Author Archives: ghotchkiss

Dan Brown Rant

I’ve been surpressing this for a couple weeks now, but I’m threatening to blow a gasket if I don’t do some venting.

Enough with the frigging Da Vinci Code already!

While over in Europe, I fulfilled some lifelong dreams by visiting the Louvre in Paris, as well as Florence and Rome. But everywhere I turned, I kept bumping into adverts for the Da Vinci Code. The Louvre even has it’s own Da Vinci Code tour.

Okay, nothing against Dan Brown. I’ve read the book, as well as Angels and Demons and Deception Point. I enjoyed them. They’re entertaining, but they’re blips on the cultural radar. Mr. Brown is a writer on par with a John Grisham or a Michael Crichton. The plots are mildly interesting, the characters are about as thin as the paper it’s printed on and the dialogue is as stiff as the hard cover. The whole ancient religious sect angle raises it to slightly better than average, but just slightly. There is no justification for this tidal wave of attention that the book seems to be garnering. I thought it was restricted to this side of the Atlantic, but I was sadly disillusioned to see that it’s taken route in Europe as well. Give me a break, Paris, Rome and Florence, you’re better than this!

If you really want to see how this whole angle can be handled masterfully, take a big juicy bite out of some of Umberto Eco’s works. Compared to Foucault’s Pendulum or Name of the Rose, the Da Vinci Code is like a postcard of the original Mona Lisa.

Schmidt Takes a Bite of Apple

Eric Schmidt now sits on the board of Apple, which is leading to a flurry of speculation about what potential partnerships between Google and Apple may be in the offing. So far, the speculation seems to be rather mundane meanderings about integrating Google search technology in iTunes, possible assistance for Google in assembling a suite of apps to compete with Microsoft, and possible entertainment content distribution deals, with Jobs ties to Disney.

To me, the potential lies in the possible creation of power positions on Microsoft’s outposts, rather than assembling the forces for a head to head onslaught on the heavily fortified desk top app market. Even with Apple at their side, Google faces a daunting task in taking on Office with their tremendously entrenched position. At best, I would see them capturing a good percentage of the relatively small “alternative” market, but unless something shifts in market positions, I don’t see them swinging many main stream customers away. These apps are squarely in the pragmatist market, and the customers adverse to the risks inherent in a switch, especially when there will be a seamless upgrade path offered by Microsoft to a live version of Office.

But the cozying up takes on a more interesting dimension when you explore the possibilities beyond Microsoft’s power positions. In the mobile computing world, Microsoft has been struggling to gain market share, and the step from an iPod to a full mobile pc is not that far. Tie that together with Google’s work in creating compelling mobile apps and a web based application matrix and some interesting possibilities present themselves. We’re not far from the horizon where mobile computing starts to replace the desktop. And mobile distribution of entertainment content is rapidly moving through the early adopter stage. A chasm crossing of significant magnitude isn’t far away. I’ve got to believe that Jobs is visionary enough to see this. Apple never managed to beat the Wintel cartel on the desktop, but the hip pocket is a whole new ballgame.

Also of note is what this means for Eric Schmidt himself. Is this move solely for the benefit of Google, or is Eric positioning himself for life after Google? As the Times articles states, this moves him into a pre eminent position as a Silicon Valley power broker, and he has had political aspirations in the past. While Schmidt has done an admirable job in minding the kids at Google, the power triad structure has never been that elegant, leading to questions of its stability.

Whatever the outcome, in the swirl of partnerships that have recently been announced, this emerges as one of the more interesting developments, with some intriguing long term possibilities.

Google as the Connector, not the Creator

The TV biz is the latest to get nervous about Google. Marissa Mayer is currently in the UK, assuaging skittish TV execs who are worried about Google’s muscling in on their turf. Mayer’s message is that Google is a technology company, not a media company.

If you look at the nature of Google’s position, you would realize why it doesn’t make sense for Google to try to churn out content. Google’s point of strength, and the one they should be focusing exclusively on, is to retain it’s position as the preferred connection between users and content. It’s a connector, and as long as it continues to function as such, it’s holding all the cards. Google is the pipeline that the lion’s share of web traffic will pass through, even momentarily. And that’s the beauty of Google’s plan. It doesn’t have to worry about producing content, it can focus on facilitating the connection, and then monetizing that connection.

If you’re a connector, there’s no overhead. There’s none of the costs or headaches involved with producing the content. You just have to point the right way to it, and collect your toll for each head that passes through. It’s clean, it’s simple and it’s tremendously profitable. That’s why Google can afford to cut some pretty sweet revenue sharing splits with current content producers. If they can corner the “connection” market, they can effectively cut out the competition.

If I were the TV execs, it wouldn’t be Google I would be worrying about. It would be the millions of bored teenagers that have a camcorder and nothing better to do in an afternoon than make a stupid video. These are the clips that dominate the all time most viewed videos on YouTube. It may be easy for the established production houses to dismiss this content as amateurish and inconsequential, but these clips are precursors of the democratization of video production, as consumer generated content becomes better and more readily available. Again, it goes back to my view of the deconstruction of tradition distribution control points. Video used to have only a handful of distribution points, so tight partnerships with content creators were possible. The internet is moving the distribution point online and away from the traditional control points, and Google is very wisely trying to grab a big piece of that pie. They can remain agnostic to the source of the content, as long as they can control the access.

The thing that worries me a little is that the execs in charge of the traditional control points don’t seem to realize the magnitude of the change that’s coming. They’re focusing their attention on an easily identifiable but false threat coming from Google, without realizing that the rules of the game are being completely rewritten and the real threat is coming from their own audience.

Life after SEW for Danny Sullivan

First published August 30, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

This Tuesday, a bomb dropped on the search marketing community. It started, as so many stories do now online, with a simple blog post. After 10 years, Danny Sullivan was leaving Search Engine Strategies and Search Engine Watch. Jaws could be heard dropping around the world. Danny is synonymous with both the shows and the site. And ten years is an eternity in this biz. We just always assumed that Danny’s involvement with the two franchises was like bedrock, so permanent you take it for granted. There were others involved–many others–all integral to the success, but make no mistake, this was Danny’s gig. The thought of SEW and SES without Danny just didn’t jive. Within hours, there was a litany of tributes to Danny Sullivan on his blog. It was almost as if a head of state had passed on. We collectively caught our breath and wondered what was next.

By the time you read this, this will no doubt be old news, so I won’t go into the details or reasons of the departure. I’m not really privy to them anyway. What I would like to do instead is look at some of the back history of how Search Engine Watch began, because I think it’s a great Internet story.

A Webmaster’s Guide To Search

One of the things that is wonderful about the Web is how it evens the playing field and creates opportunity. If you’re smart, if you’re a good communicator, and if you’re passionate about something, you can pick your niche and carve out your own slice of celebrity. Danny was all three. In 1996, Danny Sullivan’s notoriety probably didn’t extend much beyond his family and friends, but that was soon to change.

In 1995, Danny left journalism behind to go into Web development. Ironically, that was about the same time I left traditional advertising behind to focus on the Web. Soon, for both of us, we encountered the inevitability of search engines. As sites were developed, Danny recognized the importance of search engines as a traffic source and began experimenting to achieve higher rankings. For four months in 1996, he tweaked and tested codes, achieving some success, and published his findings online, collectively called “A Webmaster’s Guide to Search Engines”. In the next year, it was rebranded Search Engine Watch and started to take up more and more of Danny’s time. It soon became the reference site for a number of nascent search engine optimizers (myself included) and became Danny’s full-time gig, supported by a handful of subscribers. At the end of 1997, it was purchased by Mecklermedia and Danny continued as editor.

The launch of SES

Search Engine Strategies launched from the base of support built by the site. The first show was in November, 1999 in San Francisco. The promo page is still live, if you’re interested. Since then, the show has grown from a few hundred attendees and a handful of exhibitors to attendance in the thousands and a jammed exhibit hall. As I wrote just a few weeks ago, it is the must-see search event.

In the intervening years, Danny has chronicled the birth and growth of an industry. Through the past 10 years, search engines have come and gone, but Danny Sullivan was always there, making sense of an occasionally nonsensical business. He has been the constant. Like I said, he’s bedrock. He’s also a search celebrity, one of the best known names and faces in a region of the online world that has since become a focal point of global interest. You want to know about search? Ask Danny. Major newspapers, magazines and TV networks beat a path to his door. When John Battelle decided to chronicle the history of search for his book, The Search, a long visit with Danny was a no-brainer, and John makes his debt to Danny very clear in the foreword.

The creation of a community

But Danny had no special education, or credentials to become the pre-eminent expert on search marketing. He has a degree, but there’s no Ph.D. of Search. He simply had a passion, a curiosity and a knack for communicating what he found. The Web gave him a voice, and he found his audience. Through the past 10 years, he has never failed that audience. Almost single-handedly, he opened the communication lines between the search engines and Webmasters and helped to create the community that now exists. From his beginning efforts, people like Brett Tabke and Matt Cutts have taken up the torch and continued to keep the communication flowing. Danny Sullivan has taken on the stewardship of what he began, continuing to nurture the SEM community, and there are many who are in his debt.

As I said at the beginning, I don’t know the details of the split between Danny and Incisive Media, and it’s not appropriate that I comment on them. I don’t know what will happen with Search Engine Strategies and Search Engine Watch. But I know that Danny’s passion for search will continue, and it will resurface soon. In a very interesting way, Danny Sullivan and the Internet grew up together, and each has helped in the development of the other. It is a true symbiotic relationship, but in this case, we’ve all benefited, and I hope we all will continue to do so.

SES-SEW without Danny: What the Hell is Going On?

My jaw dropping news of the day is that Danny Sullivan is leaving SES and SEW. He posts his reasons on his blog. In the 7 hours since he made the post, there are already dozens of testimonial comments from the who’s who of the search world.

I won’t really comment further, but it’s somewhat ironic that I just wrote a column about the SES franchise and Danny’s involvement in it.

Danny Sullivan is as much a part of the industry as anyone. The SES/SEW franchise has helped shape the industry. It’s one of the Internet’s great stories, and one that I’m happy I got to see first hand.

Godspeed Danny.  You’ll be missed in one part of our virtual world, but I know you’ll be helping create another.

Gore Impatient about the Speed of Change with Internet Video

Here’s an interesting op-ed piece from MediaPost’s Tobi Elkin on the blurring of the lines between the power of television and the power of the Internet, this time from Al Gore (hey..didn’t he “invent” the Internet in the first place?). It’s not that long, so to save you the hassle of logging in, etc, I’ll just quote the whole article:

So former Vice President Al Gore addressed a group of British TV execs yesterday in Edinburgh, Scotland and told them that while the Internet is a great democratizing force, TV remains the most influential form of media and people should have more control over its programming.

Gore, whose Current TV venture hinges upon participatory/citizen journalism and user-generated video, told the assembled execs that so far, the Web can’t replicate “television’s power,” according to a Reuters report. “Most of what’s happening in the encounter between television and the Internet has been the Internet cannibalizing television,” Gore told the execs.

Gore recommended finding ways to use the Internet to give consumers access to TV and the way it’s programmed. He suggested that citizens can participate in the democratic process by challenging inaccurate comments made by politicians, particularly in TV ads.

Gore noted that while user-generated Web communities and sites are powerful , they don’t reach mass audiences. “You can stream that, forward it, store it, time-shift it, you can do lots of things, but you cannot broadcast in real time to millions of people over the Internet,” Gore told the execs, according to the Reuters report. “The Internet is now creeping into the television domain, but it’s still not creating the change that many anticipate will come.”

Still, YouTube is streaming about 100 million video clips a day, and Current TV reaches nearly 20 million homes; nearly 30 percent of its programming is user-generated.

Is Gore underestimating the power of Web communities and the power of the Web to attract mass audiences? Or is he merely issuing a clarion call to denizens of the Web–all of us–to wake up and make our comments and opinions count? Either way, it’s clear that regular people have the power to create and distribute media and make it matter. I think Gore is looking to put a fire under us to challenge the status quo and en masse, call out politicians–and anyone else, for that matter, who veers from the truth. It’s a good fire to light, and we’re up for the challenge.

Do not, I repeat, underestimate the power of the Web and its denizens. Internet users are capable of calling politicians, and anyone else for that matter, on the carpet–and biting them in the ass.

Tobi Elkin is Executive Editor, MediaPost.

I agree with Tobi. Trying to assess the Internet’s future role in shaping interaction with, and the creation of, television programming is like trying to forecast the effects of a tsunami before it’s begin. We simply have no idea of the forces that are being unleashed here. What Gore is referring to are the first few ripples in what’s to be a full force tidal wave in the next two decades. The whole notion of programming, who controls it, and who calls bullshit on who are all about to be twisted, torn up and reformed in a way we won’t recognize.

The other issue is the Web’s ability to attract an audience. Again, the nature of engagement with video is just being defined. I for one think there are some fundamental issues with how we engage with essentially linear media in a multi-tasking environment, the infrastructure required to deliver high quality video to us, and some pretty basic human-computer interface challenges that have to be addressed. Again, we’re seeing ripple effects, but just below the surface, an earthquake is ready to erupt. Given the nascent stages of this communication channel and how our society is adopting it, the fact that YouTube is streaming 100 million clips a day should be scaring the hell out of someone, rather than prompting Gore to complain about the “creeping” pace of the Internet. This is all about tipping points, and we’re getting very close to one.

If Gore is telling us to wake up to this possibility, then go for it. But it’s way too early to be laying bets here. Still, that said, I do like how Gore is reinventing himself. Between the crusade behind “An Inconvenient Truth” and his awareness of the democratic potential of the Net, he seems to be grasping at the notion of the fundamental reweaving of society’s fabric that’s happening, and the potential to address some apocalyptic issues before it’s too late. He’s going for the big ideas, a refreshing change from the insular navel gazing that seems to characterize much of what’s happening in Washington.

Psst – Want a Hot Spot Paisano?

First published August 24, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Surgeon General’s Warning: Prolonged exposure to the Internet can lead to physical dependency and addiction. Use of the Internet can increase levels of anxiety and reduce attention spans.Hello, my name is Gord, and I’m addicted to the Internet. I didn’t realize I was addicted until I recently spent three weeks in Europe and had to go through withdrawal. But after hanging around hotel lobbies trying to get a hit from a local hot spot, I’ve had to face up to the fact that I can’t kick the habit. I need my broadband, baby!

Fear and Loathing in l’Italia

I didn’t go totally cold turkey. I had my PDA to keep up on e-mails, but it just didn’t give me the rush I was looking for. Here I was, surrounded by the culmination of centuries of artistic achievement, and all I could think about was where my Google hook-up was coming from.

I speak somewhat facetiously, but there’s a lot of truth here. Here’s an online definition of addiction:

    1. Compulsive physiological and psychological need for a habit-forming substance.
    2. The condition of being habitually or compulsively occupied with or or involved in something.

It seems to me that going online qualifies on both counts. There’s no doubt that being online is habit forming. But it goes further than that. I realized in the last 20-plus days that it’s hard-wired into my physiology. Not having instant access was as foreign as not having my right hand.

I use online a lot, mainly to access and assimilate information. I enhance what I see in the real world by researching it online, letting me place it in context for myself. And for the past three weeks, every sense I have has been bombarded to the point of overload by input. Art, history, locations, music, literature, architecture, it was all right in front of me. Paris, Florence, Rome: cradles of civilization that I was standing in the center of, and it was if I couldn’t fully assimilate them, because I didn’t have access to an essential part of my cerebral hardware: the right brain, left brain and “wired” brain.

What’s it worth to you, amico?

The analogy carries even further. Accessing the Internet while traveling in Europe is rather like hunting for illicit substances, in that it can be difficult to find and notoriously expensive. Five euros (a little over six dollars U.S.) for fifteen minutes, thirteen euros for an hour, thirty euros for a day… I have a price list for hot spots around the continent imprinted in my memory.

I wasn’t the only one that went through withdrawal. My wife and two daughters showed similar symptoms, but for different reasons. For me, it was losing a logical and information-gathering extension of myself. For them, it was losing a communication channel. They have adopted e-mail as a primary way of keeping in touch (and instant messaging, in the case of my oldest daughter), and they felt somewhat cut off. This was somewhat demonstrative of the way men and women tend to use the Internet, something I talked about in a previous column.

This is your brain on high-speed

But addictions aren’t always harmful. One could argue that we’re addicted to oxygen. Breathing is certainly habit-forming. So is there anything wrong with developing a strong dependence on the Internet?

One theory that I have is that our brains tend to gear up a notch when we go online. There is so much we do through computers that we have difficulty  maintaining linear thinking when we’re online. Even if we’re focused on one task, there’s the knowledge that there’s e-mail to check, things to look up, a hundred other things that we could be doing. Being online seems to increase our level of both anxiety and distraction, just because it’s so damn useful in so many different ways. Focus is a tough thing to maintain.

We have seen manifestation of this trend in the way people act when online. It’s nothing short of frenetic, skipping all over the page, multi-tasking, grasping information in a hundred little forays around the screen. It’s a different interaction from much of what we do day to day. Is it harmful? I’m not sure, but it does seem to be making permanent changes in the way we learn and communicate.

Anyway, I’m back in the office tomorrow, and will once again have my cerebral cortex plugged back into the Matrix. I’ll be wired again. I guess that’s a good thing, but I’m sure going to miss the espressos, Chiantis and Calabrese salsiccia.

Oh, well, everything in life is a trade-off.

European Vacation – August 22

I have mixed feelings today. We’ve been gone for 3 weeks, and I’m ready to go home. But I’m also sad about ending what has truly been the vacation of a lifetime. This has been a tremendous experience for us all, and each of us fully appreciate it. The experiences and memories have crowded their way into my consciousness, and I feel shell shocked at all we have seen and done.

I am so glad I’ve managed to keep this blog up, mainly written on numerous trains and planes. It has allowed me to keep a running timeline of the trip, and hopefully it will allow be to later slot the right memory in the right place. We have over 1500 photos between us, several hours of videotape, and between the blogs, the video and the pictures, I think we have managed to capture and chronicle the essence of our trip.

We have seen amazing pictures and sights, but for me, it will be people that form the most valuable memory. The generosity of Lina, Gaetan and our families in France, Nathalie negotiating with the French police in Paris, the unexpected hospitality of Didier and Nadine in Montvernier, the bicycle ride with Marc, Gilles and Yves through the French countryside, the sweetness of Gassime and his Nonna housekeeper in Florence, the surliness of the Italian tourists in Sorrento (I didn’t say they were all good memories), the new family I met in Calabria and “Go, go, go Hotchkiss” (which has since become yet another Hotchkiss insider joke) and the professional prowess of the staff at the Hilton in Rome. You know at the end of the Olympics when they flash the highlight reel and you feel a rush of bittersweet feelings (or is that just me)? That’s how I feel as I write this. The memories of the past 3 weeks are flashing through my mind, and it one way it seems like a years worth, and in another, it seems like we just departed yesterday.

It was with sadness that we departed the luxury of the Hilton this morning. Although it’s far removed for our regular lives, it was a sweet taste of luxury for all of us. Flori and Anna left early for one last tour down to Sorrento, Pompeii and Naples (they haven’t seen this part yet) and they’ll be flying back in 3 days. We packed and headed for the airport on a clear, hot Roman morning, Jill, Alanna and Lauren determined to squeeze a little last minute shopping in. We boarded the flight, with several more security checks due to the recent arrests in England, and right now I’m somewhere off the coast of Newfoundland, on my way to Atlanta. We still have a long day ahead, with another 5 hour flight to Portland, then a short hop to Seattle where we have our last overnight, then on to Kelowna tomorrow morning. I doubt I will bother blogging the rest. There’s nothing really exceptional about flying from Portland to Seattle, as nice as both those cities are.

This vacation was a challenge to take. I’ve never taken 3 weeks off before. Thank you to my incredible team at Enquiro for letting me do it with complete peace of mind. But I’m so glad we did. This was more than a vacation. I think for each of us, this changed us in a perceptible and significant way. The memories shared here will continue to build our family foundation. I’ve always wanted to expose my children to the treasures of the world, and this one trip has substantially moved that goal several steps forward.

I’ve also been able to temper my North American ambition with a European appreciation for the moments of life that I think we too often ignore on this side of the Atlantic. There is a balance there that is important, and I’ll be striving to find it more often in our lives. And I have fallen in love with France and Italy. Like all love affairs, the success lies in total acceptance, both of the gifts and faults. There is a lot to love, and a lot to find fault in. But really, the secret is just to enjoy it all, and leave it to stamp its own impression on you, rather than you on it.

Thank you so much, from all my family. We will be back! We’ve already started the planning.

European Vacation – August 21

This was our last full day in Italy, and I wanted to squeeze every last minute from it. Another breakfast at the Executive Club and we talked the shuttle driver into dropping us off close to the Vatican. We arrived just after 8:30, but even then the entrance line up was more than a kilometer long. We had been told it moved quickly though, so we decided to forego the numerous offers of guided tours that would slip us past the lines (at 30 euros per person) and try our luck in the line. It took 90 minutes, but we were in the vast Vatican Museum just after 10 am, 180 euros richer. We rented the little audio guides and started wandering through the massive labyrinth.

There is little on earth to compare with the Vatican Museums. The galleries, loggia and past pope’s apartments are all works of arts in and of themselves. Although busy, the line ups weren’t too bad as we wound our way through room after room, filled with incredible frescoes, statues and tapestries. I spent several minutes in one room, where Raphael himself had painstakingly painted the vivid frescoes on each wall. This was a once in a lifetime experience, that culminated in a crowded trip to the Sistine Chapel. I challenge anyone not to be tremendously impressed with this incredible work of human hands. The only downside..the swarms of Japanese tourists that ignored repeated warnings about taking pictures of the artwork. Inside, I was screaming, “Just take a damned look..you don’t need your picture in front of it! Enjoy the art, for Christ’s sake!” But even I knew these thoughts were better left unspoken, especially considering my current location. I did manage to get my hand in front of the lens on several different shots though, so I left with some sense of satisfaction.

After the museums, we emerged to find the line up had shrunk to a fraction of its former length. A 30 minute wait and you’d be inside. I was beginning to think the horror stories I had heard about 3 and 4 hours in line were just a way for hotels to sell more ridiculously priced tours. After grabbing a quick panini outside the museum, we threaded our way around to St. Peter’s.

There is perhaps no place on earth that has been more successfully designed with one single purpose in mind, and that’s the scare/impress the “hell” out of you, literally. From the famous square to the massive basilica, everything was designed to make you feel tremendously small and insignificant, and it works. We took a quick side trip to the sepulcher of the popes, which I highly recommend. The newly finished tomb of John Paul II was particularly poignant, and several people stopped in front to pray, give thanks and shed a few tears. Everyone accompanying me were raised Catholic (I was raised Anglican) and I could tell this place held a special significance for them.

After, we entered the Basilica. I have visited a few large churches, including Westminster Abbey, but this one topped them all. The sheer scale by itself makes it unforgettable, but add to this the sacred art, footballs fields of marble (remember, pretty much all pilfered from the Palantine palaces), Michelangelo’s amazing dome and the precious metals adorning every inch and this is a visit that overloads all the senses. A visit to St. Peter’s leaves you feeling awestruck and slightly battered.

We physically couldn’t take in one more thing, so we caught a taxi back to the hotel and rested up for a night visit back to Rome. This time, we tried out the pool and I attempted a visit to the fitness center. To be honest, my heart wasn’t really in it (and my gall bladder was rebelling against too much rich food) so I wrapped up by joining the rest by the pool.

We headed back into Rome at about 8 at night, and tried to complete our “seen it, done it” list, as well as pick up a few souvenirs for home. In rapid succession we did the Trevi Fountain and threw our coins in, the Spanish Steps (and climbed to the top), the Pantheon and the Piazza Navone. As we walked from one to the other, we found crowds at each, migrating between them following the same route we did. Perhaps it was the length of the day, perhaps it was the miles our feet had put in, perhaps it was just sensory overload, but I don’t think we fully appreciated this “postcard” tour of Rome. We wrapped up at the Piazza Navone and went back to the hotel to pack. There was one appropriate moment though. As we waited for the girls at the Trevi Fountain outside one of the endless blur of souvenir shops, we listened to someone sing Arrividerci Roma at an outside Ristorante. It was a perfect finishing note to the trip.

European Vacation – August 20

“Oh my god, that’s not a bed, that’s a religious experience!”

It has been a long time since my last good sleep, but something about the several hundreds of  dollars of bed linens (the Hilton sold them, and supplied us with a price list in the room. One pillow went for 300 euros!) and a mattress that defies imagination seemed to do the trick. I could happily have spent the rest of my life in that bed.  But today, we had Roma to explore, so I dragged myself from the comfy confines.

As Jill and the kids were getting ready, I explored the room for a bit. Thank God for Hilton Points, because this would never be a hotel that we could ever stay at on our own tab. Prices in the mini bar started at 10 euros for a small bottle of water. Room Service breakfasts started at about 50 euros per person. The bottle of Spumante supplied by the hotel was also 50 euros. And the rooms we were in went for almost 900 euros a night at rack rate. This was not a hotel for the economically challenged.

First  stop, the Executive club room for breakfast. It proved to be as delicious as last night’s supper, with fresh fruit, real eggs and bacon (a rarity on the continent), along with the staples of hotels breakfasts we had become used too, cold cuts and cheese, breads and pastries. The hotel also offered champagne to accompany the freshly squeezed orange juice. This was dangerously addicting!

After breakfast, we caught the hotel shuttle down close to the train station, with was also the main transit plaza in Rome. Rome operates an open air tourist bus called the A110 Trambus, which did a circuit of the major attractions. Our plan was to get tickets, do the full circuit and then get off close to the Colosseum and the Palatine Hill.

On the shuttle, we met another family from Minnesota and Toronto who had a similar plan. We waited in line for the bus and finally climbed aboard one ready to do the circuit. The bus hit the major stops, including the Piazza Venezia (close to the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, the Palatine Hill and Circus Maximus), Vatican City and St. Peter’s, the Trevi Fountain and assorted other monuments and ruins. After doing the complete circuit, we got off and the Piazza Venezia, the main heart of Rome, and started off for the Colosseum. After seeing a rather imposing line up, and learning that we could get on a guided tour and skip for line for 9 euros per person, we decided to go this route. The tour guides were supposed to be English speaking, but we got a native Roman who spoke with a rather thick accent and who’s primary English “go to” phrase appeared to be “okey dokey”. Still, it was interesting, although it was insufferably hot (about 38 degrees Celsius). We did the tour, then exited the Colosseum for the second half, a tour of the Palatine hill with another guide, this time an Australian named Amanda.

In my opinion, the Palatine Hill was the more interesting of the two. Amanda seemed to be the reincarnation of Mary Poppins but she was understandable and had a lot of interesting facts to share. Lauren whispered that she must have been a kindergarten teacher and I suspect she was right.

A quick background on the Palatine Hill. It seems to have been the founding location of Rome, one of the seven hills that formed the early city, and the one that legend says was chosen by Romulus himself for his new home. From that day, it was the location of most of the imperial palaces, just up from the Forum, which was the heart of the ancient city. In every major language, the word for palace is derived from “Palatine”. Left to fall into disarray in the middle ages, most of the marble that formed the facades of the huge palaces was looted for the construction of the Vatican, a practice that has left just a few crumbling ruins and foundations of the once mighty location. Still, it offers a fascinating glimpse of the excesses that eventually led to the downfall of the Roman Empire. Huge dining halls next to the aptly named vomitorium (not a myth, but a real practice), private stadiums for gladiator games, massive living quarters cooled by adjacent fountains, this was “La Dolce Vita” at its extreme. As we wondered around the ruins, picturing what once was, I was struck again by the embarrassment of historic riches that typifies Rome. As Amanda was talking in one section, a few of the group sat on the first available seat they could find. In this case they chose a toppled roman marble column that had to be 2000 years old. In any other city in the world, this would be a priceless treasure locked behind glass in a museum. Here, it was a handy park bench.

I couldn’t help but think about the lifestyles that typifies the rise and decline of the Empire. In the beginning, guided by the ambition and astuteness of Julius and Augustus Caesar, the empire flourished. But as lands were conquered and slaves become plentiful, the Romans no longer had to work and the culture fell into a several century long downward spiral of boredom, excess and senseless gratification. The stratification of the society became extreme, with the highest classes (noble families, senators) living in unimaginable luxury and the slaves being considered a renewable resource to be used and discarded as they lost their usefulness. In between, there were the Plebians, the Roman citizens that were entitled to the privileges (i.e. not having to work) that came with their birthright, but who were perpetually stuck to the “cheap seats”. It was for this class that the Colosseum was built. The more bored they became, the more potentially dangerous they became as lawlessness took hold. The solution was to provide a never ending cycle of festivals and celebrations, entertainment (like the gladiator games), complete with free food and wine. Of course, this lower class was well separated from the higher class, restricted to the upper most levels of the Colosseum.

Another interesting insight was to realize the lowered status of women in Roman society. They were basically possessions, with no rights and little status in society. Of course, this is not that different from our society as recent as a 100 years ago.

Somewhere, there’s an interesting line to be drawn from these roots of Italian culture to the attitudes of today, but I lack the expertise or knowledge to be the one to do it.

By the time we wrapped up our tour of the Palatine hill and walked down through the remains of the Forum, we were exhausted and hungry. We turned a nearby corner and grabbed a quick dinner at a nearby trattoria, then caught the metro back to our shuttle stop to return to the hotel.

At the hotel, we grabbed a shower, then resumed our place in the Executive club for a late night drink and dessert  Tonight, we managed to grab a table out on the balcony overlooking the pool, where we could hear the poolside pianist and sipped a glass of wine as we watched the lights twinkle down below in Rome. A perfect night cap.