Today we took a tour to Villa d’Este in Tivoli and Hadrian’s Villa through viatour.  Tivoli is a small hill town that sort of overlooks Rome (from a distance).  The villa was nice but the grounds were spectacular.  Over one hundred gravity fed fountains.

 

After Villa d’Este we went to Hadrian’s Villa.  Hadrian’s was enormous.  It was in ruins primarily due to looters.  It was an incredible estate both in size and scope.

 

After this tour we met up with the Rick Steve’s tour in Rome.  We started off with introductions etc. then did a short walking tour of the neighborhood before gorging ourselves at Bomba Ciccia.  Dinner was outstanding and a lot of fun- dinner is quite an event in Italy.

Since it was Christmas Eve, we walked to the Vatican after dinner to watch them place baby Jesus in the crib.  I’m told that in Italy, baby Jesus doesn’t get placed in the manger scene until midnight on Christmas Eve.  In any case, he had already been placed when we got there but St. Peter’s square was a sight to see.

Dinner was included with the Rick Steve’s tour and so was the wine, so many people at our table had lots of wine!  Jenn made friends and we ended up walking all the way back to our hotel helping this woman walk.  It was an adventure. On the way back, we saw Castel St. Angelo and a few other buildings that looked cool at night.

 

We also walked through Piazza Navona with the group and saw that a lot of people had witches in their windows.  Our guide explained that was the christmas witch who brings gifts to the children.