Today I am flying to Roma for the 4th Italian Meeting on Probability and Mathematical Statistics, where I have been invited at a session on MCMC. This is a meeting leaning more towards probability than statistics, but I hope to learn from sessions close enough to my interests and obviously meet new people. At the same time this is an opportunity to see long time friends I haven’t seen since COVID and (cerise sur le gâteau !) to spend three days in Roma as I last visited this unique city with our parents in 2019 (with a fabulous discovery of the Ostia archaeological site!, as well as the visit to the very antique San Clemente al Laterano, with its Mithraic crypt).