Day 11 – Tivoli, Italy
We had some fun on the way to Tivoli, laughing at the road signs. I had to draw pictures of the road signs that we saw so we could remember them. There were hilarious signs in the tunnels, showing a person running up stairs, with fire at their butt. Then another showed a car bumping into a truck, going uphill, mind you. The sign for a curvy road was pretty funny too. At this point, anything would have been funny…
Tivoli was not our favorite place, but it was okay. The city was crowded and warm. We arrived on some sort of Market Day, so vendors lined the street, and it was packed. It took us 45 minutes to wait for a parking space to open up. (My husband is so patient; I would have had a fit if I were driving!)
We met the owner, Fabio, at the entrance to the apartment holding his tiny newborn baby. His wife, Suzanne, let us drop our bags off, and asked us to come back in an hour, and she’d have the room ready. It was a cute little apartment, with a kitchen, bathroom, large bedroom, and an arched entry onto an enclosed patio with a gorgeous view of Tivoli.
It had hard wood floors, adorable decorations, and my favorite thing, a guest book with messages written from all the guests who had stayed there. It was fun to read where people were traveling from, and see the messages written in all different languages. There were even some drawings, although some not appropriate to tell about…
Tivoli was probably the only place we encountered a downright rude waiter. Well, actually, I think he was the owner. We sat down for lunch, ordered bread, water (which they charge for there), and a pasta dish each. When we asked for the check, the man said, “Why? Just go, you hardly ate anything anyway, just pasta, no fish…” We looked at each other in confusion, and smirked at the bill a few minutes later. For eating nothing, he had no trouble charging us the 24 Euro for lunch!
After a half hour walk, and no sign of the information center, we turned back and decided to take the car instead. Good thing, because Adrian’s villa was quite a drive from our resort. We gladly paid 2 euro for front parking, 16.50 each to enter, and fought a group of old people to get our tickets. I wasn’t exactly sure what Adrian’s Villa was, but I knew it was famous. Basically, it was ruins of a brilliantly designed town for its day, built under the Emperor Adrian. We should’ve gotten the audio guide so we’d know what we were looking at, but we listened in as other tour groups passed us by.
Later we walked the streets of Tivoli, packed with crowds of a different sort, not quite as well dressed or quiet. My husband ordered pizza and found that it had sardines. Never again, he assured me. The crowds were getting to me, so we called it a night.
