{"id":101,"date":"2013-08-13T04:46:59","date_gmt":"2013-08-13T09:46:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.canicusmodius.com\/blog\/?p=101"},"modified":"2013-08-13T04:46:59","modified_gmt":"2013-08-13T09:46:59","slug":"canicus-in-italia-day-1-8-july-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.canicusmodius.com\/blog\/?p=101","title":{"rendered":"Canicus in Italia: Day 1 (8 July 2011)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Originally posted on July 9, 2011<\/a> by Canicus<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The day started with an Italian breakfast in my hotel. Not bad. But I am discovering that in Italy\u00a0they never seem to make a full cup of coffee. The cups aren\u2019t that big to begin with, but they only\u00a0fill them half full.<\/p>\n

Today was essentially an orientation day. I learned in Paris a couple of years ago that one of those open bus tours is really a good way to figure out where the tourist stuff is. So today I\u00a0walked over to the Termini, which is also the \u201ccrossroads\u201d of the \u201cA\u201d and \u201cB\u201d Roman metro lines. I bought a three day pass for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I\u2019ve planned on Ostia for\u00a0Monday and south of Rome Tuesday-Friday.) I then rode the very crowded B Metro to Colosseo<\/i>.<\/p>\n

You come up from the underworld to face the Coliseum.\u00a0The Coliseum was built by the first Flavian emperor, Vespasian, using loot and slaves he had\u00a0captured in the Jewish War. It was completed by his son Titus, who also completed the Jewish\u00a0War at Masada. It was originally called the Flavian Amplitheater, but came to be known as the\u00a0Coliseum because it was located near a colossal statue of Nero. The coliseum was also built\u00a0on the site of Nero\u2019s extravagant \u201cGolden Palace.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking for the place to get on an open tour bus I walked completely around the Coliseum.\u00a0There are all kinds of souvenir hawkers you encounter. That probably was true in the early days\u00a0of the\u00a0Coliseum\u00a0too. I did break down and by Rome\u2026Past and Present a rather neat little book\u00a0with pictures of many of the ancient sites which have overlays which show how they looked \u00a0originally and when you turn the overlay, you see what remains today. The real souvenir was an\u00a0S.P.Q.R.ROMA cap. There were also a bunch of Roman Legionaries having their pictures taken\u00a0with girls.<\/p>\n

The first loop around the Coliseum did not turn up the bus stop and it was lunch time, so I\u00a0decided to have lunch at an outdoor cafe\u201a. When I post the photos, I\u2019ll include a shot of lunch. A violinist came around and entertained us with a ditty I didn\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

After lunch I started another loop around the Coliseum with better instructions as to where the\u00a0busses hide. This time I found them. I looped twice around Rome in the afternoon, sitting on both\u00a0the sinister and the dexter sides. I discovered that one of the stops the busses make is about 50\u00a0meters from my hotel. The ticket is good for two days. So tomorrow, I\u2019ll do it again and this time\u00a0get off at some of the stops.<\/p>\n

Windows tells me I took 287 pictures today. There is no way I\u2019m going to post them all. In many\u00a0cases they were rapid fire shots of the same thing from a moving vehicle (that bus). So I\u2019ll need\u00a0to see which ones are the best of each set. I\u2019ll also need to do serious cropping of virtually all of\u00a0them and some serious \u201cfixing\u201d of some. They were shot with an extreme wide angle lens, which\u00a0means they have more than is interesting and sometimes have building falling over that aren\u2019t\u00a0falling over.<\/p>\n

Sunday I plan to go to Mass at St. Peter\u2019s and then take in some of the sights there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally posted on July 9, 2011 by Canicus The day started with an Italian breakfast in my hotel. Not bad. But I am discovering that in Italy\u00a0they never seem to make a full cup of coffee. The cups aren\u2019t that big to begin with, but they only\u00a0fill them half full. Today was essentially an orientation … Continue reading Canicus in Italia: Day 1 (8 July 2011)<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.canicusmodius.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.canicusmodius.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.canicusmodius.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.canicusmodius.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.canicusmodius.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=101"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.canicusmodius.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102,"href":"http:\/\/www.canicusmodius.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions\/102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.canicusmodius.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.canicusmodius.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.canicusmodius.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}