Roman Hotel

The Best Western Hotel Mondial on via Torino was picked from the internet based on published ratings, that it was close to the train station and that it was a Best Western property. Close to the train station is subjective, as it is about 800m – not bad if you are just walking, but pulling two rolling suitcases and carrying back packs, walking over cobblestone roads, it took us 25 min to get to the hotel. 

The outside is nondescript, looking much like the rest of the street side buildings, but once inside we were in for a treat. The lobby is tastefully decorated and the front desk staff very friendly. During the course of our stay, we heard them speaking no less than six different languages to guests and on the phone. The elevator says it can hold four people, but those four need to be very friendly to ride rather than walk. If you have bags, two people with luggage could fit, but not much more. 

Their ‘Continental Breakfast’ consisted of a buffet of scrambled and boiled eggs, cold cuts, a variety of breads, cereals, cheeses, jams, jellies, plain and fruit-flavoured yoghurts, coffee, tea, three kinds of fruit juices, and milk.

The lounge area was filled with very comfortable and relaxing couches and chairs, and it was suggested that we might enjoy eating dinner in these surroundings. The food was mediocre at best, with the exception of the tiramisu, which was no less than superb.
Overall, if we were to go back to Rome, we would stay here again. It was comfortable, convenient, clean, and the staff were absolutely fantastic.

The guest rooms are small by North American standards, but average size for European standards, with 4m ceilings and enough room for a king sized bed – just. The room was very clean and the bathroom was huge. We found the pillows to be very thin on filling, but doable if you double them over.

€95/ night

Best Western Hotel Mondial
Via Torino 127
Ph: 39 06.472.861
Fax: 39 06.482.4822
http://www.hotelmondialrome.com/en/

Politics Down Under

I recently read an article about Australian style politics that sounded like it would be so good for the Canadian public that there would be no way possible that Beloved Leader Harper would ever endorse it for the Harper Government, but if the other parties emulated Australia’s Federal laws, it may well change how Canadians vote.

Consider that currently in Canada, you can pay your $1 - $25  and be a member of the Federal XXXX Party which gives you the right to cast your vote for the leader of the Federal XXXX Party. If the Federal XXXX Party wins more seats than their closest rival, the leader you helped pick, becomes the Prime Minister of Canada until the next election or leadership convention when the process is repeated. The Prime Minister has no responsibility other than to a) the riding where s/he was elected, and b) … well… there is no b).

As Emperor Harper has demonstrated, this is HIS show (e.g.: directions to the caucus, backbenchers, and the media to call the “Canadian” Government, the “Harper” Government), and if you step out of line your political career is in significant jeopardy. People loose cabinet postings, backbenchers are ignored during question period, and private members bills are tabled for decades. Follow Harpers rules, and be awarded a cabinet post with extra pay, staff, a real office, a travel budget, and tons of other perks,

 

In Australia, the party leader is chosen by those with party seats in the House. After all, they are elected as the people’s spokespersons at the Federal level, so they are allowed to speak and choose who the appropriate person is to lead the party. No need to waste millions of dollars on a leadership convention when you only have to ask the elected MPs for that party. If this were the case in Canada, King Steve 1 would HAVE to play nice with the backbenchers in order to retain his throne. Dismissing them as mere peons (or is that pee-ons?) may well see votes being cast in the direction of an elected MP who (gasp!) listens to the people chosen by the people.

Gaius Julius Caesar ignored his backbenchers and Roman history speaks for itself (15 March 44 BCE) when Marcus Junius Brutus, Tillius Cimber, Servilius Casca, Brutus Albinus, Gaius Trebonius, (and 55 others) made their point 23 times at point blank range.

Would we see the PMO with a revolving door? Possibly but in my opinion, that is better than the Harper oligarchy we have currently in place, and cleaner than the option executed by Marcus Brutus and his friends.

Worst Customer Service award goes to...

HSBC Mastercard Customer “Service”.

Anybody who has grown up on a farm or in a farming community knows what ‘servicing’ means. HSBC Mastercard has taken the agricultural meaning and applied it to the phone support area of their business.

We have learned over the years that if you don’t let them know, then their security people will tag the out-of-country activity as "unusual activity on the card", or at least suspicious and suspend transactions until they can confirm the identity of the card user;  therefore we called HSBC to let them know that we would be out of the country for three weeks and that the credit card would be used far away from the areas that we would normally access their services: we even provided them with an itinerary of where we would be travelling when.

The 35 minutes on hold waiting for the less-than-competent customer ‘service’ agent was a GREAT start to the day as we had felt truly “serviced” for being kept on hold so long and the recording telling us we needed to go their website to resolve issues. When the agent finally did grace us with the honour of answering the phone, she had to be provided with the information – twice – then insisted that we provide her with an email address or cellphone number “in case there is unusual activity on the card”. The agent could not understand that we were calling HSBC to let them know SPECIFICALLY that there would be "unusual activity on the card" because the card would be in Europe, and not in Northern BC. A frustrating, circular, argument to say the least.

Our concept of a vacation is to leave everything electronic at home – no computer, no cell phone, not even digital music. We are taking a camera with two 32Gb memory cards, but that is the extend of anything with even a battery attached. I don’t even where a watch.

After explaining that we travel without communication devises, the agent still insisted on an email address that we were to check on a daily basis just in case HSBC has to get in touch with us because “… all you have to do is find an internet café in each city you are in …”.  I can only surmise that this agent has never taken a vacation or thinks taking a vacation means being tied to the internet.
We finally decided to risk it and head out on our vacation, untethered to electronic forms of communication despite the insistence of HSBC Customer “Servicing” Department.