Garry and Joan; Travels for the less(or more) adventurous!: Mishmash of Italy

So One last modern Italy story, a confusing mishmash of our last few days in Italy, not including Pompei. As if everything I write isn't confusing.
Anyway a little bit about visiting The Isle of Capri, plus a day bus trip to the hanging gardens of Tivoli since we didn't want our side trip to "Bagni Di Tivoli" to be the main memory, and on our second last day in Italy, we were back in Rome and spent most of the day in the Vatican, so I thought I'd send a few photos of these areas before attaching my last original email about visiting Pompei.

The Isle of Capri is on the Amalfi coast, arguably the most scenic area of Italy although I'm sure a lot of people have varying opinions. We stayed overnight in the town of Salerno but caught a ferry from Sorrento. The scenery coming into The Isle is unbelievable,

The whole island is a small mountain with two towns. Capri is the lower port town that you enter.

AnaCapri is the town at the top of the mountain

What's truly the adventure about this, is how you get to the upper town. You can hire a taxi, but if you do that you miss out on all the fun. The best way is to take the bus. The public buses are small and are always very crowded with very few seats. Being as most people are standing, you end up in a top heavy vehicle that sways from side to side as you drive up this narrow road with hair pin turns. Very exciting! Joani kept her eyes closed for most of the ascent but I found it very good for my heart. It started and stopped, several times on the trip up. I'm glad we did it.

We toured the hanging Gardens and Hadrian's villa in the same day and they were both marvelous.

The Hanging gardens of Tivoli was supposed to be somebody's idea of what the Hanging gardens of Babylon looked like. Who knows whether the architect was successful but they're beautiful nevertheless.

Hadrian's Villa was an extremely large complex built By the Roman Emperor Hadrian in the second century AD. It was to him, just a little getaway from the troubles of running the largest empire in the world. This little getaway covered more than 250 acres of land with over 30 buildings, including servants quarters

theatre

and swimming pool complete with lifesize statues.

I guess it must have been hard being the Emperor.

So, on to the Vatican. Since there are so many different religious views in the world today, and it is such a hot button topic. I'll stay away from any stories about the Roman Catholic religion except to say that it was a very interesting day.