Hadrian's Villa and Villa d'Este

Finally, a day after I had thought, I am at Piazza dei Re di Roma, and am early of course. I meet our guide, a generous soul from Toronto, Canada, married to a Roman, she tells us, and she is certainly a loquacious and knowledgable guide for the afternoon trek to the Villa of Hadrian and the beautiful Tivoli Gardens with fountains of more recent Renaissance times.

The Villa is about forty minutes from Rome, not taking in the traffic, which she says, is excessive because of the Metro strike that day. Little seems any different, but we have to stop soon for a nature call from one of our passengers. Luckily a Servito is on the way and it's not a long stop as a very long American, 1m 80, sheepishly obeys his call of nature.
The enormously large country residence, built by Emperor Hadrian on a hill, is at last a reality and is amazing. Like a little village housing a thousand people, mostly vassals, it is a seat of power worthy of one of Five Great Roman Emperors.

There are only nine in our group so we get good attention from our guide, who is very solicitous that we fill out the online assessment which is posted a few days later. She will get good reports I am sure.
After the gasps of Hadrian's Villa Lucrezia Borgia's Villa d'Este is next. But this one is famous for the gardens and fountains mostly, and they are fabulous. We are given an hour's free time to stroll and climb the hundreds of steps but I am walking fit, so I do it good time enough to have a huge gelato while waiting for the group on the Tivoli piazza. It is a lovely town, Tivoli, perched high on a hill, being home to another Pope's palace, built to rival Lucrezia. The people seem very happy, but then it is Saturday afternoon, and they are on holiday. A group of young people are preparing a sand sculpture on the piazza for later that day. There is a young people 'passagiata', and the young girls are of course, very heavily made up. It has been another tiring but enjoyable day.