I’ve wanted to visit Rome for a long time — since high school when I learned about it in Mr. Thompson’s Latin class, really. But I’d never been — there aren’t a ton of reasons to get there for work, and I’d never been on holiday either.

But a couple of weeks ago, I got a chance to go for a few days of vacation there, prior to a visit to our Paris office and attending the Monaco Media Forum. Thanks to my mom being kind enough to visit, Kathy was able to go as well, so we got to spend a fantastic 4 days together exploring Rome.

I have a lot of different reactions to Rome — but the main one is that it feels like 4 or 5 different, distinct cities that all happen to be located in the same place. There’s Ancient Rome, of course, and Catholic Rome (and the Vatican) — and Renaissance Rome (including the home of the Medicis) and modern, International Rome. These are all related to each other, naturally (for example, the Popes underwrote much of the Renaissance work) — but just felt really distinct to me — a little more than I expected. (There are also some interesting monuments to Italian nationalism built earlier in the 20th century, celebrating people like Vittorio Emmanuel II, first king of a united Italy.)

In some parts of Rome, the various periods collide in interesting ways — the Pantheon, for example, has functioned more or less continuously since being built by Agrippa in the first century BC (and then rebuilt in the 2nd century AD) — it’s now a Catholic church, but also is where Vittorio Emmanuel is buried, not to mention Raphael — and is of course, despite being nearly 2,000 years old, the largest concrete dome in the world.

I found the Pantheon to be incredible — there’s something about the proportions of the building that make it feel incredibly stable — there’s a rightness to it that’s incredibly compelling. (I think the iconic status of the place plays into that, but it’s not just that.)

And the Roman Forum and the structures of the emperors on the Palatine hill were amazing, of course. There’s something about being able to walk through the forum, to walk through Domus Augustana (the villa that the Flavians built), and just try to imagine what it looked like, what it felt like, how life must have been. I’d always heard the aphorism: “Augustus found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble,” but not really internalized what that meant — as you walk around the Palatine & the Forum, you get a sense — many of the buildings have small holes in them — where the metal hooks had been that had previously held the marble facing for buildings (and that metal was eventually melted down to make ammunition, centuries later, naturally).

The permanence of the ancient buildings is astounding, and — especially taken with the incredible Colosseum, and the remnants of the aqueducts nearby — really hammers home the point that this civilization, for all its obvious faults, really knew what it was doing. Their level of building, planning, administration, and just general control of civic life was unprecedented, and incredible.

Of course, the next question you’re faced with is this: what the hell happened? We know, of course, with hindsight that what happened was invaders from the North, and the middle/dark ages, and the plague, and a shift of power to Constantinople in the East. But, really, it took a thousand years after the fall of Rome to start to approach the level of competence of the Romans again.

What a remarkable thing. I think most of us think of history as a more or less one direction proposition: progress. (We can debate for a while whether, you know, tending to virtual fish & farms is, strictly speaking, but you know what I mean.) And maybe the progress is of a technological sort, or maybe it’s geographic, moving from civilization to civilization.

But you never think the whole world (give or take) will take a gigantic, centuries-long, step backwards. We all read about it in school, of course, and understand it intellectually, but being there, seeing it and thinking about it just left me breathless.

Anyway. Fantastic trip; hope to get back to see more than just Rome, and spend more time in the city itself, too. Will hold onto my camera better next time, too.

I’ve put up a set of pictures of Rome, plus out the window from my hotel room in Monte Carlo, up on Flickr. (Taken with our smaller Lumix LX-3 camera, which is fantastic.)

I really love walking in the morning in the cities I’m traveling to — I think I’ll never get tired of it. Often, because of jet lag, I’ll wake up earlier than I really want to be awake, and going outside helps me clear my foggy brain. Every city is different, and the same, of course. Cafes opening up, shop vendors cleaning up in front of their stores, kids going to school, parents dropping them off. Just the city waking up for the morning, and there’s such a wonderful mix of quiet and energy and humanity.

[As an aside, I'm really interested in BrightKite and their iPhone application. Not sure it will stick with me, since without background apps on the iPhone you have to active the app to update your location, but it's a really interesting development. Worth watching.]

I’ve been in Berlin the past 2 days for a community event, some press meetings, and a talk at Web 2.0 Expo this morning. Got to walk around Berlin some last night, and saw the Festival of Lights all around the city. Amazing stuff. This is just before I crashed from jet lag…

Very happy to write that I joined the Board of Directors of TripIt this month. Simple story — I’ve been using their service when I travel for several months, mentioned it to one of their investors at OATV, met with the company, really liked them and their product, and here we are.

It’s a fun company with a really differentiated product offering that actually helps my life when I travel, so I’m excited to be involved. (Try it out!)

Over the past couple of years of coming here, I’ve really come to appreciate Tokyo as a city — it never really feels super-dense anywhere even though there are lots of people living in a close space — and there are lots of green areas, sidewalks, public transportation, on and on. When you consider that it’s an absolutely gigantic city with maybe 28 million souls, the way that it works and feels is a stunning accomplishment.

The past couple of mornings I’ve gotten up early to jog 10k or so from my hotel and around the Imperial Palace, and it’s been great. Or, rather, yesterday was a good run, but not all that great, since it was rainy & cold and I was jetlagged. Today was much nicer, and felt great to run around a place that’s been important (and beautiful) for centuries. I’m starting to really like running in the early morning in urban areas like this (although I don’t do it too often, and Sunnyvale isn’t quite dense enough to be interesting) — it’s a bit of a communion with other runners — a shared start to each of our disparate days.

I found today & yesterday that it really helped my running, too, as there was always someone ahead of me on the loop around the Palace — so I always had someone to work to catch up to (and occasionally fall behind). As a result, I think I (re?)discovered something about myself: I tend to run better from behind. It’s easier for me to concentrate and focus enough to catch up, and it makes me a better runner. (Or at least a more consistent, faster runner.) That’s probably a little window into my non-running psyche, too, and maybe a clue to why I’m drawn to work at a place like Mozilla.

Or maybe not; I’m a little jetlagged for psychoanalysis. On to Narita, then heading home. Thanks to everyone at Mozilla Japan for another very good trip, and for an unbelievably great launch here in Japan. See you in Vancouver.

So now to Tokyo — gotta figure out what some very interesting bloggers in Japan will be interested in hearing about from Mozilla.

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I was very lucky to be able to see Kohei’s presentation to a room packed with people at the Ginza Apple Store here in Tokyo. And I have to say he did an incredible job. Very comprehensive, entertaining, funny, engaging talk about Firefox 3 and what’s coming next, given to a full house at the Apple Store. Very happy to have been able to seen it live and was blown away by how great it was. (click through if you want to see more pics)

The story’s simple — it started 10 years ago in a way that not many people knew how to interpret at the time or since — but it’s always been a story of individuals deciding that the world can, and should, be better, and that the best way to make that happen is to jump in and get started.

That the best way to get a menu to look a certain way is to start writing code. That the best way to get a browser in a certain language is start translating strings. That the best way to help people understand the importance of the Internet is to start talking to everyone.

This trip, and every trip I’ve taken for Mozilla — 3 to Europe, 5 to Japan, and 3 to China so far — has been an object lesson in this theme. I got to spend time with Tristan and Peter, who decided some years ago that Mozilla in Europe was important enough to start with uncertain prospects — they’re amazing in their dedication and results. And with Pascal, who is so generative and productive that the running joke is that he’s going to have to get some sleep one of these years. And Anne-Julie and Jane, who’re bringing marketing skills to bear on the problem. This trip I also got to spend time with Zbigniew Braniecki (aka Gandalf), who’s a member (among many, many others, as he’ll attest) in our Polish community and is inspiring to talk with about any subject.

Anyway, last week reminded me yet again of how many people there are around the world who care incredibly deeply about keeping the web open — not just in Europe or Mountain View, but everywhere. Thanks to everyone for a great week.

It’s an amazingly comfortable airport, and I found myself in a very good mood even with the very early departure time.

Where I am now, on the other hand:

Heathrow is like the purgatory of air travel. Always delayed in and out, always crummy food, always long walks. I give the airport a little bit of credit, being one of the world’s very busiest airports, but man. Yuck. But I’m getting pretty familiar with the tiny-little-cans of diet coke in the red carpet club.

Really here to see Chibi and Kaori and Gen and Kohei and Joi and Nobu and other folks from Mozilla Japan as we think about what to do here in 2008. It’s been fun and productive to work with the team here as they’ve grown from just a couple of folks 2 years ago to a real office now. Japan is a tough culture/market to really crack for open source, but Chibi (Takita-san, head of Mozilla Japan) has worked hard on raising awareness of OSS here for years, and is making real headway. I’m excited to talk with her, the board, and the rest of Mozilla Japan tomorrow.

But tonight, Web2 types.

2 random tidbits: (1) in Japan, my iPhone seems to be an iPod — no connectivity at all, and (2) I haven’t been here in a year or so, and am reminded what a great place Tokyo is. I’ve been to lots of great places in the past couple of years — Tokyo really is one of the world’s great cities, alongside London and Manhattan, in my view.

Sent via BlackBerry from Cingular Wireless

Apropos of that, we’re going through a semi-bogus effort this weekend of moving clocks ahead 3 weeks earlier than normal. I like the extra daylight for sure, and spring forward weekend is traditionally one of my favorites of the year — but it feels very early this year. The theory is that it’ll save energy because when people get home from work around 6 or 7 o’clock, they’ll use less energy because it’ll still be light outside. What the theory discounts is that people use a lot of lights & such when they get up in the morning and it’s completely dark outside, also. Recent study of Australian efforts in 2000 (pdf) suggests there’s no energy savings at all.

It seems to me that it’s sort of like squeezing blood from a stone — no matter what we do, the days are just still a little shorter than we’d like them to be.

Anyway, we’ll see how Sam does next week. You’d think I’d really be psyched at the idea that he’d sleep until 7:30a now, but it’s sort of a bogus economy.

In any event, happy DST — let’s see if it feels like spring has sprung this year.

Adjusting to Tokyo time a little bit now — was able to sleep until 5a this morning. Went to the gym, but sorta crappy — short workout. But now I’m at the point where I can make my own way in the morning, get my coffee from one of 3 or 4 different coffee shops, and get to the Mozilla Japan office on my own. It’s amazing how much a little bit of recognition and autonomy helps in terms of feeling more comfortable in a foreign environment. I am finding that between iTunes video and my new Nano that I’m more insulated from the local environment than I would have been in years past — but I’m also more in touch with my family and more comfortable, so I’m sometimes in a better frame of mind. Interesting tradeoffs. (The picture is a baseball stadium next to where our press conference was — there was a college tournament going on at the time — you could hear the drums from the outside.)