Saturday in Tivoli

 If you remember we rented a car last weekend. On the Saturday we drove out to Tivoli to visit Hadrian's Villa under gray, rainy skies. Above is a photo of the scale model of the complex. This really must have been an amazing place in its day.

Heather's goal is always to check out the ancient buildings and sculpture while Larry wants to combine this with some eating and drinking of the same exquisite quality. Here in Italy, that's not too difficult. Above you can view a fantastic combination of the two, Ristorante Sibilla .

This was one of those places that (with their stunning location) could probably do very well even with mediocre food. Instead, they create some very nice dishes, some claim it's worth the trip from Rome just to dine here. The special antipasto was a treat, you can see it above. A fantastic artichoke on the second level while below are polenta with a delicious ragu and a little fried dough thing stuffed with ricotta and topped with some heavenly tomato sauce.

The first plate, a pasta with fresh tomato, was lacking something, perhaps just a bit of salt? Not being expert cooks we couldn't say for sure, but after the wonderful antipasto this was a bit of a letdown, though still pretty good.

Our second plates were this tasty salsiccia with what tasted like cicoria and shoestring potatoes. All very good, expertly prepared and presented. We'd ordered their prezzo fisso menu and added the antipasti, so there were plenty of other ala carte menu choices...the ones we saw going past looked very good.

We finished with this tasty and beautiful dessert, a kind of thick, sweet cream, almost a custard, between two layers of heavenly sliced almonds and what might have been corn flakes, drizzled in chocolate sauce and dusted with powdered sugar. Very tasty!!

On our way back to Rome, we stopped by Villa d'Este for a taste of the Renaissance after enjoying the Roman ruins before our pranzo.

We were back "home" at the Academy just after dark, planning Sunday's adventure.