Tivoli e Pisa

 

The last two days I spent taking small day trips in Italy to two great places, Tivoli and Pisa. While both are tiny places to visit, they have great sights and that can be seen within a few hours. In Tivoli, which is just outside of Rome, there are amazing gardens that you can visit. I decided to take my mom to see the famous water gardens at Villa d'Este and the ruins at Hadrian's Villa, both major tourist attraction sights. I had previously visited both places while studying abroad last year and I had to go back to Tivoli! It is super relaxing and beautiful and a great get away from the hectic city. There are some other villas and places to visit in Tivoli, but seeing two amazing gardens in one day was enough for us. Today we decided to head up to Pisa, which is very close to Florence and we actually transferred trains in Florence too. I would suggest, if you want to see the leaning tower, to go straight from Florence if you will be visiting the David, kill two birds with one (marble) stone. Pisa is another major tourist attraction, but other than the built up commercial area leading you from the train station to the Field of Miracles where the Tower, Baptistery and Duomo are located, there isn't much else to do. Like Tivoli, only a couple hours are all you need. On this trip to Pisa we decided not to wait around to get into the tower, a limited amount of people can enter, and just take some photos, stare at the tower and pray it doesn't fall on us, and eat. After this, we headed on our way back to Rome. Not too exciting, but after seeing so many different Italian cities in the last week, we were not going to spend much time, or money, to do more tourist things. Overall, it was a pretty successful two days, and my mothers last two days in Europe as well. Starting tomorrow, I will be heading out to see Ostia and the dig sight, and my mother goes back to the good old USA. I am a little jealous she gets to go home, I miss my dog, but at the same time I have three more weeks to spend in Italy! More things to do and more sights to see, I am also thinking of heading up to Assisi and possibly to visit my friend in Madrid for a weekend, lets see what I can fit in!