Tivoli

Today we ventured south to Tivoli, just outside Rome.  We arrived at Hadrian’s Villa 45 minutes early, which we were all thrilled about since we got up so early. Our tour guide showed us a model of what Hadrian’s Villa would have looked like, and I was amazed at how large it was!  We saw lots of ruins of loggias and baths and theaters, and also saw all the places Emperor Hadrian would have roamed around for “refreshing walks,” as our tour guide mentioned multiple times.  We saw his private swimming pool, and the famous reflection pool he built for his secret male lover, which we were all disappointed our tour guide did NOT bring up.  Thank goodness for Mick Charney.

After Hadrian’s Villa we had a picnic lunch by the buses in the parking lot.  A little ghetto, but it was nice that we had sandwiches, chips and cookies provided for us so we didn’t go hungry.  Next stop was Villa d’Este.  We drove into the town of Tivoli, which I would describe as half sketch and half happenin’.  The bus dropped us off on a main street, and we walked the rest of the way to the villa, by-passing some tourist stores filled with inappropriate undies and aprons that had the statue David strategically printed on them. 

We toured the house first, but our tour guide couldn’t keep us inside very long.  There is a vast amount of gardens behind the house, with tons of beautiful fountains around every corner.  We were so distracted by all the beautiful flowers, gardens, fountains and pools that we kept losing our group.  On the plus side I now have lots of potential new profile pictures.

You will be happy to know I have some more words that Italians can’t pronounce.

Olive: alive

Vehicle: vee-HIGH-cull

Buried: bury-ed (pronounce every syllable)

Statue: stay-chew

I apologize for not having a spill of the day in a while, but hopefully this will make up for it:

While we were waiting to see part of Hadrian’s Villa, I was looking at a brick wall that was once covered in marble.  After standing 25 feet tall for almost 2000 years, you can imagine the state the wall was in - pieces of brick crumbling away, some bricks sticking out while other areas were hollowing out.  I touched some of the bricks, and not realizing everyone was watching me, I tested how strong the wall was.  I thought the brick was still stuck in there pretty well, so I let go of it and my teacher goes, “if you pull that brick out, the whole wall is going to fall down.”  I laughed and jokingly turned around and acted out an exaggerated tug at the brick.  To my surprise it crumbled in my hand and a huge chunk of the brick fell to the ground.  Everyone made the situation worse by gasping at what had happened, and I turned around embarrassed because I had broken an ancient wall.  My teacher told me he thinks the wall will survive, and then made me feel better by saying that part of the brick hadn’t seen sun for a couple thousand years.  So, in the end I freed a brick at the cost of breaking Hadrian’s Villa.

Tonight is another procession, should be similar to last night’s but I’ll update you if anything excited happens like someone’s robe catches on fire.  There actually was a close call last night…

Cara Marie