greetings from rome

if there is one thing i learned in law school, it is that one who studies for months and takes a bar exam has a constitutional right to take a vacation immediately following. if that bar exam happens to be california or new york, that vacation may, at the test-takers option and at no additional charge, be upgraded to a trip to europe.

i am cashing in on that law right now, as john and i are on day 7 of a 10 day trip to italy; 3 days in venice where we stayed here; www.hotelbernardi.com, 2 in florence where we stayed here; www.johanna.it, and now 5 in rome at this funky place; www.the-beehive.com. i researched a ton so i'm not surprised, but still happy to report, that all 3 places we've stayed have been excellent; super friendly, great locations, perfectly clean, unique, and amazing rates, to boot.

i am presently using a euro-keyboard and cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to make capital letters on this screwy keyboard, and can barely figure out how to access the punctuation marks, so please bear with me for the 'flat' tone of these things. also, all the blog commands are in italian, and some appear to be missing, so i can't even figure out how to upload photos or even make links that don't show, so please also pardon the messy looking blogs. i'll see what i can do to clean it up and add some photos when we get home.

note to anyone who is thinking of traveling to europe, italy in particular, in this shoulder/'off' season; we highly recommend it. the weather could not be more perfect- not rainy nor too hot- and there are a zillion tourists but only a fraction if what will come in the next few months. oh, and the hotels are slightly cheaper than peak season. viva italia in march, we say.