Tivoli

Villa d’Este is in the town of Tivoli. I had used Google maps to plot out the walking directions from the train station.  We followed the directions, then must have taken a wrong turn somewhere, the street names didn’t match where I thought we were on the map. So I enabled the GPS. Oops, we were not where I thought we were so we adjusted course and continued. We get to the destination, but that’s not the entrance, it’s just a fence at the back of the villa. So we kept going. I don’t know how many times we doubled back, but we eventually found the entrance. It took an hour and a half to get from the train station to the villa. When we left the villa at the end of our tour, it only took 15 minutes to make it back to the train station. We wanted to wander through the town anyway, and probably wouldn’t have seen so much of it if we hadn’t gotten lost. So it’s all good in the end. And, we stopped in some little shop for a sandwich for lunch and got a very tasty small pizza, about 6 or 7 inches in diameter, folded in half like a sandwich. Not near the tourist area by the villa, so instead of paying €5 each, we paid €2 total.

Villa d’Este

Today we went to Villa d’Este in Tivoli. It’s about an hour by train from Rome, but way closer than Orvieto (had a faster train to Orvieto).  The villa was constructed in the late 1500s with a terraced garden and many water features, all using gravity to build water pressure for the fountains.

Italian food

Maybe we are just going to the wrong places but there doesn’t seen to be much variety in Italian food. Don’t get me wrong, I have had pizza everyday so far (one day was a calzone, close enough) so it’s partially my own fault. So what if the noodles have a different shape, they’re still noodles.

For a change, last night we went to a Mediterranean place and had shawarma. Yummy.  Not an Italian or tourist in sight.

I’m not the Pope

I decided to let that guy from Argentina be Pope this time, I’m not sure I’m ready to live in Rome full time. We did not go to St. Peter’s square last night. We saw it on TV and it looked crazy crowded.

In sickness and in health

I’m over my cold but Denise is still suffering a bit. She’s being a trooper and pressing on. We had different symptoms. I had a nose thing and she had a cough and a fever. The fever is gone but she’s still coughing.  And for those of you wondering what kind of crazy medicine the Italian pharmacist gave me, it was Actifed, which you can get at Walgreens.