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

I arrived Saturday night after the sun had set and the westerly winds were pulling the crisp air from the surface of the sea. My taxi driver wore leather knee high boots and a leopard print mini skirt. Her nails were painted robin's egg blue and she popped her gum every few chews. I slid into the cool leather of the black Mercedes and the pounding house music immediately swarmed my ears. The electronic beats stung my hearing after the twenty-hour travel day, but I dared not ask her to turn it down. I wanted to take in everything she - and Croatia - wanted to give.

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.

After a week in Dubrovnik and the island of Hvar, I landed in Greece with three friends by my side. We lost ourselves in the whitewashed walls and blue-capped churches of Santorini. We explored the small streets of Thera and Firostefani as we lapped ice cream by the mouthful, and we scaled the steep cliffs of Oía to watch the legendary sunset over the Aegean. We spent a day at sea and swam in waters so clear and blue you could see the bottom of the earth. I jumped in and let the cool, salty water keep me afloat as my weightless body slowly bobbed back and forth, humming me into a serene peace.

The last few days were spent in the Old Venetian Port of Chania on the island of Crete. I played with stray cats and local dogs in the streets. I spent a morning obsessing over a young Friesian and let her pungent, musty smell of horse sweat and leftover hay overtake me. I found a small table on the water and sat down to write as the sun drifted downwards in the sky, and the blues softened into purples and then pinks. I watched as the white lights of the ancient lighthouse began to glow, and the last remaining remnants of the walled city slowly began to disappear into the sea. The world walked by me in every language and I felt at home lost in the foreign tongues and unfamiliar hand movements.

My soul is a patchwork of the great places I've been. My blood is sticky and bleeds blue with the salt from the seas I've swam in. I walk the old walls of ancient cities and listen to their stories. I hold the earth in my hands and watch the sand fall through my fingers until I've finally felt something. I don't know how I would survive without quiet moments in cities I never grew up in. In worlds that were never meant to be mine. Lost in languages spoken in tongues I'll never understand. I keep seeking - searching - and the more I go the more I realize I cannot stop. The beauty of this world brings me to tears and I can never seem to get enough of it. The music. The sunsets. The conversations in cafes with strangers and the belly rubs with the dogs in the streets. There's a kindness and a beauty in the anonymity. In the knowing that we'll never see each other again. It seems like more and more these moments alone when traveling are the only times I can be free.