Keats and Obama. I mean, what?

So we went to the Spanish steps this morning so we could visit the Keats Shelly Memorial home. This was the house that Keats lived in during the last days of his life, before he died of tuberculosis. It's now been turned into a museum filled with books by him, Shelly, Lord Byron, and others, and paintings and letters and paraphanalia of all three. It was mildly interesting, but this day was mostly for the literature students on this trip. We felt a little bored and tired. But it was still good. Then we took the subway waaay south to the Piramide stop (I hadn't been there since that fateful day when we did the scavenger hunt) so that we could go to the Protestant Cemetery. That was my favorite part of the day, actually. There were trees and it was very very quiet (as one might imagine, being around dead people). We found some friendly cats and pet them, and tried to find the earliest instances of Christian imagery on the tombstones. I'll explain that: The reason that this cemetery exists was to have a place to bury "non-Catholic foreigners." Obviously, if you weren't Catholic, you couldn't be buried in a Catholic cemetery. In the earlist days of this particular cemetery, any sort of cross, mention of God, or salvation had been outlawed, because the Catholic church believed it was the one true church and therefore the protestants had no right to use any such symbols. The protestants were forced to have their burial services at night, otherwise the sight of a non-catholic priest blessing a burial would cause riots among the general Catholic public. Very interesting. Anyway, the earlist date I found on a headstone with a cross on it was 1845, but I'm sure there were a few that were older. But not many.
Came back, took a nap, and we'll be going to the Museum of Modern Art here in a few minutes. Oh, but I mentioned Obama because of what's happening tomorrow. I'll back up. For the past few days, we've been seeing people in suits driving around in dark cars in big groups, with police stopping traffic and pedestrians to let them through. We've been walking around at least twice when their little caravan has gone past. Helicopters have been watching the city streets, too. It's all felt very ominous, and we were all wondering what important person is in the city. Well, turns out it's Michelle Obama and her daughters. They've been sightseeing the past couple of days and I guess tomorrow President Obama and his family are having an audience with the Pope at the Vatican. Guess where our very last outing is tomorrow? Yeah. So I think Dr. Kresser went to the Vatican today to make sure that we'll still be able to get into the Museum part of the Vatican, because we have reservations. But it's incredibly ironic that the closest I'll probably ever be to the American President is in a foreign country. Ha.

Pictures:

A kitty that I managed to persuade to come over and be petted. He was really thirsty, so we turned the water on for him. He wasn't so sure he liked water on his whiskers, but he got over it.

"They change their sky, not their affections, who cross the sea."

-an inscription on a tombstone for someone born in America who died in Rome.