We walked up the cobblestone street into the Bo-Kaap, the Cape Malay Quarter, with its view of bright pastel-colored homes running like a perspective painting up the incline of Signal Hill, and came to a spice shop.
Making Neighbors Aware In Combes, Tex., a run-down suburb north of Harlingen, Ms. Chávez announced her presence in a neighborhood of plain-colored homes by painting her own bright pink, prompting neighbors to call it "the Barbie house".
As Elvis navigated the winding, hilly roads up the island's eastern side, taking us past fruit stands stocked with breadfruit, mangoes and bananas, goats tethered to telephone poles, and pastel-colored homes covered in bougainvillea and perched on stilts, he gave me a brief lesson on the island's agricultural history.
Today, all across Little Havana -- at the open-air stands that sell shots of strong coffee, in Maximo Gomez Park, where old men slam their dominos, and along the palm-shaded streets lined with small, pastel-colored homes -- Cuban-Americans were pessimistic about ever seeing Elian in Miami again.
The pastel-colored homes and the feathery sabal palms of charming Charleston are basically skinny-arming us.
Driving through the hills in the direction of Florence, we passed olive, cypress, and pine trees, mature vineyards, fields of sunflowers, and classic Tuscan-style, ochre-colored homes.
You pull off in a small town, distinguished only by a bright blue Mosque set against a backdrop of sand-colored homes and desert.
The trim campus buildings, painted to harmonize with the neighborhood earth tones, suggested a medical office-park; out back were an organic garden, a climbing wall and a well-kept athletic field fringed by big peach-colored homes.
While the village was almost destroyed by flooding and landslides in 2011, it's up and running again, still attracting travelers with its coffee shops, brightly-colored homes, and scenic plazas on the bay.
Manarola - Widely regarded as the most beautiful of the five villages which make up Italy's Cinque Terre region, Manarola is a stunning community of brightly-colored homes cascading down the rocky slopes between the hills and the Mediterranean.
