Tivoli, Lazio, Italy
Saturday, March 20, 2010
I was originally planning on going to the vatican museum in the morning to see the sistine chapel but when i got there the line wrapped around 3 sides of the vatican walls... a 4 hour wait. i decided it wasn't that important this time so i caught the bus out to tivoli instead. tivoli is a hill town about 40 minutes out of rome and its home the hadrians villa and the villa d'este. i decided just to go to the villa d'este cause i learnt a fair bit about that at uni last semester. the vila itself had a photographic exibition showing images from various towns around italy. it was really interesting, made me want to go and explore more, especially in the south. the ground floor had amazing old wall murals. the decoration was so overwhelming, it covered every surface and there were mosaics and statues and fountains, and i hadn't even been outside yet! the gardens of the villa are definitely the most famous. there were over 20 fountains. there was an amazing amount of water. and the flowers were starting to bloom so there were dafodils everywhere. i spent the first couple of hours in a part of the garden where most people apparently miss eating lunch and reading my book, it was delightful! then i zig zagged my way around the garden making sure i saw all the fountains and even made it to one of the performances of the organ fountain. it took me over 2 hours to walk around it all, it was very impressive and they had beautiful views over the country side.
