Susan Spano adopts Roma

After three somewhat stormy years living and blogging in Paris, four months in China and a stint in a rented apartment near Santa Monica beach, Los Angeles Times travel writer Susan Spano announced her new home in Sunday's paper.

I am overcome by the warmth of the Romans. It took me months to defrost the shopkeepers in the Paris neighborhood where I lived, but here, the wedding photographer who has a storefront office next to my front door accepted two suitcases delivered to me when I wasn't home. Here, the owner of the hardware store down the block -- which has one of everything in a space the size of a bathroom -- embraces me when I pass by, and his breath doesn't even smell of wine.

It would take volumes to say what I love about this city, beginning with the old-fashioned Nancy Drew keys to my apartment, the big windows in the living room overlooking my neighbor's terrace and the clothesline on the roof where sheets dry in no time under the hot Roman sun.

But will she still have a newspaper job, with benefits and all that, at the end of June?

Previously on LA Observed:
Paris blogger goes on assignment
Ms. Spano in Paris
Those 'women' on Rue Blondel