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Carpe Diem

This will be the blog for my Fall 2024 trip to Italy I will spend 5 nights in Rome, 6 nights in Florence, 3 in Cinque de Terre ,4 nights in Milan. I thought that I would include some travel with the European Society of Pathology meeting in Florence Read more
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    West Family TravelsCarpe DiemTraveler

    Ostia antica

    September 20, 2024 in Italy ⋅ ☀️ 20 °C

    I had a busy day yesterday. I left Claudio and Albertina's place in Milan at 8. I think I enjoyed this accommodation the most. Clean quiet comfortable bed and I found it very enjoyable chatting with Claudio whose English was very good. This was probably the most that I interacted with an Italian on the entire trip.

    I made it to the train station on the trolley car. I love trolley cars. I caught my 9 o'clock first class train to Rome. I have decided to splurge on up grading train tickets. For an extra 10 Euros one gets a much pleasanter experience and half the seats are empty. It was a 3 hour train ride from Milan to Rome. There is a moniter showing the speed and when we were outside urban areas we were doing 250 k/ hour.

    I decided to spend my last night of the trip in Ostia Antica a community on the coast where the Tiber river flows into the Mediterranean. Ostia Antica is right by the airport and is also the location of a significant archeological site also known as Ostia Antica. In Roman times Ostia was the main port for Rome. Goods would be off loaded from ships in the Med into warehouses before being moved upriver on smaller vessels. It had been a very prosperous town. Unfortunately it's harbour silted up at the end of the 4th century and with the collapse of the Roman empire it had been abandoned to slowly be covered by silt with yearly floodings of the Tiber. It was rediscovered and excavated in the 19th century to reveal a beautiful bricked city preserved to the first and some second stories. It would appear that Roman buildings were typically 4 stories tall. The upper stories were probably mined for bricks as they hadn't been buried in silt. Walking around the site gave a reasonable feeling for what it was like living in a Roman city. Many floor mosaics were preserved and some wall paintings. They had many drawings of what the buildings in their intact state would have appeared like. They had a beautiful amphitheatre. I wandered around for three hours partly using an audio guide and partly using the posted signs to reconstruct life in the Roman era.

    I caught a bus back to Fumicinio where I am actually staying and had supper in with groceries from a local grocery store. It had been a long day. Fumicinio seemed a little more rougher and blue collar than Milan. My Air BnB was good. Clean quiet comfortable bed.    Read more

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    Good bye to Rome

    September 20, 2024 in Italy ⋅ ☀️ 17 °C

    This is my last day in Rome. I will be flying out on WestJet at 2:35 pm to Calgary and then connecting on to Edmonton. I had one last adventure this morning. I borrowed the rickety old woman's bike from the Air BnB owner and bicycled around Fiumicino for about an hour. I wanted to make it down to the sea for one last visit. Fiumicino is not a very bicycle or pedestrian friendly city. Although I didn't go on any major roads, the streets that I was on were narrow with no shoulders. I realized the safest tactic was going the wrong way down one way streets as there was more space and I could see the cars coming. Forgive me Ray for this bicycling transgression.I survived and made it back to my accommodation unscathed.

    There was supposed to be a national transit strike today. It was very difficult to tell how this would effect the bus I would take to the airport so I paid the Air BnB owner 20 Euros to give me a ride that way I didn't have to fuss or worry about missing my plane.

    I am now sitting at the airport chilling before my flight leaves I think that I have had a pretty good trip. In the moment having the vitreous detachment was a worry however I didn't have a retinal detachment which can be a sequelae of a vitreous detachments. Over the last two weeks the haziness has improved probably because the blood has reabsorbed and the floaters although still there are diminished.I have an appointment to see an optometrist on this coming Monday for a recheck so hopefully all will be well.I didn't get too lonely on the trip as I was traveling by myself. I read a number of books, stayed pretty active and kept this blog. I think I had more fun on the family European vacations as it is more fun to experience these adventures with others but that wasn't an option. I read something on this trip by Theroux who said that one is never alone if one keeps a Journal . I think that is very true. If not for the meeting, I wouldn't have come to Italy at the beginning of September. It was too hot that first week in Rome. In fact with Global warming I would probably avoid European holidays in June, July, August and early September. I just seem to wilt in the heat. I bought some compression bags for the trip which worked very well as did my TRTL neck rest. I brought too much clothing as I wanted to look get at the conference. All of my accommodations had laundry so it wasn't required. The conference that I attended was just okay too much stuff that won't have an impact for 10 years or more and by then I will be retired. That is probably what I will find more and more over the next several years as I attend these conferences. I really found the Rick Steves book helpful and was glad I had it with me. I would have missed out on a lot winging by myself and tripadvisor.

    I hope you have enjoyed the blog and this will give you some inspiration for your own travels.    Read more

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    Milan

    September 18, 2024 in Italy ⋅ ☁️ 14 °C

    Yesterday was my day to spend in Milan. I got a slower start than many of my previous days but was still out by 9:00. I took the trolley car from my Air BnB down to the Piazza del Duomo. That is also the location of the Milan cathedral which has the 4 biggest nave in the world. I am starting to develop church and cathedral fatigue but it was a very beautiful cathedral with beautiful stained glass windows. Many were damaged during WW2 but a few had survived. The church ceiling was supported by 53 huge columns which Rick Steves described as the size of sequoias. I did the Rick Steves tour which was just right. The most interesting thing was a statue of St. Bartolomeo. St. Bartolomeo was skinned alive by the Romans in 100 AD. He seems to be a favorite of sculptures or painters here in Italy. After the Duomo, I headed over to the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele which is Milan central for luxury clothing and fashion accessories. It is a glass and iron domed four story building. An Italian version of the Eiffel tower but as a building. All of the high end brands were represented including Gucci, Prada and LVMH to name a few. After some lifestyles of the rich and famous I thought I needed some culture. I wanted to go to Pinacoteca Ambrosia Milan's oldest museum but it was closed on Wednesday which totally caught me off guard. Mondays are the norm for museum closures but Wednesdays. Instead I headed off to the Brera Art Gallery. I opted to do the audio tour as Rick Steves didn't offer much of a tour. The audio tour was supposed to highlight the best of the museum but I seemed to prefer many of the paintings not on the tour. My favorite painting was of Christ lying on a stone altar after he had been crucified painted from the perspective of his feet. It was a very interesting perspective.

    After a vegetarian lunch and some wandering around the streets of Milan- gosh they have a lot of clothing stores , I was going to finish off with the highlight of the day. Leonardo De Vinci's last supper. I had booked the ticket 3 months in advance and had to actually call Italy to get a ticket as I had missed the online ticket purchase. I was there a good hour in advance and it had started to rain so I chilled out in a coffee shop. Leonardo spent 4 years painting this masterpiece from 1494 to 1498. He painted it in a Dominican monastery dining hall associated with the church Santa Marie dell Gracie. He had been commissioned by a wealthy nobleman who was hoping to curry favor with the monks so he could be buried in their church. All Dominican monasteries have a picture of the crucifixion and of the last supper in their dining halls. Tradition. What was radical about Leonardo's painting was that it had perspective when you looked at it from the hall. It appears that Jesus and the disciples are an extension of the hall. Leonardo also gives the disciples so much character rather than merely representing 2 dimensional characters. One can feel the emotion in the room when Jesus announces that he will be betrayed by one of them. The fear and anger is palpable. The problem with the painting is that Leonardo merely painting the walls rather than doing el frescoes which penetrates the paint I to the mortar like Michelangelo did with the Sistine chapel. The paint had been peeling off within several years of being painted. That combined with high humidity from visiting tourists has resulted in the painting slowly fading. It is all rather ethereal. The Sistine chapel was more impressive however the last supper is still very iconic. The visit and tour was a great way to finish the day.    Read more

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    Antonius Stradivarius

    September 17, 2024 in Italy ⋅ ☁️ 16 °C

    I think probably everyone has heard of Antonius Stradivarius the renowned Cremonese luthier who lived from 1644 until 1737. Antoni made violins during the zenith of Cremona violin making. As a violinist I find this very interesting so when I learned that there was a museum in Cremona dedicated to Antoni I felt compelled to go. Rick Steves doesn't mention Cremona in his book so I was flying solo.

    I took the train from Milan. It was about an hour and 15 minute trip. I disembarked at the train station and my first impression was there were no or very few tourists. This was a pleasant surprise after all of the touristy places I have been to in Italy. I walked about 30 minutes into Cremona and the number of violin and Stradivarius sculptures slowly increased until I reached the violin museum. They had an audio tour set up for the museum which took one through the history of the violin and violin manufacturing in Cremona. The museum has about 20 instruments made by Stradivarius all of which are named. I recognized the Stradivarius Cremona as many instruments such as my violin is a copy of this violin. Now what was really impressive which totally caught me off guard was that the museum had a very large collection of tools, original molds and patterns used by Stradivarius. Supposedly his three sons involved in the luthier business died several years after he died. Stradivari lived to 94 so two of his sons were in his 60s when they died which for 1750 was an old age. In the late 18th Century his youngest son who was not a luthier sold them to Italian violin collector Count Cozio. After being kept by Count Cozio and his descendents, they were finally sold in the early 20th Century to violin maker Giuseppe Fiorini. In a generous gesture, he donated the entire collection of tools and Stradivari templates/forms to the City of Cremona in 1930. As such you can see all of this stuff that Stradivarius used to actually make the instruments much with his labelling and instructions written on them. Think of what a great resource all of this preserved equipment has been for violin manufacturers. The stuff was all laid out in drawers which could only be pulled out by this extremely enthusiastic museum worker who described all of the equipment and pointing out subtleties that would have been missed such as the most worn mold. It was really impressive and well worth the trip. The museum also displayed winners of the yearly luthier competitions the museum has. Afterwards I wandered over to the luthier school but there was not much to see. I wandered around the rest of the city taking in the beautiful cathedral before walking back to the train station for my 3:30 train to Milan. A very enjoyable day.    Read more

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    George Clooney's houseGeorge Clooney's house

    George Clooney for a day

    September 16, 2024 in Italy ⋅ ⛅ 17 °C

    Today I got to be George Clooney for a day. George owns a house on Lake Como which has done a lot to draw attention to the area and increase its notoriety. Rick Steves suggestion was to take the train up to a town on the east of the lake called Varenna, maybe do a ferry ride on the lake to another town before returning to Varenna. Varenna was a very picturesque Como lake town originally built without roads for automobiles but which were added in later. Known for its large lakeside estates with beautiful gardens I enjoyed a nice roam through town before visiting one of the lakeside villas and garden. Rick's tour didn't take as long as I had thought so also on his recommendation I decided to take a ferry to Como at the most southern tip of the lake and then take the train back from there rather than Varenna.Billed by the ticket office as a 2:15 minute journey it turned into a 3 hour journey. Some of the ferries don't do all the stops.It was nice after the first few stops as pretty well the majority of people disembarked. I chatted a lot with a funeral home owner from Dayton Ohio and an Australian couple from Sydney. The funeral home owner from Dayton said he noticed a dramatic drop off in deaths from Covid after the vaccine was released in March 2021. He said that no matter what people say about the vaccine it had a pretty dramatic effect on Covid deaths. I think it is easy for us to forget that. I saw a lot of the lake and many of the beautiful villas along the shorelines. We even went by George Clooney's house. All in all it was a pleasant way to spend a day.Read more

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    Milan

    September 15, 2024 in Italy ⋅ ☀️ 20 °C

    I left the beautiful Cinque de Terre yesterday. Three days was enough to do it justice. I accomplished everything that had hoped to do. The train trip up to Milan was unremarkable. I booked a first class ticket for another 10 euros and it was worth it. Larger seats more leg room and less passengers. I made it to Milan by noon and Milan has a nice feel. It seems much more modern than Florence or Rome. Milan seems to be living in the present while Rome and Florence are living in the past. I took a delightful street tram to my accommodation. With Google maps and tap on tap off with one's credit card taking public transit is pretty easy. I am staying with Claudia and Albertina in their apartment. They seem very friendly. Another woman was staying with them last night. She was from Edmonton as well but was a work nomad now living in Albania. She left very quietly this morning for an early morning flight.

    Last night I walked about half an hour towards downtown to LaScala which is Milan's famous opera house. I actually took in the symphony. Great symphony and great sound.    Read more

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    Cinque de Terre

    September 13, 2024 in Italy ⋅ ☁️ 16 °C

    Cinque de Terre consists of the NW coast of Italy just before joining up with the rest of Europe. The coast is very steep right down to the sea. It is interspersed with 5 main towns on the coast built where rivers have carved out narrow enough valleys to allow some habitation. The buildings are very colorful and are built up the sides of the steep valleys. The buildings seem to come tumbling down the valleys into the sea. All of the towns seem to have a castle and a harbor. The towns are quiet in the morning but by early afternoon they are packed with tourists making day trips from as far away as Florence. The land around the towns is terraced but much of the land doesn't appear to be worked. Lots of abandoned oil groves. No wonder olive oil is so expensive in Canada. I visited two of these towns yesterday. Riomaggiore and Manarola. They are spectacularly beautiful. Rick Steves has a self guided tour that he does through the towns. One sees the harbour, the castle, the principal church, the cemetary-because often they command great views, the main tourist fares of the town and often a circumnavigation of part of the town. My first town was good as the majority of tourists hadn't shown up. I trained between towns. Manarola was busier but still pleasent. I could have done another town but it was early afternoon and I decided to head back to Varnazza where I was staying to chill out. Rick Steves had a good tip of something to do in Varnaaza. At 5 pm I took a public bus along a very meandering route into the hills behind the town. We probably accumulated 4 to 5 hundred metres of elevation before being dropped off around 6 at a sanctuary known as the Madonna de Regio before walking down the valley through terraced landon which there were some olive and lemon and grape groves. One commanded a beautiful view overlooking Vernazza and the sea.

    Today I decided to walk to Monterosso, one town a few kilometres north of here along the coast. I took my time and it took me 2 hours. It didn't pass the West test of a hike as I saw two parents carrying children in baby carriers. It was a walk but a very pleasant and scenic one. When I got to Monterosso I did the Rick Steves walk of all the sites ie cemetary castle church then took the ferry back to Vernazza. There was still one thing I needed to do and that was go for a swim. It hasn't been too warm but I won't be swimming in the Mediterranean for a while and I thought it would be fun. I ditched everything of value at my accommodation, hid the key in a flower pot and with only a towel, shoes, swimsuit shirt and my back up glasses. I noticed a family of Italians at the beach and they agreed to look after my stuff while I went for a swim. It was very refreshing and they gave my stuff back to me when I was finished. I will head out later for supper and one last wander around town. Many of the day tourists should have dissipated. I have enjoyed my three days in Cirque de Terre but am looking forward to Milan tomorrow.    Read more

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    Waiting to see the opthalmologist
    Morning walk FlorenceMorning walk Flor6Matt and IPaper cited at conference with Larry Jewell as principal authorVerzannaVetzannaVerzannaAir BnB in old olive oil mill

    There is a fish in my eye.

    September 12, 2024 in Italy ⋅ ☁️ 16 °C

    When I last left you I was headed off to the opening ceremony of the European Congress of Pathology. While at the opening ceremony I started to notice some increasing floaters in my left eye and a haziness to my vision. I had noticed some floaters in my eye in Rome but had ignored them. I couldn't ignore the haziness. I called my Blue Cross insurance in Canada and they told me to attend a local hospital which I did the next morning. After 4.5 hours, I was seen by an ER physician who sent me off to an ophthalmic hospital to see an ophthalmologist who worked in their ER. I got in to see the ophthalmologist quickly and I was dx with a posterior vitreous detachment with hemorrhage but no retinal tear. This was good as a retinal tear can cause blindness while the vitreous detachment is just annoying but could potentially lead to a tear. These detachments occur with age and probably would have occurred had I stayed in Edmonton. The ophthalmologist recommended against strenuous hiking and exercise and suggested followup if things worsened.

    I missed the conference on Sunday but attended Monday afternoon, all day Tuesday and Wednesday. Some of the talks were good however there were too many talks directed to AI and computational pathology. AI and computational pathology will be the way of the future-10-20 years out but the talks don't really translate into information or knowledge that I can apply when I get back to Edmonton. I talked to lots of European pathologists which was interesting and even met Matt, a English pathologist who had spent a year studying with us in Edmonton about a year ago.

    Today I headed out on the train to Cinque de Terre on the northwest coast of Italy. Think picturesque fishing villages set in river valleys cascading down the steep slopes to the sea. I was going to do some hiking but now with the PVD will confine myself to training between the villages and wandering around the villages. I will make the most of it. I have spent the afternoon walking around Vernazza where I am staying and it is very beautiful but also very touristy.    Read more

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    Florence

    September 6, 2024 in Italy ⋅ ☁️ 26 °C

    I left Rome yesterday on the 11:10 train. Everything went smoothly and arrived at my Air BnB at 1:10. It still quite hot here with it hitting 33 yesterday afternoon. My body shuts down above 30 so I took it easy until 630 when I headed out on my Rick Steves audio tour of Renaissance. I met two American woman also doing the same tour. We all thought that was pretty funny. Florence is known for its beautifully Domed church, the Duomo, the Medici family of bankers, Michelangelo, the renaissance and art. I managed to cover these all on the tour.

    Today I was up early for my visit to the Uffizi. I also did a Rick Steves audio guide tour which was well worth it. He tours you around and show you the15 best art pieces and explains their cultural significance, just as if you had a tour. Botocelli's the birth of Venus, three Leonardo DeVinci's no one was paying attention to and more. It's funny how people fawn over the Mona Lisa but then totally ignore other pieces. After Uffizi I headed over to the Bollergo museum and checked out some more art including two sculptures by Michelangelo who no one seemed interested although people will stand in line for hours to see Michelangelo's David which is also here in Florence. So odd. By then it was noon and getting hot so I decided to bus it to a public pool where I have been hanging out with my wonderful new swim cap and some fellow Canadians. Two woman from Halifax and then another woman who is from Edmonton/Stoney Plain. I mistook the Haligonians for two American women I had met in the line up for the pool. The woman from Stoney Plain was sitting close to me by the pool and was talking English to her daughter. She didn't have and accent. If you meet someone in Europe speaking English without an accent they are either Canadian or learned their English in Canada. She was a school teacher who had moved to Italy with her Italian husband who she had met in Vancouver. Interestingly her parents were from Hudson Bay SK where Cheryl's mother grew up. She knew of Cheryl's Aunt Agness and Peter who owned Llewellyn Services- The snowmobile dealership in town. Small world. My conference starts tonight so I probably won't blog until the end of the conference as pathology probably doesn't interest many of my audience.    Read more

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    Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling

    September 5, 2024 in Vatican City ⋅ ☁️ 21 °C

    The name of this blog today is actually the name of a book by the Canadian author Ross King. I read this book a few years ago and would highly recommend it. It was a biography of Michelangelo and his 10 years of painting the Ciatine chapel.Ever since reading this book it has been on my bucket list. Today was the day of my semi private early morning tour of the Vatican museum and St. Peter's basilica. I was so excited I had problems falling asleep. The tour was expensive however it allowed one to get into the Vatican with other tour groups before the general public. We had to meet near the Vatican at a flower shop at 7:30 am. After the previous days Metro shut down I got up at 5:50 to ensure I would have enough time to check on the metro, eat breakfast and arrive in a timely fashion even if I got lost or had to hike it. The metro was running thank goodness. I arrived at 7:05 and there were a few couples waiting. I decided to grab a cafe latte to get some energy to sustain myself and the one couple directed me too a coffee shop nearby which was fortunate as there was a 10 minute downpour. When I returned, there were 14 people waiting. They broke us down into two groups with Cynthia leading our group. She was great. Very organized . She must have talked for much of the 3.5 hours of the tour other than in the Ciatine chapel where the current Pope has decreed that the guides must be quiet. I don't think we got into the museum until 830 but she used her time explaining the history of the Vatican, the Cistine chapel and the rooms painted by Raphael. The museum houses the Pope's art works and artifacts. Given that the institution has been going for almost 1600 years that is a lot.She directed us through halls of ancient sculptures, sarcophagi and tombs followed by halls of tapestries, maps and paintings before hitting the frescoes of Raphael a contemporary of Michelangelo's. The finale was the Cistine chapel. We spent 20 minutes there and following the guide's advice grabbed a bench seat on the sides of the chapel. It is beautiful. The 20 minutes flew by in no time. I guess the frescoes were revolutionary as many of the subjects are only scantily clad which represented a significant scandalous change in art. The Japanese company Nippon paid for the ceiling frescoes to be cleaned and now own the rights for the images for 20 years. There are docents screaming at people to put their phones away. I very surruptiosly was able to get a photo. Despite the fact that I was supposedly on an early morning beat the crowd tour it was still very busy. Our tour guide says that the Vatican is always increasing the number of tours allowed in. It must just be a Sardine fest for the general public compounded by not knowing where to go. The tour was expensive but it was worth it.

    Following the Vatican Museum we were able to jump the 2 hour queue for St Peters Basilica. St Peters is enormous, the largest church in the world marking the site of St. Peter's crucifixion. It is enormous and beautiful as the walls are covered in Marble.

    After touring around St. Peters for 30 minutes with our guide, the tour was done. It was 11 o'clock.

    I was pretty tired by now having been on the go since 6 am. I passed on the climb up to the top of the dome. It was cooler today but it was very humid. There were two things I still had on my list. The Pantheon and the Trevi fountain. The Pantheon is an extraordinarily preserved building from 100 AD built by the emperor Hadrian to allow the worship of all the Roman gods. It is known for its dome for which many of the domed ceilings are based. An engineering marvel. After Rome adopted Christianity it was converted into a church and never plundered so one can get an excellent idea of what a Roman temple looked like. After a Rick Steves audio tour of the Pantheon I walked to the Trevi fountain for a quick photo before heading back to my Air BnB. The Trevi fountain was featured in Roman Holiday starting Audrey Hepburn. It is a tourist magnet.    Read more

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    A Day Of Culture

    September 4, 2024 in Italy ⋅ ☀️ 22 °C

    I was up fairly early this morning to head out to the Borghese gallery. I had a timed entrance so needed to get there by 9 am. Supposedly they can be quite strict with entry. It was a 15 minute ride by the metro but when I showed up the metro line wasn't running. Heavy rain yesterday afternoon had somehow disrupted the metro.I ended up walking which took me 45 minutes but fortunately I had budgeted enough time. It was running later on the day.

    The Borghese gallery is located in a beautiful mansion once owned by Cardinal Borghese. It is known for its sculptures by Bernini, a mid 17th century sculpture. My favorite was one of Apollo chasing Daphne but just as he catches her she starts to turn into a tree. The sculptures look so lifelike. The first circle of the museum I only noticed the sculptures, the second loop I noticed the Roman floor mosaics. The third time through I noticed these wonderful paintings by Caravaggio also a mid 19 century artist. In my last loop with the museum I noticed the elaborate ceilings. It was a lot to take in.

    After the museum I walked over to the Rome National museum as it was on my way home. The national museum houses Roman sculptures from 100-200 AD and floor mosaics. The Roman sculptures were very gifted. The Romans copied the Greeks who have subsequently been copied by more modern artists. Bernini's hermaphrodite was a copy of a Roman and Greek sculpture. The Roman gallery wasn't as well air conditioned as the Borghese. I was pretty spent by 1:30 so walked the rest of the way back to my Air BnB where I have chilled out and done some washing. One has to pace oneself in such warm weather.    Read more

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    Colloseum and Roman Forum

    September 3, 2024 in Italy ⋅ ☀️ 26 °C

    Today was my Roman history day. I had bought tickets to the Colleseum and Roman Forum. I think that we are all familiar with the Roman forum. If not check some YouTube videos from the movie Gladiator. It's like the Eiffel tower is to Paris, the forum is to Rome. I had a timed entry for 9 o'clock which is early when you are jetlagged. Despite it being September it seems that it is still full on tourist season. I arrived by 8:30 and stood in a very long line up but gained admission by 8:40. They allow 3000 people per hour into the colleseum which gives you idea of the line up. I did the Rick Steves audio tour which was quite good. One essentially walks around on the second tier admiring the structure and main stage and wondering what it was like during a gladiator event 2000 years ago and wondering how long it will be before Rogers place in Edmonton will require additional tax dollars so that it can last the full 30 years of it's lifespan. The colleseum was operation for 500 years.

    After the colleseum I headed next door to the Roman forum. The Roman forum was the religious and governmental centre of Rome. By now it was about 28 degrees and I was starting to slow down a little bit. I did another Rick Steves audio tour and learned about the first Basilica which was a law court used as the architectural footprint for present day churches, the eternal flame, the vestal virgins, various Roman temples and archways. We owe so much to the Romans. I then headed over to the Paladdin hill the site of the emperor palace. Even though the buildings are half ruined that the largesse and grandeur of the buildings is still impressive. I met some Canadian women while in the Paladdin. The Blue Jays hat gave them away. The didn't have the Rick Steves audio tour so much of the site was lost to them.

    After lunch and a little nap, I headed out again to the Basilica of San Clemente. The Basilica was a notable 14th century church. In the 1850s the priest at the church started tunneling beneath the church believing that it had been built on another 4th century church which had been used as the foundation for the later church. Further excavation beneath the original church revealed that it had been built on a pagan temple. One could see the pagan temple, part of a Roman road and the floors of the ancient buildings. It was a time travel.

    After the museum I headed back to my Air BnB which was fortunate as they had a massive Thunderstorm lasting for about two hours. All the history and heat tired me out so I had an early night.    Read more

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    The colleseum
    The colleseumThe TibetTraveste1Jewish pizza shopJulius Caesar crime scene

    Bike and Food tour of Rome

    September 2, 2024 in Italy ⋅ ☁️ 32 °C

    I arrived in Rome yesterday with a direct flight from Calgary. It was a 10 hour flight. I had bought a special neck pillow known as a TRTL. It worked pretty well supporting my neck. I think maybe I fell asleep for part of the flight. Although my neck was comfortable the rest of my body wasn't. Getting in from the airport was very easy on the Leonardo de Vinci express train and then I walked to my Air BnB. It was 35 degrees and sunny when I arrived which was a little of a shock to the system. Despite being jet lagged, I was able to stay awake until 8:30 which is pretty good. I am located 15 minutes from the colleseum so I strolled down to the colleseum to stay awake. It is surreal seeing the colleseum for the first time.I woke up for a little while in the middle of the night but still had a good sleep.

    Today I hadn't made any special plans in advance. Tickets for the colosseum, Vatican some of the museums sell out months in advance so I have planned to do those later in the week and have bought my tickets well in advance . I noticed a reasonably priced bike and food tour on Air BnB so I signed up for this. It was wonderful. The trip was guided by Luca a local chef who had gotten into the tour business. We biked around the Traveste part of Rome and listened to Luca telling us the history of the area and I interesting stories about the food scene. Everyone along our route seemed to know Luca. It was very Italian. We learned how to drink from an Italian fountain. Saw lots of old ruins including the site where Julius Caesar was murdered. A Dutch family of 4 was also on the trip with the young adult sons. One son was into logistics and the other was training to be a physiotherapist. Their English was good so it was fun chatting with them. The trip included Breakfast, a pizza snack from a Kosher pizza shop in the Jewish quarter a tour around the Traveste area of town and around the colleseum and a very large late lunch cooked by Luca with an incredible pasta sauce. I will be eating a light supper. The tour lasted for 5.5 hours. All in all a full day. I will head out tonight for an evening stroll but I am just chilling out now    Read more

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    My airport Uber

    YEG

    August 31, 2024 in Canada ⋅ ☀️ 21 °C

    I am just sitting at the Edmonton airport waiting to depart on my trip to Italy. I will be in Rome for 5 nights, Florence for 6, Cinque de Terre for 3 and Milan for 4. The week in Florence will mainly be for the meeting of the European Society of Pathology but the rest of the trip is for pleasure. I have a lot planned so hopefully you will enjoy my blog. Please keep checking in over the course of the trip as I will be updating footprints every couple daysRead more

    Trip start
    August 31, 2024
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