Admiring Hadrian

Hi Everyone, I'm really trying to get down all my Rome notes, but it has been made much more difficult since I arrived in Amalfi. I am now typing on a laptop awkwardly set up in a bar where I have been participating in Happy Hour (this entitles me to 15 minutes of free internet). Let's see how far I get.

Our second day in Rome I will not comment on too much. Nina and I went for a long walk that started with us at S. Agostino to check out Caravaggio's Madonna with the dirty feet. Appropriately we had very dirty feet, as we arrived dripping wet in the church after being caught in a torrential downpour. After that, we went on a very long walk that ended in our visit to the Borghese Museum where I got to admire for 10 blissful minutes Correggio's Danae. After that we had another delicious dinner at Frank and Silvia's and went to bed early (comme toujours!).

Hmmm, I have left Nina alone for too long with our drinks I think. I will edit this post soon and finish up our adventures in Rome before I begin to describe how crazy Naples was.

Ciao!

Continued the next day (September 23rd)

Tivoli is always a place I had fancied visiting. This is mostly due to the fact that professors told me I should go, and partly due to my own warm feelings for the Emperor Hadrian. If you aren't familiar with Hadrian give his name a google. Besides being a fairly decent Emperor he was also a visionary architect. While the Pantheon is his best known project, his Villa at Tivoli is also a marvel to behold. (In addition to this he also had very good taste in young men - please google "bust of Antinous" also. Delicious!)

Nina having never heard of Tivoli was eager enough to see what I had built up as a spectacular day trip. I must admit that the day started on less than a promising note when we found ourselves in the unkempt looking modern Tivoli. With confusing signage as our only guide (the tourist office kept being promised by the aforementioned signage but was never located) we decided to hoof it to the Villa d'Este (a renaissance period villa known for its beautiful gardens). We did, in fact, find it after a somewhat worrisome walk where signs were few and far between, such that you would just get to the "I've given up all hope" stage and were prepared to call a cab when at that moment another one would cheerily appear.

The gardens of the Villa are really quite extraordinary. There are a great number of fountains made remarkable by the fact that each of them is so unique from one another. Some send huge firework-like jets of water up in the sky, framing immodest statues of goddesses, and laughing children who turn their spray nozzles towards the viewers. Some others run down long staircases, which are pitted by a series of basins each passing their overflow on to the next. My personal favourite was a long line of waterspouts all fashioned as different animal faces.

Impressed though we were by the Villa d'Este, Hadrian's Villa put it to shame. Firstly it is huge, and while it is mostly a ruin there are small tastes of its former luxuriousness preserved. Wandering around, Nina and I agreed that the best part of the experience was that we were mostly alone. We could wander for long stretches without meting a single soul. As silly and romantic as it might sound I feel that this wonderful stillness allowed the buildings to really speak to us, and impress us with their simple grandeur. We were left alone to admire, puzzle over, praise, condemn, even touch as we saw fit.

I couldn't have wished for more.