Well, it's a long trip. Today Beth's first words were, "Two more weeks". I'm sitting here looking at the room and what a total mess it is and, if we hadn't picked up and moved out as many times as we have in the past 3 weeks, I think I would be nervous. It doesn't look like we'll be able to get all this stuff into the small bags we have and get out of here to catch the 10:30 train. I'll let you know.

The Firenze SMN Station.

We got on our train and who do we find sitting in our seats but these two...

"Turn it up loud captain!"

It looked as though they had traveled quite some distance to go to some Heavy Metal concert. They had their Megadeath and God's of Metal T-shirts on and they looked brand new. Except for one brief moment when dude got up to make a call they sat like, this and a few other variations, for 3 hours.

Beth workin' the phone list.

First real mistake of the trip. While Beth and I are listening to The DaVinci Code she panics. "Oh no! I left my new sweatshirt on the bed back at the hotel." Very much NOT like Beth to do that. Mark Nunn taught her well about how to move out of yet another Motel 6 every day on tour back in the day. Somehow we slipped. Since we had gotten an Italian phone card for my "gucci" world band phone we were able to call the hotel from the train and have the sweatshirt shipped to Dublin where we'll pick it up at the end of our trip in a couple of weeks... oh yea... a couple MORE weeks, hard to imagine.

Front gate at The Beehive, they "buzz" you in to a secure front garden,
a surveillance video camera is mounted on the wall.

We made it to The Beehive!

Our first impression. We love it.

The Beehive is a small friendly hotel/hostel (both private rooms and what they call the Dorm Room with bunk beds for "the kids"). The first thing you see... OK the first thing WE saw as we walked in the front door, the receptionist is using a white iMac G4, you know, the ones on a stick. Of course, I'm standing there wearing a T-shirt from the Apple Store opening in Burlingame and immediately I get a smile on my face.

They also have a "cat in residence" named Ingmar. Ingmar is not allowed in the guest rooms because of the possibility of the next guest being allergic to cats but other wise it's pretty apparent this cat runs the place.

In the downstairs "café", (count the Macs), oh and free 802.11!

This place has an attention to detail that I've been missing here in Europe so far. Face it, you come to see Europe for the ancient architecture and historical works of art, but most of the places we stay in are barely keeping up with 20th century sensibilities. Here's a few examples of tiny details that make a big difference.

Shelves. The London Bathroom was a joke, here, there are all kinds of useful shelves and amenities.

Ideas. In Belfast they are still trying to figure out WHY you would come visit them. The Beehive has a book that tells you all the places THEY like in Rome.

Hooks. In Dublin the room was nice but there was no place to hang anything. Hooks on the wall in your room for your towel and even a coat rack and umbrella holder in the lobby.

Service. In Paris we left our Key at the front desk and yet, THEY left it at the front desk with the front door open when we came back after 11PM one night. Here, 24 hour receptionist!

Map. If Beth and I weren't as good as we ARE with maps we would still be wondering around the streets and alleys of Venice. The Beehive gives you a "Beehive City Map" with "home base" marked for you. :-)

Pillows. Is it really that hard to give me a few extra pillows. You should have seen the two crap pillows we had in Florence. The Beehive has big fluffy comfy pillows, 4 of them.

Another attention to detail, look how the two tile themes line up in a door jam at the top of the stairs.

The decor and styling and workmanship is great. It is no wonder why they get so many repeat customers. This is the ONLY place we have stayed that I would recommend to a friend without reservation.

After checking out The Beehive we needed a quick bite. We decided to put their "Things we Like" book to the test and go for a slice of pizza. Worked great, the pizza was great, and close and we will probably go back.

Pizzeria del Secolo, a winner from "the book"

And now for the rest of our day... Rick Steves Rocks. If you haven't heard of Rick Steves you don't have a TV. He spends 4 months out of the year researching and shooting shows for PBS about how to travel in Europe in a low cost and interesting way. Seeing the back streets and seeing Europe more like a local then a tourist.

In his Rome 2005 book he has a tour recommendation called "Night Walk Across Rome". It was great. We started by taking a bus to the Campo de' Fiori, a square where there is a statue of a guy that was heralded as a free thinker... I like those guys.

Fiori means flower, and you can tell that during the day there are a lot of flower venders. Rick's book recommends a slice of "pizza bianco" from a place called Forno's. We liked it so much we went back for another slice but they had closed at 8PM.

Not the bus we took but this one reminded me of Tom Mellado, :-) Just kidding.

Then it was a short stroll to Piazza Navona. This place, in the evening hours is great. Not to hot and chocked full of vendors and entertainers.

Crazy busy in this square.

The fountains here, and many other places in Rome, are naturally powered. That is to say they are HUNDREDS of years old and powered by the gravity of the aqua ducts that the Romans built like... uh... a long time ago.

Beth, a bunch of naked guys in the fountain, and me.

Again, as per the Rick Steves book, we got a gelatto at a recommended place, sure enough... it was great.

Remember I told you about all the cockroach street vendors in Florence, well either they followed us to Rome or there is a whole secret brotherhood of them. Piazza Navona must have had, 20 of these guys, mostly selling fake purses. This time I was able to get a blurry snap of them scattering when the police came by. I'm pretty sure I saw the cops throwing a bunch of confiscated fake purses into a garbage truck but, like Florence, SECONDS after the cops past they were already staking out a new place to lay there stuff down.

Scurry like a rat, with a fake designer bag that is.

After "fake bag square" we headed to the Pantheon. Seriously old building, predates St. Peters by over a THOUSAND years and it's amazing. The geometry alone in the Pantheon is hard to fathom for people without computers or industrial machinery. You can't tell how big it is in this photo but I think the columns are 40 feet tall

The dome is as high as it is wide – 142 feet from floor to rooftop and from side to side. To picture it imagine a basketball sitting in a wastebasket so that it just touches bottom.

I got news for you, I tried to make a square box once, with power tools and everything... I failed. This thing is really impressive. I can't wait to see the inside. Remember, it's 1800 years old.

Pantheon at dusk.

OK... the Romans dig their obelisks... but I guess, once you figure out how to spell it, you may as well build a few. Turns out a lot of these are stolen from the Egyptians. Rome has more obelisks then any other city. This one below is less then 100 yards from another one.

Yet another Obelisk.

Next was Trevi Fountain. Not that old, it was built in 1762, 200 years before I was born, and was built to celebrate the reopening of the aqua duct which supposedly powers it.

Chris teaching some kid to put his camera on a pillar to steady it to get a better night shot.

A business idea dawned on me at the fountain, perfect for an entrepreneurial soul who wants to live in Rome. Get a good digital camera and some nice flashes... more then one to do a good job. Figure out how to take a GREAT photo of a couple in love in front of the fountain at night.

Set up a monitor so people can see how great they look immediately after you take the photo, you'll need a camera that can be controlled by the computer like the Canon D1. Then take photos and give people a business card with a URL on it, that's all you do. The web site is set up to sell them prints but otherwise the image has a watermark on it.

All you have to do is be gregarious and get people to take a photo in your cool set up that does a great job. They get to decide later if they want the photo. If you do a great job, they'll want to buy it.

Beth's Trevi Fountain, and WE have a wide angle lens.

After Trevi Fountain we headed to the Spanish Steps. We were to tired to take any good photos so we called it quits, after all, we started the day in Florence. The problem now was getting back to The Beehive. In Rome, the Metro only has two lines. Luckily one was right next to the Spanish Steps. However... the metro stopped running before we got there.

We took a good look at the map and decided to just go for it and walk. It was no more then two miles and if we had gotten even slightly lost, we would have gotten a cab. As you can tell by this post... we made it "home" ok.

Ingmar was holding down the fort.