Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Italy Travelog #4
Rome Cavalieri hotel - Saturday, 24 May 2025, 4pm

Around 3pm today we arrived at the Rome Cavalieri. It's a Waldorf Astoria hotel, so we had reasonably high expectations. Recall that our other W-A experience was the Waldorf Astoria Pedregal in Los Cabos, MX— where we had an amazing arrival experience, a very bougie lunch, and later, a touching "Happy Retirement Ms. Hawk" card.



Compared to the Pedregal hotel, which was an over-the-top, 5-star experience, the Rome Cavalieri is merely a solid 4.5 star hotel. Everything is appropriately swank— including the prices in the restaurants 😱— but, for example, we had to *gasp* wait in line at the front desk to check in. (At the 5 star hotel, staff opened the car door for us, greeted us by name, and escorted us to a private table with cocktails where the concierge came to us to deliver our keys.)



Our room is suitably luxurious, and spacious, though again without the over-the-top-ness of the W-A Pedregal. Here the balcony with a private pool and a beach vidw is replaced by a balcony with... -out a private pool or a beach view. 😅

Not that there's even a beach, anyway. We're in Rome. Though this hotel is right up the hill from Vatican City. If we were on a higher floor we'd be able to see it from our balcony.

As we explored the hotel grounds a bit this afternoon we found a hawk.



Yup, there's a hawk sitting on a railing on the terrace overlooking the pool area. As you can see from the jess to the left of the bird's feet, though, it's not a random hawk; it's kept by a falconer. The falconer wasn't around this afternoon so we spent some time admiring the bird by ourselves without knowing what species of hawk or falcon it is. Hawk noted that our iPhones will identify what we're taking a picture of, if they can. Her iPhone told her, "bird". Thanks, Apple, we were confused for a moment there that it might be a flower. Apparently that AI feature was implemented by the same team that created the original icon for Apple Maps showing a route of jumping off a bridge into busy interstate highway 280 traffic.

A few days ago I blogged about "Fun with Stuffed Animals": amusing myself— and sometimes my spouse— by posing our stuffed animals and making up stories about what they're doing. The inspirations for that blog were a Treant giving people the finger and a meal for our hawks. When Hawk read that blog she was amused all over again, including some of the links she clicked through which went back many years, such as finding rocks in a Tylenol bottle and "*In this picture the role of my wife is played by one of our stuffed animals, 'Sassy''.

Playing around with stuffed animals is a daily thing. I mean, every day is another opportunity for stuffed animal soap opera. That snake we bought as a treat for Winter? He's already shared it around to curry favor with other hawks in the house. Currently Phoenix has it.



Phoenix is a Folkmanis hand puppet. She's a "clone" of the first hawk we had. Originally these hawks came with a snake. There's a bit of velcro in their beaks to hold onto it. Phoenix came second-hand without a snake. So part of our thinking was to get her another snake. This one's bigger than the original snake, though, so it doesn't stick well in her beak.

Why do I share this? Well, aside from it being amusing, it's also prodded us to buy another hawk. Hawk was so inspired that she went on eBay to see if there's another Folkmanis red-tail listed. She found two and bought one. So soon we'll have another clone. Shh, don't tell Phoenix, she'll think she's being replaced!

Georgia Travelog #25
Atlanta - Sunday, 13 Apr 2025, 8am

"We've upgraded you to a suite," is a phrase I love to hear as a frequent traveler. It's not always a significant upgrade, though. Sometimes the suite is barely bigger than a regular room. Sometimes it's got more space but no extra furniture— so I'm just looking at a lot of empty floor and walls. Other times, like this time, it's an older, kind of worn-down hotel. Here's a walkthrough of our upgraded room at a hotel just outside ATL airport:



Other than the noise outside the room (and flashing lights) from the parking lot that lasted until past 11pm, other... not-so-enjoyable... aspects of our stay included a slow line at the front desk and slow, creaky elevators. I mean, when the door doesn't even open and close smoothly, you wonder about the mechanical soundness of the lift and safety mechanisms. OTOH, once we closed the doors the sound from outside was muffled, and the bed was deliciously firm. I slept better than I did most of this past week on too-soft hotel mattresses.

Lest I sound like I'm looking a gift horse in the mouth, let me be clear that I do appreciate this upgrade. The extra space (and extra furniture!) was useful even on our one-night stay. As an elite benefit, it's nice. It's just that if I had a paid a lot of extra money for this suite... well, I'd probably wish I'd paid that money to get a nicer basic room at a nicer hotel.

It's long been a moment of truth in tech: You bought a product a few months ago. Today a new product comes out from the same maker or a close rival. Do you regret what you bought? Do you wish you'd held out a few months longer to buy the shiny, new thing?

That moment of truth happened for me in the past 24 hours, when Apple announced the new iPhone 16e. It's a new, low-cost model in the iPhone 16 range that fills the slot formerly occupied by the iPhone SE series. That hits home for me because prior to buying an iPhone 16 Pro four months ago I happily owned an SE 3 for a few years. If an "SE 4", as many people thought the 16e might be called, were available 4 months ago, would I have bought it? Do I wish I'd waited 4 months?

The answers are "Maybe yes" and "Definitely no". But let me elaborate on that.



The two phones, the 16 Pro and 16e, are similar in many respects. They've got the same A18 processor chipset, though the 16e has a total of 10 processor cores compared to the 16 Pro's 12 cores. They've got the same storage options. They've got almost the same screen size; the 16e is just a fraction of an inch smaller.

Just two things are really different. The obvious one is the price. The 16e is $400 cheaper. The other difference is the camera. The 16 Pro has a 3-lens setup; the 16e has just one.

If I'd looked at these cameras side by side 4 months ago I would've asked myself— rightly so— "Is it worth $400 for a fancy camera?" My answer probably would've been No. So I'm glad I didn't get to frame the question that way!

Four months ago I would've said "No", probably, because I've already got a fancy camera. I own an interchangeable lens camera with a few nice lenses. It's several years old but still takes great pictures. But it's big. It's bulky*. It's one more thing to lug around.

Still, could the tiny lens(es) on an iPhone camera replace it? Four months ago I would've said No. But there was a steal of a deal on the 16 Pro— basically it was free!— so I bought it. And in the 4 months since then I've found that the little cameras and lenses are way better than I expected.

First I tried learving home my big* camera on short hikes in the area, like the walk at Byxbee Park where we spotted a red-tail hawk. I was impressed with what the 16 Pro could do. Then I left my big camera home this past weekend for hiking in red rocks areas in Nevada. Yeah, the big camera would've shot many of the pictures a bit more nicely... but the iPhone punched well above its weight. I'm glad I took the plunge on the fancy, improved iPhone cameras.

_____
[*] "Big" and "bulky" are relative terms. My Fujifilm X-T3 mirrorless ILC is downright svelte compared to even the modestly sized 35mm film SLR I used years ago. But it's way bigger and heavier than the iPhone that's always in my pocket wherever I go.

A few months ago... or maybe it was a year+ at this point, I'm not sure... Hawk and I were straightening the pile of shoes in our hall closet, and I found a pair of footwear I didn't even remember buying.



They're hiking shoes. Not hiking boots, but hiking shoes. When did I buy these? I wondered. I couldn't remember! So I stuffed them back in the closet— except in a more orderly fashion than the pile of shoes that was in there, because that's what we were cleaning up— and promptly forgot about them again. 🤣 Until today.

Today, for whatever reason, I remembered these shoes were in the hall closet, sitting there almost certainly never used for who-knows-how-many years. So when Hawk was feeling well enough to want to do a light hike today (she's still not fully over traveler's diarrhea after two weeks!) I figured it would be a great opportunity to try out these hiking shoes. That's because while the trail we picked, at Bxybee Park on the bay in Palo Alto, is too easy to want to wear hiking boots, the gravel paths made me want to wear something a bit more protective than my Keen sport sandals. Even with their toe cap the sandals still pick up small rocks on gravelly trails.

"I don't even remember when I bought these," I mused out loud as I laced them up in the hallway. "Maybe a few years ago at REI when I saw them on a clearance sale and figured, 'Why not try them?'"

"I think you bought them fifteen years ago, at Footwear Etc.," Hawk countered, name-checking a store that used to be around the corner from us but closed up years ago.

Well, regardless of when or where I bought them I could easily surmise why I'd bought them. While I've never bought hiking shoes before, always preferring either the sturdiness of hiking boots or the light weight and breathability of hiking sandals, for the right price I would've taken a chance on trying hiking shoes. And today, finally, is the time to try them!

Update: By the second time I'd worn them they fell apart! 😡

Panama Travelog #37
Back at the hotel, Panama - Mon, 30 Dec 2024. 6pm.

We got back from our hike in Metropolitan Park with great views of the city from Cedar Hill and a few wildlife sightings just after 1pm today. I went back out almost right away to get some lunch from the Rey supermarket around the corner from our hotel.



Speaking of our hotel I realized when I was coming back from the quick shopping errand that I hadn't taken a photo to remember what the hotel looks like. Mostly that's because almost every time we've been here it's gloomy and raining, or at night, or all of the above. In other words, not great picture time. But early this afternoon it was still sunny, so I snapped a few pics around the hotel.



Another one I hadn't taken a photo of is our room at the AC Marriott hotel in Panama City. In this pic Hawk is sleeping on the bed. She was tired when we got home and fell right asleep. (Update: 24 hours later we were both feeling sick, so I think this is the start of it for her.)

The room is kind of a mess in this photo, but that's cinéma vérité. This is how we've lived in this space for the past 72 hours, with a few suitcases and various small bags lining the shelf along the wall. This is actually comparatively orderly as most of my clothes are out of the suitcase and on the hangers/in the drawers in the closet (and the empty suitcase packed away).



Here's the view out the window from our room. It's not quite as good as the view from the pool on the roof, but it's still nice. Note that tall black building, the Tower Bank building, dominating the view. That's the reference point I gave for where to find our hotel in the huge panoramic picture I made from the top of Metropolitan Park.



Speaking of the view from the pool on the roof, here it is... in the daytime, when it's not raining! The trick is it actually just finished raining. Shortly after the pic-from-the-room I capture above, the skies opened up and poured for at least an hour. Hawk woke around 4pm, and we went up to the hot tub for a nice, long soak after the rain cleared.

We've been at the hot tub for a long time today, almost 2 hours. The rain cooled the temperature in the tub so it's more of a warm tub than a hot tub. The difference of a few degrees means we've been able to stay in the water quite a while without overheating.

Trade Show Travelog #6
The Wynn Las Vegas - Wed, 4 Dec 2024, 8am

Taking it easy is rarely something that happens at a trade show. Sometimes the opportunity comes around, though. Generally it requires affirmative effort to make it happen, which is kind of ironic. I had an opportunity to carve out some "me" time after Day 2 at the trade show and I took it.



I started by checking in to my hotel room at the Wynn. I had already been here Tuesday morning, but that was just to stow my bag. I got a room on the 55th floor, 5555. "Lucky 5s," I call it.



The room is pretty comfortable. It's well sized without being huge. It's luxurious without being frilly. It has even has a nicely sized desk for working. Well, it's not literally a desk; it's a table, on the right in the photo above. It's way easier to spread out my computers and get some work done there than on an ironing board.

Then there's the bathroom....



Again, luxury without ostentation. Though maybe that is a bit ostentatious. And it's way bigger than what I need. I"m not going to use the tub or the second sink. I just need the shower, one vanity, and the toilet.

Speaking of showers, I took when I came home from dinner. Once again that was late, like almost 11pm, even though dinner was just in the neighboring attached property, Encore. OMG even though these casinos are relatively new they are smoky. I took a shower before bed just to wash all the latent smoke off my skin and out of my hair. This is a trick I figured out years ago in Vegas for sleeping better. It worked again.

Oh, but before going to bed I snapped a pic of the view at night from my hotel room.



The floor-to-ceiling windows spanning the width of the room are another touch of understated  luxury. Plenty of other nice hotels I've stayed at don't have such expansive views.

Here's a pic after I got up this morning:



This morning I'm enjoying sitting by those huge windows, working on my personal computer from a small table while sitting in an easy chair. I enjoy the view though not specifically because it's the Las Vegas Strip. I'd be fine if it were just the mountains. Though at least it's not a view of a freeway, high-voltage lines, and miles of concrete.

Oh, and this room on the 55th floor? It's not really the 55th floor. As I noticed when staying on the 54th floor at another casino, floors 40-49 don't exist. Really I'm on 45, not 55. It's nice regardless.

Now, just because I'm taking it easy early this morning does not mean today is wholly a take-it-easy day. No, there's still plenty of work ahead! I do have downtime for the next few hours, but then I have a customer meeting at 11, booth duty from 2-6pm, and probably another team dinner after that. But definitely it's nice to have this downtime now to recharge for later.

Wow, it was almost a month ago now Hawk and I made the decision to upgrade our phones. We've actually had the phones in our hands and been using them for a few weeks. How's it going? Although the transition process was ridiculously difficult our new phones are easily a win— and a very inexpensive win— over the phones we replaced.

My new phone is the iPhone 16 Pro with 256GB of storage.



Yes, mine's actually the color in the product photo above. It's called Natural Titanium. Prior to this I've always chosen black iPhones. There's nothing wrong with black. I almost picked it again for this phone. I just felt like I'd give another color a try. Plus, I knew that since I'd wrap a thin case around it the color of the phone's metal back and sides wouldn't matter a lot.

Anyway, color is not what makes this phone better or worse than the older phone it replaced.

My previous phone was an iPhone SE 3rd generation. I'd had it for 2.5 years. The SE 3 is an interesting hybrid of old and new technology. It has the size and form factor of an iPhone 8— which is many years old at this point. That means, among other things, it had top and bottom bezels on the screen and a "belly button" with a fingerprint scanner. It also had older camera technology— though not as old as the iPhone 8. Despite the parts of the SE 3 that were old, the processor was current as of 2.5 years ago, Apple's A15 chipset.

Here are 5 things that have struck me about the practical differences switching to the 16 Pro:

❖ Size was one of my first concerns about the iPhone 16 Pro. The 16 Pro definitely looks much larger because its screen is so much bigger: 6.3" diagonal vs. 4.7". But a lot of that expanded screen size comes from the edge-to-edge design. The 16 Pro has no top and bottom bezels around the screen like the SE 3 does. The upshot is that the 16 Pro is not quite 10% larger in each dimension than the SE 3. For example, the length increases from 5.45" to just 5.89". That keeps it within the realm of fitting in a pants pocket.

❖ Meanwhile the screen is noticeably larger. That jump from 4.7" to 6.3 is huge. I rarely thought, "Oh, this screen is so small," while using my SE 3 for a few years, but after a few days of using the 16 Pro I picked up the SE 3 again and was amazed at how small and quaint it looks. It felt like using a toy instead of a tool. On screen size, there's no going back.

❖ The camera's way better. In the past I've never put much value on having the best camera possible in a mobile phone. I've always had a dedicated interchangeable-lens camera for situations where I really care about image quality. My iPhone camera was always there for "happy snaps". That dichotomy made sense when dedicated camera were better than mobile phone cameras in most situations. Over the years, though, mobile phone cameras have improved much more rapidly than dedicated stills camera. They're now "good enough" for a lot of things. One attraction of switching to the 16 Pro is its 3-lens setup. In addition to a normal, somewhat-wide angle lens, it has a super-wide angle and a moderate telephoto. It also has a better imager than the old SE 3. One test was when I snapped some impromptu hawk pictures at Byxbee Park a few weeks ago. The results were night-and-day better than what I could have gotten from my SE 3. Would my dedicated camera have done even better? Absolutely. But I would have had to lug around a dedicated camera and probably 2 lenses to get those pics, versus having the phone-camera already in my pants pocket.

❖ I'm noticing I can go longer between recharging the battery. My SE 3 wasn't old enough that its battery was degrading significantly, and I was generally still satisfied with how long I could go between charges. The new 16 Pro definitely lasts longer. My seat-of-the-pants estimate is that, with my normal pattern of use, I can go about twice as long between charges right now. That's close to in line with the technical specs: the SE 3 has a battery capacity of about 2,000 mAh; the 16 Pro about 3,600 mAh.

❖ The 16 Pro switches to a USB-C connector. This is driven by an EU regulation and provokes a cable challenge for all of us who've owned iPhones for several years with Apple's proprietary Lightning connector. I still remember when Apple changed iPhone connectors back in 2013. We had a bunch of the older 30-pin connectors and had to replace them or buy adapters. Thus we knew what we were in for here. At least this time around the change is to a general standard. Lots of devices use USB-C. Now our iPhones no longer require a special cable. Though we are still having to replace things like the connector cables in our cars. Since it's a move from proprietary to an industry standard, I'm happy to lean into it.

Yesterday I posted about how Hawk and I bought new iPhones (the new 16 Pro) Thursday night. The deal was practically a steal. Verizon and Apple (I assume they're subsidizing it on the back end) offered a whopping $1,000 credit, each, for trading in our old phones. Normally the trade-in value for our older, mid-range phones would be $100 or less.

"Where's the catch?" you might wonder. With an eye-popping deal such as this, there's always a catch. Would it be higher monthly fees? Expensive contracts with long lock-in? Often something that's free up front costs more in the long run. That's how they get you.

We went into this deal very much aware of the ways we might have to pay more for "free" iPhones. To our pleasant surprise, there's really no funny business with Verizon's deal. Yes, we did have to agree to a new service plan with Verizon, and yes it is more expensive than our old plan— but only by a little bit, and we also get more for the money.

Pay More, Get More

The salesman's initial quote for our new monthly bill was a lot higher, almost 50% higher than we're already paying. Aha! That's how they get you. But the salesguy shared an itemized breakdown the moment I asked and answered all my questions without dodging. One big cost increase was coming from paying for a phone insurance plan he stuck in there. I challenged him on that. He defended it, pointing out to us the value of the insurance plan. When we said firmly we don't want it, he took it off the quote with no further discussion.

Paring off the insurance we don't want, the base price of the new plan increases by $15/month. As our old plan was already over $200/mo (for 2 phones plus wireless home internet) this is an increase of less than 10%. And the new plan is better than the old plan. Not by a huge amount, but by a bit. A key difference is that we'll pay no international roaming charges. If we take just one overseas trip a year we'll come out roughly even. (In case you're wondering, "Are you really going to travel that much?" I'll point out that we've taken three foreign trips in the past 10 months.)

I note base price above because we did also choose to buy a few of the add-ons that Verizon offered. Aha! That's how they get you. Except we picked things that were bargains. For $10 per bundle we chose a Disney-Hulu subscription and a Netflix-Max subscription. We already have Disney-Hulu and it costs more than $10/month, so that's a savings right there. And we've been wanting to get Netflix and or Max, but their price at well more than $10/month has made us hold off. So this is another respect in which yes, we are paying more, but we're also getting more.

The X-Factor: A Better Camera

As I wait for my new iPhone to arrive— they have to ship it to me; expected late next week— one thing I'm eager to explore is how well the camera system works. The iPhone 16 Pro has a trick, 3 lens camera. In addition to the standard sorta-wide angle lens there is also a super-wide lens and a moderate telephoto lens. I'll be keen to see what kind of picture quality these produce. I mean, on an absolute scale it won't be as good as I get from my dedicated stills camera, a Fujifilm X-T3, with nice lenses I've invested in. But on a relative scale I expect it'll be close. Close enough that maybe I won't carry a bulky dedicated camera so often when I go hiking? That's what I'm keen to see.

On a hiking trip two weeks ago I broke my hiking pole. (I fell over a waterfall and snapped it in two on the way down!) I started looking for a replacement the next day. Local outdoors stores didn't have the sort of pole I enjoy using, and the nearest REI with one in stock was almost 2 hours away. I decided to order online.

Online I found two poles that seemed like what I want. One's a REI brand pole that's the most direct replacement to, but not an exact replacement, for the one I broke. The other is an ALPS brand pole I found selling on Amazon.

Which is better? I decided after poring over the tech specs that I couldn't be sure until I held them in my hands, so I ordered both. They arrived in the mail last week. I finally had time to unbox them Sunday.

You can see in the picture (right/above) that the two poles are similar in a number of ways. They're both collapsible/telescoping, and they both have rounded handles at the top— instead of the "pistol grip" or ski pole style grip that's more common with hiking poles. This was a key feature to me, as I when I'm using the pole for balance on tricky terrain I like to push straight down with the palm of my hand on the smooth pommel rather push my weight down through a bent wrist grasping a trigger-like handle.

Also, both poles have exterior clamps for locking the telescoping mechanism in place. This is different from the internal locking mechanism my old pole had. I liked the internal mechanism. It was an elegant design, giving the pole a clean profile without knobby bits that catch on a pants leg or tree branch. Alas it seems like no poles use that design anymore. I can only surmise it was more expensive to manufacture, wasn't as durable, or both.

The poles are not exactly the same, of course. The REI hiking pole I selected has an olive green shaft, while the ALPS pole is a neutral gray. I really liked the blue of the pole I lost, but that color isn't offered anywhere. Gray is dull, but I'm really not a fan of the green.

The REI pole is shorter by a few inches when collapsed, as you can see in the photo. That could be a big benefit when packing it in a suitcase for air travel. Among the tests I did Sunday was to lay both poles in our checked airline bag. Even the larger ALPS pole fits fine.

The pommels of the two poles are different. ALPS has rounded wood top, REI has a slightly shaped cork handle. I thought I'd prefer the cork by a lot— my busted pole had a cork handle, and I loved it— but upon trying them out the wood handle seemed. Plus, I salvaged the cork pommel from my old hiking pole... I can unscrew the ALPS pole's wood cap and screw on my old cork pommel!

One little difference that kind of pissed me off is that the REI pole doesn't come with a rubberized foot cap for use on hard surfaces. It's got a chisel point. REI sells foot caps for several dollars extra. The ALPS pole costs half the price of the REI and comes with a foot cap included.

At this point you probably won't be surprised that I chose to keep the ALPS pole and return the REI pole. The main reason was the cost— REI was 2x the price. And the ALPS pole included the foot cap and seemed to have a slightly heavier duty construction. Fortunately, returns are easy with REI. There's a store less than 2 miles from our house. We walked it in there and had a cash-in-hand refund minutes later.