A Honda Civic and the Medieval Streets of Tivoli

Yesterday we took a day trip out of Rome! How exciting. Jimmy was "on duty" for work, whatever that means, and was not allowed to go anywhere further than an hour away, so we went to a small nearby hilltop Medieval town called Tivoli. We DROVE there in my brother's very own vehicle. Chiara, the not-so-trusty GPS system, guided the way. Jimmy claimed she was leading us on the "rape route", where, we'd surely be raped as she led us down not-well-traveled cobblestone roads in the medieval darkness. What a new and interesting experience, driving in this country. Tivoli is about an hour away, and when we arrived...it was pourrrrriiinnnggg rain. So we waited in the Honda Civic vehicle, right here in this very spot, and waited for the rain to lessen.

This picture was taken afterwards... but I enjoyed this scenery very much, those houses/apartments are so old and beautiful looking.


We proceeded to run up and through the cobblestone streets, thank GOD we had some umbrellas, until we found a nice open Trattoria to consume in. I ordered some kind of meat stuffed pasta, which I thought was going to be ravioli, but it turned out to be these log-type things, in a large lasagna-like platter. It was extremely good.



There is a famous Villa there with gardens, called Villa d'Este. The gardens were pretty. Thank goodness the rain subsided so we were able to tour them. TONS of fountains. Wow these ancient people really loved fountains...However! The cool thing about THESE fountains, is that they are all completely run by gravity, with no water pumps or anything mechanical.


This one was really cool. It had like hundreds of mouths and heads just spurting out water.






This was the "Water organ" that plays music on the half hour, every 2 hours. Water makes it play. It was actually kind of boring. They should have had geysers like blasting up or something cool while it was playing.



How weird is this one? We were perplexed by it.



After the gardens, I was in dire need of some snack/cafe nourishment, so we entered back into the medieval streets to find something. What we ended up with, was, in all seriousness, THE BEST TREAT, I may have ever experienced in a long, long time. Julia and I randomly split a BANANA SPLIT. But. it was made with DELICIOUS gelato, (crema, chocolate and nocciola (choc. hazelnut)), which homemade whipped cream on top, chocolate shaving, some drizzled chocolate syrup, and an exceptionally good banana. It was so FREAKING FLIPPING good, I'm still thinking about it. DAMN. Gelato makes ALL the difference. Here is the aftermath, couldn't control myself to get my camera out before it was devoured.

God. Italy, you are not known for your banana splits, but you ARE GOOD, OH ARE YOU GOOOOOODDDDDD.



Oh, this is a statue of Romulus and Remus. The myth says they were raised by a She-Wolf. (woman wolf?). See them suckling the wolf??? THEN, the two of them each head opposing villages. They fought, and Romulus won... which is WHYYY it is called ROME... not REME. I mean, Rome is a wayyy better name.


Such a MEDIEVAL TOWN.







This town is SO old. Kind of felt like going back in time.

And then it started to rain again as we left. This is when Jimmy said "Look at me driving this Honda Civic, that I bought in SPRINGFIELD PENNSYLVANIA, down this Medieval road. What the hell."


We then hit some serious, SERIOUS Italian Roma traffic on the highway. All the Italians were hanging out of their windows smoking their brains out. We were behind a Priest, and figured, if God were to separate the traffic and create a clear way home, it would surely be in the Priest's lane.

That's just some dude who got out of his car, bc we were not moving at all. And that's the Priest in front of us, in the Volkswagon Golf.

What a day, what a day! We made it back in time for Jimmy to watch the Eagles game....lame.