We had a good night's sleep our first night in Rome. This morning we made do with coffee in the Nespresso maker located in our room. (Hopefully tomorrow we will have time to go get a proper breakfast with pastry and real espresso.)

At 9:30 a.m., we were picked up by our driver Constantine who took us to a place about 30 miles outside of Rome known as Hadrian's Villa. This is a ruin of a large palace and garden complex that was built by the Roman emperor Hadrian in the year 120 or so. The ruins are very extensive and quite interesting to walk around. We had a very knowledgeable guide, Giuseppe, who told us a lot about the Emperor Hadrian and his family. One big advantage to visiting Italy in this time is that there are very few tourists, so we had the whole place more or less to ourselves. Here's a photo: After our tour of Hadrian's Villa, Constantine picked us up and took us to the nearby town of Tivoli, where we had a scrumptious lunch of oven roasted rock fish ala Siciliana, which means it comes with potatoes, tomato, olives and capers. They served the fish whole and the owner of the restaurant cut it up for us at the table. The restaurant was called L'Angulo do Mirko.

Then it was off to our afternoon visit to Villa d'Este. This is a beautiful palace and gardens built in the 1500s by the Borgia family. Both the Villa d'Este and Hadrian's Villa are UNESCO World Heritage sites, which is always a mark of great distinction for a historical site. Although the villa is quite impressive, its gardens are the real attraction. There is a nearby river which has been harnessed to power many beautiful fountains. So much craftsmanship and skill was required create these fountains. Our guide told us that there are 400 gallons per second of water passing through these fountains. That's a lot of water!

After seeing Villa d'Este we headed back to Rome. I had a brief and very enjoyable nap, and then it was time for us to meet our friends Suzanne and Patrick for dinner. By happenstance, we are in Rome at the same time, so we met for aperitifs at a cool artsy bar called Milea Art and Food where we got caught up on each other's travels, followed by dinner at Osteria La Gensola, recommended by our mutual friends Mark and Beth. This was a really classic Italian restaurant where everyone except us was Italian. It was really fun and the food was just great. I had the Roman classic dish Caccio e Pepe, (cheese and pepper) which is pasta with Pecorino Romano cheese and black pepper. That sounds really boring but it's so delicious that I just want to eat it at every future meal in Rome.

After dinner we walked back over the Tiber River towards S&P's hotel and stopped for our first gelato of the trip. I got coffee caramel gelato which was just right for after dinner. We bid farewell to our friends and walked back to our hotel wondering why can't life be this great always...

More tomorrow!