The Eternal City of Rome has offered us one of its loveliest gifts—Trastevere.   We have landed in an area full of life and living. It is a circus. A fiesta. A celebration.

Street performers entertain with whirlwinds of fire, giant bubbles, and silly comedy routines. People dine.  People drink.  People laugh.  We join others, sitting on the steps of the fountain, and watch the spectacle. Wisps of glowing color shoot straight into the air and fly higher than the buildings surrounding us, then gently helicopter their way back to earth landing in the hands of the street hawkers who sell them.  We buy two.  Tottering back home close to midnight,  the party goes on till the wee hours of the morning.

I am where I want to be. I awake to sun-drenched, aged washed walls; images of forest green shutters. Terra cotta planters full of flowers frame the base of the window. The morning smell of coffee tickles my nose.

The apartment gods have been kind, giving me a gift I didn’t even know I wanted in a place I adore.