This YouTube travel vlog from Kara and Nate Buchanan documents a day trip from their hosts' farm in eastern Italy to San Marino. They stop in Loreto for piadina sandwiches and visit the Church of the Sacred House (which houses the claimed House of the Annunciation), then continue to San Marino where they tour hilltop castles during a medieval festival. The vlog cites several local facts (San Marino ≈24 square miles; population 33,562), notes a castle entry fee ($4.50 each), and highlights scenes at the country's highest point before returning to the farm at sunset.
Questions this video answers
August 4, 2017
Just over 24 square miles
33,562
$4.50 each
Chapters
Foreign.
It is our fourth day on Bob and Gina's farm. We have been just loving life here. They are totally spoiling us with the best food. Cappuccinos, homemade wine from their vineyard. We've already extended our time here, actually.
And even though we're really enjoying life here on the farm, today, we're leaving and doing something that I definitely didn't expect to do when we headed to the east coast of Italy. Today. We're visiting a new country, driving to it, a country that I did not know existed two days ago. So two hours north of here, like an island inside of Italy, kind of like the Vatican, is a country called San Marino. I think it's one of the top five smallest countries in the world.
You don't even need a passport.
And we're taking a day trip, and.
Bob and Gina haven't been either, so they're coming with.
Road trip.
Yeah.
So we just drove about an hour up the back half of the boot of Italy. We stopped in a town called Loreto before we go to the new country, because Bob and Gina have a favorite lunch spot here with these little sandwiches. We can check it out.
So we're at Bob and Gina's favorite Piadina shop. So apparently Piadina is this part. It's like an Italian quesadilla. I got.
Prosciutto, and what is my cheese? Pecorino.
That's nice. That looks really good, too.
Yeah, there's a little jealousy going on over here.
We're gonna cheer.
Looks.
So this church behind me is called the Church of the Sacred House. And that's because inside of this church there is actually a house, and it is the house of the Annunciation. So supposedly, it's the house where an angel came and told Mary that she was going to have baby Jesus. And it's here in Italy. So the story goes that angels picked up the house from Nazareth and they brought it here to Italy. But they had, like, a short stop in Croatia because they got tired and needed to rest. But eventually it ended up here, and it's inside this church, and we're about to go see it.
So there's no videoing in the church. I tried to take, like, one discreet, subtle video while we were inside of the House of the Annunciation. It was really cool. So the more plausible story is that the house was actually brought over by a ship and a very rich family.
Their last name was Angeli, so they think maybe it turned into angels.
The angels brought it over. So I don't know for sure, but it could Potentially truly be the house of the Annunciation. Because they were saying, like, a lot of, like, the brick or the stones that were used to build the house were from Nazareth, like, consistent with the stone. And they're not from around here. It was a really cool church. And, like, the church itself was just incredibly beautiful. I was kind of comparing it to St. Peter's that we were at in the Vatican. It was. It was smaller than St. Peter's but still extremely impressive. And there were, like, 10 people, as opposed to a thousand.
We're off to San Marino. Hopefully it's not training. Thank you.
Nice. Thank you.
We just made it into our 52nd country.
So some interesting facts about San Marino. Since we know very little. Its size is just over 24 square miles with a population of only 33,562, and it has the smallest population of all the members of the Council of Europe. Thanks for cabinia.
Sa.
We paid $4.50 each to get into the castle on top of the hill. And it's so cute. They have music playing and everybody's dressed up, like, in the original clothing. And there's, like, buckets of water sitting out like people when they used to live here. I guess that's really neat. Like that guy.
Wow.
See the lake?
The lake's over there. It's super cool. There's another castle over there.
You can see. Look at how beautiful is. And then you see this other. The other castle.
One of the best parts about this castle is they have this medieval music playing, so you can hear it everywhere you go. Really sets the mood.
We are officially at the tallest point of the whole country of San Marino.
So we learned that this castle was built in the 11th century and redone in the 15th century. So it was a little bit. And they had this festival going on. So that's why everybody was dressed up and kind of reenacting the medieval times. And they had this one room that had all of the Dr. Tools in there. And the guys were trying to tell us each tool was in English, which was really cool. And it was crazy stuff, like a big mass that they would poke dead people with the nose of. It was just crazy. And now we're leaving.
Look how shiny the money is in San Marino.
But it'd been too long since we'd had gelato, so I made a little stop. We just got back to the farm, and I don't know if you can tell by the golden light on our faces that this is the most beautiful sunset ever.
That guy.
Little guy.
I really pressed the hell out. I just screamed.
That was free. No extra charge for that. The the country seems to like. I need to think to this more. I don't know what it is care, but the statue is really speaking to me.
Nothing about it. Let's go make it in the vlog.
On the northeastern side of the Apennine Mountains. Did I say Apennine or Apennine? Yeah, yeah, right.
