If you want to come to our house, Feb 19 – March 18, you are welcome to do so. But you will have to eat out, because we won’t be here to cook. (Not that I do a lot of the cooking.) We’re flying down to visit Mom, then driving to Ft. Lauderdale to take a cruise through the Panama Canal. The cruise line will drop us off in San Diego. From there, we’ll take Amtrak to Oxnard, CA. Then rent a car and spend several days driving up the coastal highway to San Francisco. We’ll spend a few days in San Francisco, then fly home.

The cruise doesn’t take any planning, but the rest of the vacation does, and we’ve had a lot of fun planning it. We have the coastal drive mapped out. Obviously there will be hikes, views, and coastal towns, but there’s also much more. We’ll spend a night in Old Town San Diego. To maintain its authenticity, the hotel doesn’t have any TVs. That’s not a problem because we’ll walk down the street and see a production of La Cage aux Folles at the Cygnet Theatre. The next day we’ll take a train to Oxnard, CA to get through the LA traffic, then rent a car. We’ll be stopping at the Hearst Castle and spending a night at the Hearst Hacienda. And of course we will visit the fabulous aquarium in Monterey. It promises to be an amazing drive.

Otherwise, life here is more mundane but still plenty of fun. We had a condo party Friday at a local German restaurant. (Great party, mediocre food.) Last night we accepted an invitation to the neighborhood volunteer dinner, which was another great evening. (I volunteer to run the neighborhood web site.)

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There’s plenty going on at the old folks home. We went out to dinner with neighbors yesterday. We’re going to a circle lunch/dinner a little later today. Friday was the last day our neighborhood pool is open. Danita and I decided to buy a swim membership for her at the Columbia indoor pool near us. We’ve resisted in the past because it’s a one-year minimum, not exactly cheap, and it’s redundant to have access to two pools when our neighborhood pool is open. But the winter months are long, and the exercise Danita enjoys is swimming. After we decided to go ahead with the membership, we learned that Danita can freeze her membership for 3 months. When the one-year plus 3 months are up, she’ll be on month-to-month and can cancel the member ship after the neighborhood pool opens in 2021. Danita’s taking great advantage of the pool. She’s already attended one swim exercise class, and is planning several more for the next week.

When we went to Italy, we turned the security cameras and light timers on. Normally, we get a motion warning email when the lights turn on. It didn’t take long for us to notice that we weren’t getting the emails. That makes the cameras pretty useless. When we got home, I found that Gmail has improved their security and the camera isn’t going to keep up. After 5 years, updates are no longer being offered. New security cameras are required. While surveying the market, I learned that many inexpensive cameras were receiving excellent reviews, but suffered from a defect. They would drop their WiFi connections and not try to reconnect. The only remedy is to cycle their power. This seems like a pretty serious limitation to me, especially given that it’s very possible to have a short power outage that would disconnect all the security cameras. I can’t see how these cameras got an even acceptable review.

I decided to buy one Nest camera, being careful to keep the box in case I want to return it. Nest is owned by Google, so updates should be available for a good long while. It seems to be well designed. It definitely reconnects if it looses the WiFi connection. It seems to work well, but it has two drawbacks. The first is the monthly cost. Advanced detection and saved video is only for those who pay the monthly fee. The annual fee is about the same cost as the camera. Without paying the fee, one can get a less sophisticated motion detection and watch live video, but the only thing saved is a snapshot, which is deleted after 3 hours. The second is that motion detection is done at the server. This means video is streamed to the server whether the camera is armed or not. That’s a privacy concern. Fortunately, our Verizon FIOS internet service gets us a lot of upload bandwidth, so having multiple cameras streaming video won’t be limited by our internet bandwidth. Nest is still being merged with Google and even support personnel are sometimes unsure of some details of the camera’s operation.

So far, the camera’s operation seems good. We haven’t received even one false alarm. We decided we can forego the advanced features except when we’re on an extended trip. That limits the fee to only several months a year. The camera’s nicest feature is automatic arming. The Nest server geofences our phones so the camera is automatically armed when both of us aren’t home. (That assumes I don’t forget my phone and leave it at home, as I did this morning.) We’re still evaluating. I want to create some alarms to see how it behaves when a phone is turned off and do a few other tests. Plus I want to just let it run and get more confidence in how it behaves. So far we like the Nest enough to forgive its shortcomings.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We are relaxing after our trip to Italy, but not too much. We had a neighborhood dinner/concert last night. Today we went to an afternoon performance of the play “Souvenir”, about Florence Foster Jenkins. She was a woman who couldn’t sing a single note in tune, but became famous for her singing. The person was real. The play was based on her life. It was an excellent production. There’s also a movie about the woman which is quite good.

When we got home, one of our smoke detectors was beeping and others were warning that their batteries were extremely low. I thought that odd because I had changed all the batteries not long ago. But I went out and got new batteries. I saw a 12-pack of AA Energizer “Max”. The pack also said “Try Ultimate”. It wasn’t clear to me whether “Max” or “Ultimate” was better, but Max was in the battery rack and that’s what I bought. I put them in the detectors and was still getting low battery warnings. It didn’t seem possible that 5 different detectors got the same defect at the same time. I started reading discussion boards. The first two had no useful information. Likewise the first thread on board number 3. I found a second thread and, 2 pages later, found that these smoke detectors require AA Energize “Ultimate”. It didn’t make any sense to me, but I went back to the store and found the Ultimate on a different rack. Then I understood. The Ultimate are Lithium batteries. The Max are Alkaline. I had used the wrong batteries. And I had used the wrong batteries earlier when I changed them. Let that be a lesson — Ultimate is better than Max. What surprised me is that I had stuffed the Max batteries back in the blister pack. Target gave me a full refund.

That’s the news for this week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

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.

Having had no dinner last night, we were eager to get breakfast. It had to be quick because we had 8:30 timed admission tickets to the Colosseum. With no time to investigate, we picked a place. Breakfast was good but outrageously expensive. Then it was off to the most famous Roman ruin – the Colosseum. There is no evidence Christians were ever sacrificed there, but all the other stories we’ve heard about what the Romans did in the Colosseum are true. They had all-day shows that generally started with the slaughter of exotic animals such as lions and bears. That was followed with the public execution of those convicted of capital crimes such as disagreeing with the government. The day ended with gladiator fights. There were gladiator teams, each of which had their fans. It was a lot like football, except we are somewhat less violent today.

After the Colosseum, there are plenty of other ruins in the area. We saw several before I got bored with a few columns for this god and a busted wall for that ruler. I found a spot to enjoy some shade and informal music. (Very good Italian regae!) I had a great time. It was one espresso short of perfection. By noon everybody was tired of ruins. We opted for a 2-hour lunch. We’ve been eating really well, but this food was extraordinarily good and the cost was quite reasonable.

After lunch Rick and Suzy went their way. Danita and I went to the Pantheon. The Romans built this in the first century and rebuilt it in 140 AD (more or less). I think it is the most extraordinary building in Rome because it is by far the most beautiful building the Romans ever built. And it stands today looking almost exactly as it did in 140. Plus it just happens to have a dome of extraordinary precision which was also the largest dome in the world for 1000 years. The Pantheon is quite impressive and worthy of our admiration. After visiting the Pantheon, we had an espresso, then just relaxed. We wanted a light dinner, and settled on gelato.

Roman Ruins

The Pantheon

Our cruise ended in Mote Carlo. It’s 50 miles to the nearest airport. There are few taxis. The cruise line charges a lot for a bus ride to the airport. We decided to hire a tour guide to show us the sights and drop us at the airport. It worked very well, Pierre knew all the places to go and all the things to see: Monte Carlo, old town Monte Carlo, Monte Carlo from above, old town St. Paul de Vence, and another old town whose name I don’t remember.

The flight to Rome was uneventful, but the ride to the hotel was “interesting”. Our driver was a nice guy and extremely helpful, but it was dark out and he drove like a demon. When we got to the narrow cobble stone streets in downtown Rome, he didn’t bother slowing down. Our hotel’s reception desk closes at 5 PM, We had registered online and received a link, but it wasn’t obvious how we were going to get in the front door. While he was driving, the driver called the Anna, the hotel receptionist, at home. He handed me his Bluetooth headset, and turned the radio on.It was lovely music, but quite hard to hear Anna. I went through the entry process twice, but it each time I asked a question it got more complicated and I heard less of what Anna said. I finally gave the headset to Danita so she could hear part of what Anna had to say.

Our hotel is in a pedestrian-only area, so we had to stop a couple of blocks away. The driver led us down more cobble stone streets, wheeling our suitcases behind us. When we got to the hotel, we turned on phones, clicked the links, and pressed buttons on websites. Amazingly, the door buzzed and we were in. We were to proceed to the third floor. We walked up stairs and found an area labeled “3A 3B 3C”, which had nothing to do with our hotel. We went up at least two more flights of stairs and found a locked door with our hotel’s name on it. More phones, links, website buttons, and the door unlocked! Our rooms are clean and modern, but it’s not easy to upgrade very old buildings to modern accommodations. Our room has lights hung from wires draped from the ceiling, some 15 feet above our heads. The woodwork for the floor above is exposed. We see a massive wood beam going across our ceiling. Everybody was very kind. It’s all quite different and interesting. But we were exhausted and went straight to bed.

For the last full day of our cruise, we stopped in the little village of Portofino. The area has several pedestrian trails. We walked a few miles in one direction to an adjacent town and took the ferry back. They we walked 20 minutes in the other direction to see the castle and light house. It’s a beautiful area.

You’ve heard of it, but do you remember why? When France was tired of Napoleon, the king promised to pay him 2 million francs if he would go to Elba and stay there. Napoleon went, but the king forgot to send the money. After 10 months, Napoleon went back to France, declared himself emperor, lost the battle of Waterloo, and had the English ban him for good, in a place a lot less nice than Elba, and still without the 2 million francs.

We docked at Portoferraio, a delightful town. We took an exciting bus ride up into the mountains, then took a cable ride to the top of the tallest. It was a delightful day. Here’s the pics.

We visited Rome today. We took a 10-hour tour of St. John the Lateran and the Vatican. Danita and I both enjoyed St. John very much. The Vatican was immensely crowded. The feeling was of being pushed through a commercial museum.

I didn’t know anything about St. John. It was established by Constantine as the residence of the Pope around 300 AD. Popes continued to live there until the Western Schism around 1300 AD, when the Papacy moved to Avignon, France. St. Johns was the residence of the Pope for nearly 1,000 years. The Vatican has a couple hundred years to go before it reaches this milestone.

I didn’t get man pictures from the Vatican. I managed to grab a telephoto shot of the Pieta, but it was behind heavy glass, poorly lit, impossible to get near … altogether an inferior experience, as was all of the Vatican. I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.

The good folks at Pompeii have been restoring and reconstructing a couple of houses of the richest people in Pompeii. We were very lucky that one of these houses was opened to the public just a couple of weeks ago. Below is some of what we saw.

The Romans were quite open about their entertainments. Maybe someday I’ll write up the adult version of Pompeii. Or maybe you’ll just have to go and see it for yourself.