Evolve

The ferry from Bastia crossed the Mediterranean night. I stood on the deck until the lights of Corsica became uncertain and then became nothing, and the sea was dark in every direction. Somewhere behind me, the island was still releasing the smell of its hills into the water — myrtle, rosemary, thyme, the dense wild […]

The ferry from Dubrovnik crossed the Ionian Sea overnight. I did not sleep much. I stood at the rail in the dark and watched the water carry the light from the stern in a long shifting line that broke and reformed and never quite repeated. By morning, Greece. The first moment in Greece — Athens

I flew from Crete to Cairo. There was no ferry — that crossing stopped being practical decades ago. I watched the Mediterranean change colour through the window as Africa appeared, first as a brown line, then as a city so large it seemed to have no edges. Egypt The first Egypt moment — Giza The

The ferry from Venice took three and a half hours. I spent most of it on the upper deck watching the Adriatic change from lagoon grey to open blue to something I did not have a name for — a colour that seemed to arrive not from the sky or the sea but from the

I had explained Rome to hundreds of travellers. The approach from the northwest. The terracotta roofs. Which side of the plane to sit on. Then Florence came introducing Venice. Not the information about it. Rome. None of that prepared me for the moment the wheels touched down and I understood I was actually there. My