We took the train and struggled a bit with being on time for that, but we made it. It was a nice trip though, it felt so nice to get out of the city and to see the italian countryside (beautiful) for the hour long ride. Getting into Tivoli, we got off the train and realized that we had made our first mistake: while we had read up on everything that we wanted to see and do, we hadn't actually read a map... so we wandered. A lot. The group (Lizzie) actually ended up getting a little crabby because of our lost-ness and our inability to find pizza... but once we found a pizza place (and decided that we were still hungry and found a second), we stumbled upon one of our tourist locations that we were hoping to see, Villa D'Este.
Villa D'este was built in 1550 by Cardinal Ippolito d'Este into the side of a hill and it's backyard is absolutely breathtaking with incredible views of the Italian countryside as well as beautiful Italian style gradens sprinkled with hundreds of fountains. We spent hours here lookinig at each fountain, there were so many! Our favorites were the Cento Fontane (One Hundrerd Fountains), Fontana dei draghi (Fountain of the Dragons) and the Fountain of the Bicchierone (Large Glass).
When we got out of Villa D'Este, we wandered into what seemed to be the city center where they were having some sort of festival/ carnival with music and stands and people dressed up in costumes. It was at this point that we found the tourist office, who offered us a map and informed us that most sites would be closed by four o'clock and that we would have no more time to see other sites. While this was disappointing, we were alright with it because Villa d'Este was totally worth the trip and we were starting to gt tired. The tourism woman mentioned to us that there was a bus that went between Tivoli to Rome and that if we wanted, it was leaving in a few minutes for only one euro. One euro was cheaper than the three euro train ride and none of us wanted to try to get bak to the station, so we decided to take the bus.
This decision, in fact, turned out to be a wonderful little mistake because do you think any of us thought to ask exactly where in Rome it would drop us off? Of course not. So we were dropped off and had absolutely no idea where we were. Once we figured out that it was a metro station, we guessed about what tickets we should buy and then guessed again which was the correct metro (subway). Luckily, we made it to the Termini station and finally knew where we were but were still a while from home. We needed to take a bus and struggled quite a bit trying to figure out exactly which one to take. After getting on two wrong buses, we found the right one (The "H") and hopped on. However, because we didn't know exactly where this bus stopped, as soon as we saw our road, we got off and took the tram home. So we ultimatly used all forms of public transportation in a single day... the train, the metro, the bus and the tram. I'd say that that's an accomplishment in itself. Good thing Tivoli was worth it!
In Conclusion, notes to self:
1. Look at Maps before Trip
2. Keep track of the time so we can see more than one site
3. Find the tourist office first, not last
4. Don't get on buses just because they say "Rome"
5. Learn the Metro/ bus routes
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