Roman Holiday - Biking on Appian Way

Our Roman holiday last November was more than churches, ruins, we also went biking, outdoor, on the Appian Way, on the last full day Rome. 

The Appian Way (Via Appia) is one of the earliest and most strategic Roman roads, built starting in 312 BC by Appius Claudius Caecus to connect Rome to Brindisi. It was designated as UNESCO World Heritage site. Today, at least portion of it near Rome serves as a park, an open air museum and bike trail.

After visiting the Forum at Rome, we took a bus from city center to the outskirt of Rome, and rented Bikes at Appian Way Tours & Bike Rental. I rented an electric bike, the rest of the group, mountain bikes. In total we biked about 2.3 hours for 10 miles (16km), including stops at a Castle, ruins, and waiting for a herd of goats to cross the trail,

Right out of the rental shop, there is a long uphill road - Lily did not gain initial speed when entering this section, she had to push the bike up. I, on the other hand, with the assistance from the electric motor, had no problems, easily passing everyone

Lily had to push the bike up 

Mausoleum of Maxentius

Passing through the regional Appian Way park, the first stop was, Mausoleum of Maxentius,  an open field with some ruins in it. We snapped a couple pictures and moved on. The trail then, becomes cobble stone paved, uneven, but not too bad. The second stop was Mausoleum of Cecilia Metella,  which is a Cylindrical-shaped mausoleum for a Roman consul's daughter decorated with a marble frieze. We got off our bikes, and paid for the entrance to go inside to take a look.

There is continuous playing a documentary in the basement of the tower. The daughter in the documentary told her story in the documentary. We then looked at the other side of complex. There is a basement there, where the consul's tomb is, and a documentary is playing continuously as well. It is the consul to tell his story, how he rose up in the rank, became top official for the area, and his eventual demise.

We also watched a VR movie about the history of the building complex, and Appian Way.

I don't remember any details.

stop for a museum

Our third stop was another ruin, we planed to visited. Unfortunately, it was closed for renovation,

looking inside through a bar wire fence

Beyond that point, the trail (road) becomes very rough, the fillers between cobble stones were washed away, the surface is so bumpy, we avoided the roadway, and biked on the walk path formed on either side of the bumpy road. 

By now, we were in rural area, open land on both side of the Appian way, trees, meadows, and some farmland.  When road surface was more manageable, at one point,  we were stopped by a herd of goats crossing the road. This was a welcome break for me, a change of activity from cycling to watching, from active pedaling to stand still.

When we reached 5 mile distance, we decided to turn around, in order to return the bikes before the rental shop closes. Right then I heard pleasant bird chirps, I looked and looked, finally spotted the small bird on a stump, it was an European Robin!

European Robin

Rough trail, open space, fresh air, and wildlife, it was a respite from staled air, mummies, tombs in the churches and ruins. 

Bird Watching Notes

 Some interesting things to note about bird watching recently.

New Bird Species 

In addition to a new species of bird - straw headed bulbul, 200th bird species on my bird watching list, whose chirps intrigued me for a few years, I added two more new species to my list since.

One was Asian openbill stork, which I saw and identified on Thursday evening, during the beautiful sunset at Echo lake. I saw this waterfowl before, but mistaken it as juvenile painted stork. 

Asian Openbill Stork

Another bird of mistaken identity from me was Yellow bittern, which  I thought was nigh heron for some time, even though I noticed that it was somewhat different from night heron. On Thursday, yes, the same day as that for Asian Openbill Stork, I used Google lens to check its identity, and found out what it really was.

yellow bittern

These two are 201th, 202th bird on my list respectively.

Admittedly these two birds are not new even to me, I just mistaken them as other birds. The true new birds species are Common Hoopoe, and Straw-Headed Bulbul.

Birds outside my window

It was raining on Chinese New Year's day. I heard bird chirps and looked from my window, and spotted a few blue throated bee eaters. I saw the birds before quite a few times but not around my home. I took out my big lens and captures a few interesting photos. With the big lens, I took sharp and high resolution photos of the bird!

One photo showed two blue throated next to each other, seems to be double vision of the camera. In fact, it was purely a coincident. I was trying to have a flying bird and a perching bird in the same photo, and pushed the shutter release button a fraction of a second late!

Blue throated bee eater - look carefully, you might see streaks of rain drops

Double vision?

Photography technique improvement

Using continuous shooting for moving object is a common practice and I can now use it intuitively. Here is a gif made from continuous shootings

Manual focus was a technique I practiced on at home.  I got a chance to use the technique at the moment of the need.

A couple weeks ago, when we walked at Echo lake area, I saw a couple of photographers aimed there cameras at an area with fallen leaves. One person told me there were two night jars in the area. One was close to the trail path, the other was deep into the woods, and hard to focus on. After a few tries, I decided to use manual focus, and got a good shot! I was very pleased with the outcome, and pad myself on the back.

Can you see the night jar?

Straw-Headed Bulbuls

During this morning's run at Singapore Botanic Garden Gallop extension, I heard this uniquely beautiful bird song, I hear it many times before, but have never seen the birds. So I stopped running, and looked to the direction of the sound, I saw 3 or 4 birds in a tree. One of them, a bit smaller, was a yellow vented bulbul, the other three I could not tell. They were hopping from branch to branch. Two of them flew away shortly. It was hard to take picture, so I just aimed my phone camera (3x zoom) at the birds, and took a few pictures.

One bird was bigger, another was a bit smaller. I assume the bigger one was male, and the smaller one was female or a juvenile. The features of the birds I saw, brownish plumage, stripped chest, white throat, dull yellow head, and greenish tail.

Straw Headed Bulbul - male

Straw Headed Bulbul - female or juvenile 

They turned out to be Straw-Headed Bulbul - initially IDed with Google Lens, and cross checked with eBird and Birds of Singapore. 

Straw-headed bulbul, is a species of songbird in the bulbul family,  critically endangered songbird prized for its melodious song, faces heavy trapping in Southeast Asia. While populations in neighboring regions have declined, Singapore remains a vital stronghold. Globally the population is ~ 1700, and Singapore has 1/3 of it. This explains why I heard Straw-Headed Bulbuls songs frequently.

The straw-headed bulbul is the 200th bird species of my recorded sightings. A mystery solved, a milestone reached on this Sunny morning. 

Notes

1. Some of the other pleasing bird chirps at the Botanic Garden include -  magpie robin, yellow vented bulbul, white crest laughingthrush. In fact it was the first time I saw the white crest laughingthrush at the Garden.

2. Sometimes I mixed up the chirps by white crested laughingthrush  and that by Straw-headed Bulbul. That's I mistaken straw-headed bublbul's song as white crested laughingthrush's

                                                                Magpie Robin 

Yellow Vented Bulbul Song

 White Crest Laughingthrush song

                                                

Sanya of Hainan Island

Sanya, located on the southernmost tip of China's Hainan Island, is a tropical resort city. We went there at the end of January 2026 for 3 full days,  joining my siblings and families, as a pre Lunar New Year trip. We primarily visited 3 major attractions there - West Island, Sanya Nanshan Cultural Tourism Zone, and Luhuitou (aka Deer Looking back) Park. I also watched bird when chances arose.

We stayed at the well-known, and maybe also infamous, Big Tree Residence Hotel, which by itself, is a tourist attraction. The hotel complex has 9 buildings, all in the shape of giant trees, standing by the Linchun River. They look unique and beautiful, especially when we looked at them from a short distance way from a bridge over the river. Close up look was not shabby either. That's the end of the good things we can say about it. 

The hotel complex is one of the "rotten tail" projects in China, while not officially abandoned in the traditional sense, it faces low occupancy, and is poorly managed. The building A we stayed had a foul smell due to drainage related issue at the basement parking lot, among other issues - balcony was not completed for one sibling's room,  crumbled walls/ceilings in some sections - closed to guests.

View of the Big Tree Hotel from Linchun River Bridge

A close up look

A close up of a building

West Island of Sanya 

It is small island offshore from the main island, about 15 minute away by ferry. The island's east side beach is highly commercialized with numerous restaurants, shops. There are many man made decorations along the beach, which make stroll along the beach more interesting. We basically walked the full east side beach. We were stopped at Turtle beach due to lack of trail going further, that's also natural beauty start to shine.

colorful hat shaped umbrella

After the turtle beach - where there were no wild turtles, but some in a sanctuary, we had to take a shuttle to get to the southern tip through an overpass by the cliff. There is tiny hilly islet, at the southern end of  west island, connected to the West island through a pedestrian bridge. There is a golden ox on hill top, and a paifang (i.e. ceremonial archway). Looking around, rock shoreline, trees and crystal clear water feasted the eyes! Best natural beauty of West Island is here. 

We had lunch at a beach side restaurant with organic shaped open windows, and visited the Library at sea.

windows with views

 

Library at Sea

Sanya Nanshan Cultural Tourism Zone

This zone has beautiful beach, Nanshan Temple and the 108 meter high 3 face statue of Guanyin in the sea. The beach is rocky near the temple, and sandy near the giant statue. The temple was constructed in 1995, the Statue was a recent construction as well, built in 2005. 

Chinese tourists were mostly congregated at the the Giant Statue, there was few people away from it. Fewer people at beach, or in the mountain. So in the crowded tourist attraction, there are small oases here and there to enjoy peace and nature. 

hill of longevity

The right hand of Guanyin

Luhuitou (Deer Looking back)

Luhuitou is a hilly peninsula, facing the sea on three sides, the other side facing Sanya downtown business district - where high rises and nature inspired skyscrapers reside. The hill top is 181 meters tall. After two day extensive hiking, the group decided to take it easy, rented a chauffeured VIP motor cart, which drove us to the top of the hill to enjoy the scenery, and picked us up again when we decided not walk downhill anymore. It also had other perks - free photo shot at the Luhuitou Sculpture, tea/coffee and local snack by the sculpture. It was the first time for us to enjoy such luxury sightseeing.

Bird Watching

Despite going with the group, I managed to spot and to take pictures of birds. The birds were mostly tropical birds which I saw before. I did spot new specie bird to me: I heard a unique bird chirp which I never heard before, I looked at the direction the chirp coming from, and saw nothing. I patiently looked from different angles, and finally my eyes adjust to the tree shads and saw this bird with a large crest, and I walked around and get to its backside - there were color strips on it back - it was a common hoopoe!

common hoopoe @ Nanshan

A family of Geese @ Nathan

magpie robin - same as that in Singapore

Egret at Lichun River

olive back sunbird - Luhuitou

Overall Sanya is a great place to visit especially in winter dry season - not hot during the day, cool at night. Beautiful scenery, variety of water activities  (snorkling, scub diving, kayaking, swimming ...) ...

Not the true outdoor, but more park like - comparable to Singapore.

Notes - 

1. Other notable places at Sanya we visited - Tianya Haijiao - large boulders by the beach, another beaches are Da Dong Hai, Xiao Dong Hai. All have crystal clear water - good for wading in the sea, and watching the sea.

large crowd at the Tian Ya boulder - no difference from other boulder but have the carved words

Haijiao boulder - photo edited to remove people

2. An notable food place is Huo Che Tou Seafood Market- where we bought live seafood to have a restaurant to cook for us