Cardinal Scipione Borghese was nephew to the Pope and the effective head of the Vatican government. His accumulation personal wealth were so excessive that they were controversial even in his day (late 1500s). Along the way, he built a party villa and filled it with art. We visited the villa Saturday. The villa is so popular that the next available ticket was for Wednesday. Even Borghese had to make some economies. If you look closely at the wall behind the #MeToo statue, seemingly beautiful red-swirl marble is actually painted or wallpaper.

The villa is on a large city park which includes the zoo, boat and bicycle rentals, and gardens. The gardens have several trees we were told are Plain Trees. These all have hollow trunks with holes in them. We found them quite unusual. The picture below shows Danita, Suzy, and Rick all inside one tree trunk.

Having exhausted the Borghese Villa, we found that 2-hour Italian lunches can be quite habit forming. We finished up the day with some shopping and a ride to the Hilton Hotel at the airport.

Our flights left early. We all successfully completed the first leg of our journey. Danita and I are connecting in London for a flight to New York. We’ll retrieve our car late this afternoon and drive to Edison, NJ where we have a hotel reservation. We’ll finish our drive home on Monday.