My father worked for 38 years saying he’d travel when he retired. He retired and then kept finding reasons not to go. I watched that happen and promised myself I wouldn’t do the same thing — which is exactly how I ended up standing on a sun-bleached dock in Dubrovnik, completely unprepared for how dramatically … Read more
If you’ve been scrolling past the Kvarner Gulf islands in favour of Hvar or Korčula, it’s time to reconsider your Croatia game plan. Tucked between the Istrian peninsula and the northern Dalmatian coast, the Kvarner Gulf islands are arguably Croatia’s most underrated island-hopping destination — a place where the crowds thin out, the prices stay … Read more
We’d been saying “we should all go somewhere together” for six years. After the fourth postponed trip and two weddings that got in the way, we stopped talking and just bought tickets — four of us, one-way to Rijeka, with a loose plan to spend ten days along the Kvarner Riviera and base ourselves in … Read more
Tucked between the rugged peninsula of Istria and the sun-drenched shores of Dalmatia, the Kvarner Gulf is one of Croatia’s most rewarding — and most underrated — destinations. While the crowds flock south to Dubrovnik or west to Split, savvy travellers are quietly discovering a stretch of Adriatic coastline that feels like a secret the … Read more
I booked this trip at 11pm on a Tuesday after a meeting where someone used the phrase “synergize our deliverables” for the third time in an hour — my corporate brain needed an escape hatch, and fast. I typed “somewhere beautiful, somewhere with good food, somewhere not here” into a search bar, and within twenty … Read more
When I left my job without another one lined up, everyone thought I was having a breakdown. I was. But I was also buying a one-way ticket — to Croatia, as it turned out — and those two things were more connected than I knew at the time. What I found there was a country … Read more
By February, the grey had settled in so deep I could feel it behind my eyes. I needed sun, warmth, and a place where winter was someone else’s problem for a few weeks — and somehow, on a budget that had no business funding a European escape, Portugal kept coming up as the answer. It … Read more
I never took a gap year. I went straight from high school to college to a career, doing every sensible thing in the right order — and somewhere around 32 I realized I’d been meaning to see the world since I was 17. So when a friend mentioned she was heading to Portugal to spend … Read more
The week my company went fully remote, I opened a map and asked a question I’d never seriously asked before: if I can work from anywhere, why am I still sitting in this apartment? My finger landed on Portugal almost immediately, tracing a coastline that seemed to go on forever — and I quickly realized … Read more
After our youngest left for university, the house got very quiet very fast. My partner and I looked at each other over dinner one night and said, almost simultaneously, “So… where do you actually want to go?” Portugal came up within about thirty seconds — sunny beaches, centuries of history piled into cobblestone streets, and … Read more
