Traveling is always magical for me, because I’m not seeing anything familiar so I’m free to be completely present in the new environment where I find myself. (And I do think travel helps me find myself – my humanity, my connection to the larger world and its inhabitants.) I turn my head and am captured by a vision that transports me into a kind of dance with what I see and experience. When I come home, I’m still seeing with the pointed observation that so much unfamiliarity allows me. What happens when I arrive home is also a kind of magic. I find myself newly present in the familiar space that is my home.
Floor in the vatican, Rome. 
A mosaic on the floor of il Domo in Sienna, Italy. 
Candles lighted by believers in a church in the Trastevere district of Rome, Italy. 
Statue of Artemis of Ephesus in the Vatican Museum, Rome, Italy. 
Touring in a driving rainstorm at the colosseum in Rome. 
We took a FABULOUS cooking class in Tuscany from this man. His name is Andrea and you can read about him at www.amanfromchianti.com. 
Me as Pinocchio in Assisi, Italy. 
Another lovely antique door knocker. This one is in Assisi. 
An interesting pattern in a ruin in Val d’Orcia, Italy. 
Two cats on a sunny afternoon at Casale Dei Frontini near Todi, Italy. 
The ruined cathedral in Chiusdino, Italy. 
Me, in the rain with the Chiusdino cathedral ruins behind me. 
An evening street view in Santarcangelo, Italy. 
A lion door knocker in San Marino – the little country within a country just north of Rimini, Italy. 
Me in London trying to enter the ministry of magic. 
The view of Edinburgh Castle out our front room window. 
My husband enjoying an Innis & Gunn at a pub in Edinburgh. 
The flower Clock in Edinburgh. 
Roslin Chapel near Edinburgh. 
Sitting on the steps of the Sir Walter Scott Monument in Edinburgh. 
21:35hrs means 9:35pm – But WHY 9:35? Why not 9:30?