Anyways, we started the day by eating the hotel's breakfast. And it was delicious! All the pastries you could ask for, plus croissants, eggs, cereal, juice and a cappuccino maker. We were all pretty impressed with the spread. Yummy!
We found out that we could buy metro and bus tickets right from the reception desk of the hotel, which was a huge plus11 No spending extra time in the metro station fiddling with the ticket machine or having to have exact change. Yay! I calculated that we needed 4 tickets total (1.50 each, kids are free) for the entire day's trip and off we went to walk to the metro station. It was pretty close to the hotel, maybe a 10 minute walk at most. Once we got to the station it was pretty easy to figure out which metro we needed to get on. At our metro, the Cornelia stop, the metro only goes two ways. So since I had written down which way we needed to get off, it was easy. In fact, I was pretty impressed with the metro. Everything was really easy to understand. Didn't even have to ask for help at all. For this stop we didn't have to transfer at all, which was nice.
The first stop, Aqueduct park was about 5 miles outside the city centre and turned out to be pretty easy to get too. I had written down directions with pictures (from someone's blog I found who wrote up very detailed, helpful directions) of how to get from the metro station to the park. It was an easy 8-10 minute walk.
This ended up being a common sight, as sometimes it was just easier to carry her over than to find a path.
The aqueducts were breathtaking!
See those funny looking trees in the background? Apparently they are Italian trees. The park itself was less touristy and more of a place for locals to spend time with their families at the park.
Our next stop was Tivoli. Tivoli is located in Lazio, about 20 miles from Rome. We had to take two metros, one back the way we came and then we had to transfer at Termini. I was worried that we had to go through the Termini station. I had read that the main metro station in Rome, which is the Termini station, was named as a target. So, I wanted to spend the least amount of time there as possible. Luckily for us, all the metros come very quickly, so on today's trips we didn't have to wait at all for the metros to come.
Once we got to the metro stop, Ponte Mammolo, we had to transfer to a bus to complete our journey to Tivoli. Again, I had found very detailed directions with pictures online and so it was a breeze finding where to buy the tickets and where to stand to get on the bus. It was a bit more complicated to figure out which stop we needed to get off on. The bus stops in Italy aren't marked well. Also, the bus driver doesn't stop at all the stops if there is no one waiting or no one requests a stop. We had no way of knowing which stop to request, since we didn't know the one before the stop we needed. I kept seeing signs for Tivoli, so we knew we weren't there yet. Then a local heard us talking and let us know it was the next stop where we needed to get off. Phew. We got off and made our way to The Villa D' Este, a Grand 16th century cardinal's villa. We got lost a little bit walking to the place, but not too bad. We decided to eat our sack "lunch" before going inside.
Villa D'Este is listed as a World Heritage Site, meaning it is a place of special cultural or physical significance. We went inside, used the bathrooms and then started wandering around indoors. There were tons and tons of paintings everywhere. The ceilings were beautiful.
Then we ventured outside and the grounds/gardens were amazing!
So much detail...
I thought this would be the main water feature. I was wrong!
Love "The Hundred Fountains!"
Amazing views of Rome!
The kids looking at all the fish in the water...
Incredible right?
Close up
Views from the top...
Beautiful fountain...
Pretty vines....
By the time we were done, it was still fairly early, about 4pm. It didn't seem like there was much to eat near out hotel so we decided to eat an early dinner in Tivoli itself. I knew food wouldn't be an issue on this trip for the kids because, 1. My kids are good eaters and I make them try new stuff all the time and 2. Italy is known for pizza and pasta right? My kids favorite!
We ate outside on the street which was so romantic. Even with three kids.
Love these moments between siblings that were unscripted...
Veena loved Italian food too!
Behind Priyana in this picture was where we ate dinner....
Random cool structure on our way back to the bus stop.
We asked a stranger for the bus stop back to Rome and they pointed us in the right direction. We met some foreigners (like us) who spoke English and they confirmed they thought we were in the right spot. They informed us that they had visited Italy last year for a week and decided it wasn't long enough. So, they returned and have been loving it.
Here are the kids waiting at the bus stop... They were tired, can you tell?
We went to the same stop where we got on the bus, which was the last stop so was hard to get mixed up. We then took the metro line B back to termini, transferred to line A to get to our stop, Cornelia. We then walked back to our hotel. The girls were excited back at the hotel, but we got to bed pretty quickly after posting to Facebook and texting back home.
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