Day 113

Hadrian’s Villa. Today was wet and rainy. It was the first day in the four mouth trip that it really rained. When we arrived at the villa, it was raining quite hard. We opened our ponchos for the first time and put them on in the car and then outside the car we buttoned them up. We also had umbrellas with our ponchos. While standing in the rain waiting for the lady to give us our tickets Landon was running through puddles and getting 2 times as wet. When we entered the villa the rain subsided to a sprinkle giving us quite a bit of explore time but after awhile resumed pouring.

With our map getting wet we walked down a long path with tall trees on either side. The first building we arrived at, had a huge map of the place we were going to explore. Below is some information about Hadrian's Villa and the man himself.

This paragraph is about Hadrian by Jack,

Hadrian, 117 -138 CE, was a very prestigious Roman Caeser in the golden age of Rome. Rome rose in power for 200 years, peaked for 300 years (in which was Hadrian’s era), and declined for 400 years. His main hobby was designing buildings. He stole ideas from lands he and other Caesers had conquered. Hadrian also built a wall in northern England, later named ‘Hadrian’s Wall’, for the purpose of keeping the raiding Scots out of Roman controlled England. His villa (summer home) is just outside of Rome which he used for escaping from bustling Roman life. It is very large residence, more like a small town, and [was] well decorated with mosaics and statues. It is amazing to imagine what it once was like. The numerous buildings included.

1. A private bath
   
2. An amphitheater
   
3. Uncountable temples to just a fraction of their 30,000+ gods (they had gods for everything you can think of!)
4. Apartments
   
5. Parks (does that qualify for a building?)
   
6. Guest quarters
   
7. Servants quarters
   
8. And many more! Quite a few of them were inaccessible due to danger of collapsing.

Throughout the maze of ruined buildings, there were patches of tile patterns of many bright colors. As we walked through we were listening to Rick Steves' audio guide. Some of the paths were full of water/mud and so we had to find our way around. When we finished the audio guide, we walked back to the car and by that time the rain had subsided.

Pictures of the day below.

This villa was one of Mom’s favorite places that we visited near Rome.

Back on the home front, our host, who was in Poland at the time, kept telling us that internet access would come tomorrow. But again it never came while we were away at Hadrian’s Villa. The housekeeper lady (the curator’s mom?) also kept telling us that internet availability was coming tomorrow. Dad was getting behind on his work and so he started looking for a different house to rent.