_______sanda in roma

Ciao amici,

You might recall my post about the aqueduct park and its picturesque moments I captured on my camera (or, look below if you haven't seen it yet). Well, I intentionally qualified the statement "most picturesque moment" with "...so far" because I suspected...no...HOPED that I would find equally, if not more beautiful moments in the future.

Today Keihly and I hopped on a train and traveled to Castel Gandolfo (makes me suspicious of the Harry Potter character "Gandolf"). We knew a bit about it, and from what Keihly researched, there would be a bit of the lake viewable from the train station, and we could also treck up a steep path to reach the top of a mountain... sounded interesting.

As the train emerged from a dark tunnel, we rounded a curve and was welcomed to an enormous lake which snugly fit into a valley surrounded but continuous mountain like peaks. We were both shocked. The view from the train station was fantastic -- the sunshine was exploding onto the lake (yes, sunshine explodes. Just look at the picture. It's exploding). We found the insanely steep pedestrian pathway to the upper part of the hill, and found a quaint little city (rather, the lake was bordered by many cities, this was one city with a small square that overlooked the lake). Every view from within the city - and out through the alleyways was stunning. The framed views through the narrow streets gave the small town and tight quarters such an Italian character.

We walked around the city, sat in the square to draw, and was given ooodles of pamphlets from the gentleman who was sitting in the tourism stand. Clouds flew in around 1PM, which made things cold, dark, and a bit damp. Luckily it passed and the sun poked through remaining clouds for the rest of the evening. Along the lake's edge, a road carried light traffic, and to our surprise, many people who were jogging (we saw ... mmmm... over ten people jogging within two hours -- lots for Rome!). And how could you blame them? They have found a perfect, relaxing, beautiful place to go for a run -- a steep, tree-ous hill on one side, and a placid, large round lake on the other. The air was so crisp and clean -- no smog or noise from the city.

We paid €3,80 for the round trip tickets -- so cheap! I also got a ciocolatoto (sp??--hot chocolate) at a bar when it started raining a bit. This is also when I decided that I don't need to pay oodles of money to go to extravagant places around Europe, I know there are so many beautiful places in Italy that I can easily access for cheap. (Not to say, though, I will go somewhere fantastic for Spring Break ... not sure where yet)