We left Venice by train the on the 13th to Mestre, a rather dirty industrial town, where we picked up our rental car, a VW Polo with a diesel engine, and headed off to San Leo with a stop in Ravenna where we wound up spending a night.

Ravenna is re-know for mosaics and seeing some of them our main reason for visiting.

 As an example, this work is as tall as I am

 As we were leaving we stopped at a vinoteca for a jug of wine. You can bring in your own bottle or they have some empty water bottles for people like us who didn't have one. 2 liters of great red wine for $3.00

 We stopped just outside of Ravenna to check out this church... glad we did

The bell tower

 Unbelievable!

 Some of the bishops crypts line the walls

 For a sense of scale

 Nancy playing with the animals n the front yard of the church

 San Leo with the fort above, we will stay here for two days

A closer look

 The old church in the square

 The main drag

 Town square

Inside the old church

 Nancy in front of the fort

 Entering the fort... yep, ya gotta pay

 Inside the fort

 We got into the fort late and by the time we got to the top it was getting dark. This is a picture of the town of San Leo below

 When we got back to the hotel we could look up at the fort above all lit up

 The following  are some night scenes of  San Leo

  

The entrance to the city

 From the square looking up at the fort

 The fort from our hotel the next morning

 The surrounding country side

OK, I've got to get to work on my chores, the primary one right now is getting the heater on Avelinda to work without running us out of the boat on low setting, so I will close for now and continue updating the blog later.