Steve and I ate countless delicious meals over the course of this trip, but I have to say: few things tasted more satisfying than the glue on the stamp I bought in Monaco, the last of the seven Europeans microstates we had set out to visit.
I started planning the first iteration of our Microstate Tour early in 2020 and had booked virtually every aspect of it when governments at home and abroad prohibited international traveling. I then planned and arranged a second version in the spring of 2021 — that one structured around the two French weddings we were invited to (in Bordeaux and Provence). But uncertainty over lingering Covid regulations forced the respective couples to postpone their nuptials to the fall. So I planned and booked the trip a third time. Heading to the airport at the end of August, I only half-believed Steve and I would complete the itinerary.
But it all came off, almost flawlessly. The worst glitch was Alitalia’s cancellation of our three flights (one from Rome to Malta and the one from Sicily to Nice, via Rome). I found alternative carriers, however, and I even nurse some hope we’ll get our money back from the canceled legs.
At the second wedding last weekend, several people asked what my favorite tiny country was. What I could tell them was that the one both Steve and I longed to spend more time in was Malta.
Ironically, Malta is the one microstate I didn’t blog about. We had barely 72 hours there and then went on to Sicily, where we met our friend Michael and blasted around the Italian island like Amazing Race contestants. On Sicily I barely had a moment to sit down, let alone write. And then we raced on to Monaco.
Before going to Malta I had predicted to Steve that San Marino would wind up winning the biggest piece of my heart. I loved the feisty Sammarinese independence and the beauty-drenched vistas you meet around every corner. The vibe is very different in Malta. Roughly four times bigger than San Marino, it’s a monochromatic world, at least around its magnificent harbor (the only area we got to).
Almost everything is built out of pinkish tan sandstone, which makes it look a bit like a movie set. Dozens of productions have been filmed here in recent years.
Malta the country consists of five islands. We only got to the biggest, most populated one (also called Malta). We stayed in a 400-plus-year-old building on Senglea, a finger of land sticking into the harbor.
This side of the harbor was the one-time bastion of the famous Knights of Malta, wealthy Christian noblemen who hailed from all over Europe and hated Islam. In the early 12th century, they fought as Crusaders and over time evolved into something like anti-Islamic pirates. In 1530, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V gave them Malta as a permanent home, and they reached perhaps their greatest moment of glory in 1565 when about 500 knights and a couple thousand foot soldiers held out against a vastly larger fleet of Turkish warriors. After their success in resisting the Turkish siege, Muslim expansion into Europe ended; a pretty good case can be made that because of what happened in Malta 450 years ago, Western Europe today is dotted with cathedrals rather than mosques.
The larger than life character who led the Maltese resistance was a Knight named Jean La Valette. He oversaw the building of a new capital across the harbor from Senglea and its two sister cities. The new enclave became Valletta, which claims the honor of being the first planned city in all of Europe. La Valette designed an orderly grid in which tall stone buildings lined streets made intentionally narrow so that folks walking down them would be shaded from Malta’s blazing sun. Valleta is just a ten-minute ferry ride from Senglea. Steve and I made the trip a couple of times in order to sample Valleta’s crackling night life, visit a few of its sumptuous churches, and take in some of it scenic viewpoints.
But we were keenly aware of all we couldn’t cram in — exploring important archeological sites both on Malta and Gozo (the second biggest island), swimming and snorkeling in the turquoise local waters, visiting other museums and forts, and more.
But you can never see it all, eh? On our Microstate Tour, Steve and I were away from home for 42 nights. We passed through 11 different countries, slept in 22 different lodgings, and on several occasions I felt as tired as I can imagine ever feeling. Yet over and over the sights and people and new insights recharged us. If we didn’t see it all, we never regretted trying.
As one final note, I have to credit an excellent book, Secrets of the Seven Smallest States of Europe, by Thomas Eccardt that I stumbled upon after I was well into planning Steve’s and my trip. Published in 2005, it’s too dated to be a practical travel manual today, but Eccardt’s lucid writing about the mind-numbingly complex history of all these places was a great help. To anyone else who’s tempted to see Andorra, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, San Marino, Vatican City, Malta, and Monaco — or any combination of them — I recommend it. And wish you bon voyage!
After Olivier left, Steve and I enjoyed a glass of the Prosecco which Olivier had kindly left for us and reminded each other that we never, ever want to live on a boat — unless it was one of the megayachts like the kind that re crammed cheek by jowl into the docks of the Monaco port.
Those whoppers costs hundreds of millions of dollars, however, so a future residency on one is highly unlikely.
In another, we could see the royal palace.
The flag was flying so we knew that the current prince (Albert II, only son of the late Prince Rainier and Princess Grace) was home with his family.
It has a cozy air (as palaces go). Then we ambled through the narrow streets, as charming as any in Europe. Beyond the center of the old city, a cliffside park and plaza reminded me of the best viewpoints in La Jolla, except for the public restrooms. Steve reported the Monegasque ones to be the cleanest and nicest he’s ever seen anywhere. A bit later, we wandered into the austere but elegant cathedral where the one-time movie star, Grace Kelly, married the prince.
To one side of the alter we found the site she was buried after dying in a 1982 car accident. Her husband lived for 23 more years, but now he reposes next to her.
But the streets around the place are filled with shops and businesses and markets, some mundane…
some not.
Some formal, most less so. We ambled by some flowers, but more of the ornamentation was watery or sculptural or redolent of the distant past.
…the stark simplicity of the outside of the Sistine Chapel…
…or the homely building where the former Cardinal Ratzinger (aka Benedict, the recent pontiff who retired) is living out his final years.
We had to check out of our Airbnb flat and move on, so we settled for just a photo in front of the grand edifice. 
That was good enough. The gardens had shown us a place where at least a handful of humans (the Pope and a few hundred others) actually live. It felt a bit more like a real country.
Less than two hours later, while eating what we thought would be our last dinner with Megan, I got another email from Alitalia, this one informing me our flight the next day, for which I had just secured boarding passes, had been canceled. No explanation was offered for why.
Happily, we found humans behind one Air Malta check-in counter; there we queued up behind maybe a dozen other passengers. When we reached the desk and the stressed-out clerk asked for our proof of vaccination and Maltese Passenger Locator Form (PLF), I felt almost smug showing her the QR codes for both. She unsettled me, however, when she also asked for our VeriFLY clearance for Malta. VeriFLY is a Covid document-verification app that we had downloaded in San Diego. We’d jumped through all its electronic hoops and had gotten a cheery reassurance that we were cleared for travel there. But we’d heard it was no longer required, so we hadn’t checked ours in a while.
…make it through yet another documentation check at the gate…
…and more upon arrival. My bags were searched more thoroughly than any time in memory. (Oddly, Steve received no such scrutiny.)
Although my last post was a paean to train travel, we couldn’t take a train to San Marino, the fourth microstate on our tour. A tiny independent realm located roughly a third of the way down the eastern side of the Italian boot, San Marino once was accessible by train. But Allied forces destroyed the line during World War II, and instead of being rebuilt it was replaced with a highway. So most visitors drive to San Marino. The other way to get there is on a bus from Rimini, the nearby Italian city on the coast. Steve and I boarded one of those Sunday afternoon.
Storm clouds drained the color and light from the sky, but after a half hour or so we began to get glimpses of a promontory rising up in the distance: Mt. Titano.
It was on that peak that a pious stonecutter from Croatia fled and lived as a hermit at the beginning of the 4th Century. His name was Marinus — later Saint Marinus, aka San Marino.
From what I could make out, his beatitude resulted from his being a kindly and inspiring fellow who persuaded lots of people to become Christians. Legend has it that he also miraculously cured the dying son of a local noblewoman, who was so grateful she gave him the mountain and some land around it. San Marino thus enjoys the distinction of being the only country in the world founded by a saint. On his deathbed, Marinus supposedly whispered to his countrymen, “I leave you free of domination by other men.” Repeatedly, Steve and I heard that freedom, independence, and self-reliance continue to be core values of the modern Sammarinese.
…but then we started trying to follow Google Maps’ directions up the stony warren of streets. We quickly got lost…
We finally made it to our hotel, got a good night’s sleep, and awoke to a wonderland bathed in sunshine. In the tourist office, I was able to buy a stamp:
None of that interested us much, but we were dazzled by San Marino’s three great towers. This tiny enclave for more than 1700 years avoided being overtaken by those who coveted it (including Cesar Borgia, Napoleon, and various rapacious clergymen and nobles). The story of how that happened is so complicated, it made my eyes cross. Clearly luck had something to do with it; probably good diplomatic skills too. But the towers also deserve a bunch of the credit. One looks just right for locking up Rapunzel.
The biggest and oldest tower feels like part fort/part castle.
We poked among the nooks and crannies and I reflected that being Rapunzel here might not be so bad, providing one got a room with a view.
The other day when Steve glanced at our tickets for the Bernina Express, his jaw dropped. “Oh my God,” he breathed. “Am I really in seat #61?” “Yeah. You’re in 61 and I’m in 63. So what?”
The Indian train arrived at its destination more than three hours late, after tortuous intervals of sitting and not moving. The Swiss one took off at 8:16 instead of 8:15 and arrived in the Italian town of Tirano at 12:51 instead of 12:49. Its roughly 4.5-hour-long route took us over one of the highest rail beds in the world, one constructed more than 100 years ago specifically for tourists. It posed devilish challenges to the Swiss engineers who designed it, but it helped make them into the pre-eminent experts on tunneling that they are today.
Lots of tunnels on this run!
…but turned golden long before we crossed the Italian border. We had spiffy headphones that told us (in English) about the line’s history and highlights.
The route literally winds through Heidi country — the part of the Alps where the book was set and movies were filmed.
Bridges like this and sections of track that corkscrew through the mountains and meadows are among the attractions.
In this view, the train is going under a circular bridge that it just traversed.
Views of glaciers and glacial lakes also triggered avalanches of camera clicks.
And there was a short rest stop that included traditional Alpine entertainment.
We also noted many massive buildings that we assumed house the countless companies from all over the world that set up headquarters here in order to decrease their tax burden. (While lower than what those companies would pay elsewhere, that tax money is a significant contributor to Liechtenstein’s current wealth.) The soulless structures share the streets with old homes that could have informed Walt Disney’s vision of Euroquaint.
But rain was forecast for Bordeaux on Friday, with heat moving in on the weekend and building to scary sounding levels Monday and Tuesday.
It was sunny and quite warm outside, but all that stone kept out the heat.
For our last full day in Bordeaux (yesterday), we returned to the center for more walking, another lunch, and a visit to the city’s wine museum. The pattern repeated: weather interchangeable with San Diego’s at its best in the morning, only heating up enough to sap our energy late in the day.
At one point, we drove under repeated signs warning about the thunderstorms ahead.
We’ve both been to Vatican City before, and Steve made a lightning visit to Liechtenstein in 1974, but the rest will be new to us. The micro states stand out in other ways beyond their limited size. They rank among the wealthiest countries on Earth, and their citizens live longer than almost anywhere else (because prosperity and physical well-being go hand in hand?) They have oddball forms of government. Three are principalities, one’s a Grand Duchy, Vatican City is a city-state (Malta and San Marino are humdrum republics.)
At home and abroad 