. If I had not pursued a graduate education, I would not have had this wonderful opportunity to study in Italy and experience more of la dolce vita.