Today we took a day trip outside of the city, but this time on our old friend, public transit. A subway and two buses later, we arrived at Hadrian's Villa outside of Tivoli, a medieval town 18 miles east of Rome. True-to-form, it was a beautiful sunny day except for the two intense storms that passed by during the day. Luckily there were still some structures with roofs at Hadrian's Villa and we avoided complete saturation.
Hadrian, a Roman Emperor, had the villa built and lived here for part of the time that he ruled Rome. Although the complex is mostly ruins at this point (we have some serious bones to pick with the Barbarians), it is clear that he spared no expense - it is still an amazing site. And even more amazing was that we were among a handful of visitors today so it felt like we had the place to ourselves!
We basically walked through the entire place - the various palazzo's, the "hospitality" area (for guests), the various baths, the mulitple libraries, gardens, etc. When we got to the last stop on our "tour", we caught a glimpse of how impressive this place must have been - there was still some complete marble floor covering and it gave us a better idea of how things used to look. The one thing we can't understand is why most sites we visit don't provide maps/guides. Hadrian's Villa is really, really big and without a map in our hands it wasn't so easy to make sure we hit all the highlights. 
When we were spent, we went and had a quick pizza lunch and then took the bus back to Tivoli to see another villa. Our second villa for the day, Villa d'Este. The man with the plan, Ippolito d'Este, had a grandfather who was a pope. Religion was clearly important in this family, and Ippolito became a cardinal when he grew up. He built this villa as his "pleasure palace", and it ended up being his permanent home after he was exiled from Rome due to a political falling-out. He could have done worse for himself. This villa, while not as large as Hadrian's, is amazing in its own right. First off, nearly every room is frescoed to death. But the most impressive thing about this villa is the backyard. There are hundreds of fountains - and not your run-of-the-mill fountains either. They're ornate, interesting, and really well designed. And, all but two are solely gravity powered. D'Este took a river (the Aniene), diverted it through his backyard through all the fountains, and then merged all the small streams back into one river at the bottom. We were really impressed.
Then we caught the bus/trains back into Rome, dropped off our things at home and went to meet up with Andrea and Khuzema who arrived tonight. Its nice to see some familiar faces after spending nearly every waking hour with each other over the past three months. We had a great dinner catching up and then walked around part of the city to see some sites.
Gelato Gusti per il Giorno:
Mike - Mandorla e Pistacchio
Aviva - Amaretto e Menta
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