The room in Bari wasn't much to look at, which is probably why I loved it.

Six strides took you from one side to the other. By mid-afternoon, the heat had soaked into the walls until they seemed to radiate their own weather.

The wallpaper had delicate white flowers marching over faded blue stripes, peeling in one corner as if it had finally surrendered after decades of southern summers. It wasn't stylish. It wasn't luxurious. It was perfect.

The real room was outside.

A tiny balcony barely large enough for two chairs and a little table. We'd fill a jug with iced tea, watch the cubes crack in the heat, and look out across the Adriatic. I'd seen blue oceans before, but never that kind of blue. It wasn't turquoise. It wasn't sapphire. It was a blue that didn't seem to exist anywhere else.

Life unfolded beneath us all day long.

Men argued with operatic conviction over who was more handsome. A woman loudly rejected a pastry because she'd ordered custard cream, not pistachio. Mopeds buzzed through the narrow streets like determined bees, weaving between tiny Fiats and glamorous women in short skirts.

We never had much of a plan. We'd sit. We'd sip iced tea. We'd watch the sea change with the sun and listen to a language that sounded musical.

I've stayed in grand hotels with thread counts worth bragging about, but they never seem to linger in memory. That little room does. The peeling wallpaper and stubborn heat. The balcony just big enough for us.

Sometimes happiness isn't silent or secluded. Sometimes it's a tiny balcony in Bari overlooking an impossible stretch of azure sea, with the comforting certainty that somewhere below, someone is still arguing about pastries.