While having a lazy morning, we discussed our travel options for the day...Pisa was too far, other options were the small town of Orvieto or Tivoli. We opted for the shortest drive - Tivoli to see Hadrian's Villa...Villa Adriana. Tivoli is about 18 miles northeast of Rome, about a 45 minute drive from the house in La Guistiniana. Weather was sunny and warm, great for wandering through ancient Roman ruins....but Lizzie wasn't thrilled at all...she wanted to know how long it would be before we had lunch, even though she'd recently had breakfast. Hadrian's Villa is more of a town than just a villa...it's a large complex of many buildings over 250 acres. This was Hadrian's retreat from busy Rome and his palace on the Palatine Hill, during the 2nd century A.D.. Many of the marble ... read more

So it seems our Coliseum tour guide was spot on when she said October is a rainy month. The original forecast for this whole week was partly sunny to sunny, then it changed to rain Sun-Tue, then rain for the whole week. We went into Rome with the intention of visiting Villa Borghese which has a world famous art collection and a large park around it....supposed to be beautiful. We got off at the Flaminio station and started walking towards the villa....we knew we were in the right spot when we saw all the tour buses. We passed the small artificial lake which was being dug up so only had the photo on a sign to see what it looked like when full of water. We passed other old fountains...long empty of water, small café, kids ... read more

I awoke feeling much better after 24 hours of coughing, sneezing, chills and a fever. We were more than disappointed to hear the Sox didn't win game 3 of the playoffs, but Koji did his best. We hope Peavy comes through on game 4. Our not so friendly neighborhood dogs were outside and were kind enough to stick their heads through the hedge so we could photograph them. We got the 9:36 train into Rome, taking note of the black clouds all around as we walked to the local station. Rain was forecasted, we were armed with raincoats and an umbrella but still hoping it would be a quick morning storm then clear. We took the FR3 line, changed to the blue Metro line and getting off at the Coliseo station. The meeting place for our ... read more

The weather looked to be decent so after a breakfast of pancakes (Lizzie had mini chocolate chips in hers) and bacon, we took the local train to Rome. Lizzie still was feeling lousy and opted to stay home. We took the local train to the Ostiense station, walked a few block off course and missed the visitor's center that had maps and info. I had read somewhere that on Sundays, the Appian Way was closed to cars, wrong. There's hardly a shoulder to walk on and no place to jump out of the way if a car gets to close....there's tall stone walls on both sides of the road. We passed the church called Domine Quo Vadis where St. Peter is said to have had a vision of Christ. There's also supposed to be a set ... read more

Lizzie's feeling a little better and was a trooper and went to school. Freddie and I decided on a short trip to Rome so we could be home when Lizzie got home from school. When we boarded the local train, there were two armed police officers on the train plus a conductor who was checking tickets....that was a shocker! We showed our red passes and driver's licenses and that was sufficient for the conductor. We got off the Metro at Spagna and it was a short walk to the steps. There's also a fountain by Bernini, and a column topped with a statue of the Virgin Mary. I've read they put lots of flowers on the Spanish Steps in the spring and its beautiful. We then headed towards Trevi Fountain looking for a sit down place ... read more