Greece

Greece hit differently from anything else I'd seen before. Santorini was the first stop, and standing on that caldera edge in Fira with the white cubes stacking down the cliff face and the Aegean just sitting there, impossibly blue, so wide it looked fake — I had to keep reminding myself this was real. The air smelled faintly of salt and dry stone, and even at midday with the sun overhead, there was something calm about it. That cruise ship floating far below just made the scale of the whole thing click.

Athens was the opposite of calm — ancient and loud and layered, all at once. Monastiraki square had this energy where you could stand in one spot and see Ottoman, ancient Greek, and modern Athenian architecture within the same eyeline. Then up on the Acropolis hill, looking down at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus in that late golden light with the whole city spread out behind it, I genuinely felt small in the best way. The limestone seats have been there since 161 AD. That kind of age is hard to hold in your head.

The food grounded everything. A proper horiatiki with a thick slab of feta and Cretan olive oil poured over it, gyros wrapped tight with fries spilling out, olives in every shade from bright green to near-black heaped in wooden bowls at the market — eating in Greece felt like the whole country was making a point. I left with a bag of olives and a sunburn and a very specific kind of happy.