Dubrovnik + Srebreno + Hvar + Vis + Bisevo | May 2019

“After a sleepless night I found myself on a picturesque terrace in Dubrovnik's Old Town. The ancient city slowly woke around me as I grazed on a plate of eggs and local sausages with fresh tomatoes and sautéed mushrooms. I sipped a cappuccino and wiped the foam from my lips, watching the store clerks and delivery men finish their daybreak rounds. I would come to learn that the old city was best in the mornings. Before the shops cleared their shutters. Before the swarms of tourists overtook the streets. I watched wide-eyed, porous to every smell and flicker of light and smile that surrounded me. I spent my days dizzying myself in the maze of cobbled streets and high rock walls of the old city state. I sauntered from cafe to cafe sipping macchiatos and listening to the sweet songs of Madeline Peyroux. I swirled white wine across my tongue in between bites of sea scallops in leak sauce and risotto stained black with squid ink. I ate grilled octopus - the tentacles taut and perfect - and sliced through swordfish steaks with zucchini ragù. I sauntered slowly through the labyrinth of alleyways, my fingers grazing across the shrapnel holes in the church facades leftover from the war. Her history bled through the walls, it seeped through each crack and you could see it in the lines on the faces of the men, but her beauty never faltered.”

-Tess Thomas, The Laughing Diet; “Glass Castles”