{"id":1164,"date":"2019-07-06T05:15:18","date_gmt":"2019-07-06T11:15:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beltguy.com\/blog\/?p=1164"},"modified":"2019-07-06T05:15:18","modified_gmt":"2019-07-06T11:15:18","slug":"hello-from-rome-italy-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beltguy.com\/Travelogue\/?p=1164","title":{"rendered":"Hello from Rome, Italy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n\tHello from Rome, Italy\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tSaturday morning &ndash; July 6, 2019&nbsp;&nbsp; (First post of this travelogue)\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tI am starting this post at 11:42 AM which is 3:42 AM Denver time.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThis travelogue will document our travels through parts of Europe.&nbsp; The main activity is a cruise around the Greek Islands &ndash; a trip earned by Pat via Stampin&rsquo; Up!&nbsp; This is the 14 incentive trip that Pat has earned and we have enjoyed travel to some amazing locations.&nbsp; There are reportedly about 400 demonstrators who will be making this trip&nbsp; (a few more earned the trip,&nbsp; but &ldquo;cashed out&rdquo; for various reasons).\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tWe are staying at an AirB&amp;B in the heart of the historic district of Rome (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/maps\/place\/41%C2%B053'58.1%22N+12%C2%B028'14.2%22E\/@41.89946,12.4684343,476m\/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d41.89946!4d12.470623\">Google Map Link<\/a>)\n<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">\n\t{google_map}41.899460, 12.470623{\/google_map}\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tWe left Denver shortly after 11:00 AM on Tuesday (7\/2) and arrived in Rome at bit after 9:00 AM Wednesday.&nbsp; We had a connection in Philadelphia with a bit over 1 hour between flights (too close for our standards).\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThe Rome airport is quite a distance from the city and transportation is quite expensive.&nbsp;&nbsp; The private car cost us 65 Euro (1 Euro = 1.12 dollars as this is being written).&nbsp; The port that we sail out of is even further and will cost us 130 Euro.&nbsp; SU does furnish a bus from one of the Rome hotels to the ship, but it leaves later than we feel comfortable with.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThis AirB&amp;B is a mixed experience.&nbsp; The unit is quite nice, but we have had issues with the hot water heater and we are right in the middle of the &ldquo;night life&rdquo; area over a bar that plays very loud music until about 1:00 in the morning.&nbsp; The hot water issue has been a challenge (Pat took a cold shower the first day and both my first shower and her second shower had hot water for a few minutes.&nbsp; The noise has not been too big of an issue.&nbsp; For many years I have traveled with Bose noise cancelling ear buds and that really helps.&nbsp; Pat sleeps pretty soundly.&nbsp; So, we have not suffered too much from lack of sleep.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThe weather here is quite warm (mid 90* each day).&nbsp; We had scheduled ourselves in early prior to the sailing of the ship so that we could adjust to the time difference and to let us relax for a couple of days.&nbsp; Our lives have been very hectic prior to the trip and we needed some down-time.&nbsp; Pat has been very stressed about her dad, as he had a very bad spell just before we left (he is reportedly better now).&nbsp; Even when he is OK, we still see a rather rapid decline in his quality of life and we have concerns that he will pass when we are gone.&nbsp; Pat is reconciled to that possibility (as much as she can) and we plan to continue our trip if something does happen.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tIf you look at the map, you will see that we are right in the center of the historic Rome area.&nbsp; Our apartment is located between the Coliseum and the Vatican.&nbsp; We had not planned to do any major sightseeing, as we did that in our 2008 trip <a href=\"http:\/\/beltguy.com\/blog\/2008\/09\/02\/hello-from-rome-italy\/\">(starting post for 2008 Rome travelogue)<\/a>.&nbsp; Instead we have been taking strolls to various attractions in the surrounding area.&nbsp;\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tAttached is a picture of our apartment building.&nbsp; Our apartment is on the second floor of the building on the right side of the photo.&nbsp;\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\n\t<div id=\"attachment_1165\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1165\" alt=\"Our Apartment in Rome\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1165\" height=\"225\" src=\"http:\/\/beltguy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Our-Apartment-Medium-300x225.jpg\" width=\"300\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-1165\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Our Apartment in Rome<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tI am also attaching a photo taken from our&nbsp; window that shows one of the many open&nbsp; air restaurant\/bars in the area.\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\n\t<div id=\"attachment_1166\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1166\" alt=\"View our our apartment window\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1166\" height=\"225\" src=\"http:\/\/beltguy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/View-from-our-apartment-Medium-300x225.jpg\" width=\"300\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-1166\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">View our our apartment window<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThere are a ton more details to post, but I will leave that for the next one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hello from Rome, Italy Saturday morning &ndash; July 6, 2019&nbsp;&nbsp; (First post of this travelogue) I am starting this post at 11:42 AM which is 3:42 AM Denver time. This travelogue will document our travels through parts of Europe.&nbsp; The &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/beltguy.com\/Travelogue\/?p=1164\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beltguy.com\/Travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beltguy.com\/Travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beltguy.com\/Travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beltguy.com\/Travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beltguy.com\/Travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/beltguy.com\/Travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1167,"href":"https:\/\/beltguy.com\/Travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164\/revisions\/1167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beltguy.com\/Travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beltguy.com\/Travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beltguy.com\/Travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}