Prepare ye the Way: A Trip to the Vatican

"President Obama is going to visit the pope! He’s been to the Vatican before, but not with this pope, who is perhaps the only person in the world almost everybody likes," writes Gail Collins with not a small amount of glee.

I will go to see the Pope on Tuesday...if I can get a ticket for an audience being held in St. Peter's Square on January the Twenty-ninth, in the year of our Lord Two-thousand and fourteen.

Chinese man casts iShadow beneath the Mother & Infant.

I will be reading A Room with a View on the interminable plane rides and maybe some portion of the six parts of Gibbons Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire. Today, I went to see an amazing exhibit, called The Mediterranean World in the Collections of the Musee du Louvre. It is on loan to the National Museum of China. I have no doubt that I will soon be getting my fill of encased antiquities, but this was spectacular. (I skipped the equally impressive looking Rubens, Van Dyck and the Flemish School of Painting: Masterpieces from the Collections of the Prince of Liechtenstein exhibit.) You may see 17 photographs in the English version of China Daily if you want a glimpse of what I was able to see today/

My itinerary is loose and I am excited to stay in my first Air B & B. I can even extend my stay if I decide to do Rome slowly (read: Slow Food), instead of scurrying off to Assisi or Venice for a night or two. I look forward to catching up with one of my best pals from law school and meeting his wife and infant. It will be good to get away from the fireworks and crowded trains of Chinese New Year to welcome the Year of the Horse from Rome.