Tivoli - Rome

  Rome, Lazio, Italy
Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Week 6

Assisi was very impressive with the walled city and cathedrals perched on the mountain, with a 10th century castle on top of the mountain watching over the city. The town was very nice and this photo shows the walled city of Assisi with the cathedral of St Francis of Assisi (San Francesco) which was beautiful inside. We also walked up to the castle on the top of the hill.

Walled city of Assisi

Interesting photo for this week

This is the interesting photo for this week - can you guess what is on the wires of this fence??

Tivoli was nice with a dip in the Terme mineral water spa pools at the bottom of the Tivoli hill and then up the hill to visit the gardens of Villa d'Estea. These gardens were filled with fountains from the 1500's that were extraordinarily beautiful.

Villa d'Estea fountains

We also visited the Emperor Hadrian's (AD 76-138) Villa Adriana which was amazing. This photo shows one of the pools and remains of sculptures that adorned the ancient buildings and pools.

Villa Adriana

All roads lead to Rome, and for us ever since we left Paris our road has been winding its way south and eastwards towards Rome. So now we are in Rome and it's hot and humid. We dropped the car off and we're back to public transport from now on. We have our Rome passes to get free entry to sites and transport and we are making the most of it whilst we're here.
As we were out and about walking around the town with tired feet we watched this tour group on Segways zoom past - what a way to go!

Great way to see Rome

So far we've wandered around the Colosseum, Palatino, Foro Romano, St Peters and the massive Vatican Museum - all very good.

Colosseum

Foro Romano

That's all for now and by the way, the decoration on the fence is chewing gum - yes, bizarre but true!!