Back to paradise. My sour attitude about Athens was cured immediately upon my arrival in Corfu, which qualifies fully as a subtropical island paradise, best I can tell. Think mountains-meet-Caribbean. The cicadas are a comforting reminder of a home I once had in the eastern United States. The mountains are covered in deeply green forests and intermittent villages breaking through the foliage. The water. The water! It’s such a clear aquamarine blue that the only thing I can say is that it matches my gold standard – the waters of the Caribbean Sea. Wetter and less windy (shielded on the west side, perhaps, by the mountains to my east) than the Kyklades islands in the Aegean, this large isle in the Adriatic is the cure I needed to take after a few days in Athens.

All I’ll say for today is that I’m glad to be here for a weeklong visit to paradise, that I’ve already finished another book (The Sparrow, highly recommended), and that I’ve seen my way through 26k words in my own project.

And I’ll remind you of the running list of posts for the year on the main page for 2017 and the older posts accessible here.

View from the tiled deck at Sunrock Backpackers’ Hostel (Corfu, Greece; July 2017)