After exploring the wild windward coast of Curaçao and taking a trip into the capital of Willemstad, we opted to spend the rest of the week on the calmer west coast. We hit several different beaches, each of them offering something unique: sea turtles and easy snorkeling at nearby Playa Lagun, a wide sandy beach at Grote Knip (and cliff-jumping), cliff-jumping at Playa Forti, a working fishing harbor at Playa Piskadó, and a coral reef and dropoff at Playa Kalki (not pictured).
We ended each day with a snorkel off the platform at our Airbnb, some rum, and the sunset. After watching people jump off the cliffs at Grote Knip, I worked up the nerve to dive off the 6-8 foot platform at the place we’re staying. It feels really high up when you’re about to willingly leave firm ground to fall through the air, but being airborne for that slip of time, then feeling the cold water crash on the crown of your head, rush across your ears, and bubble along your skin as you bullet into the ocean is exhilerating.
Walking to Playa Lagun from our AirbnbView from the beach at Playa Lagun: a 2-minute walk or a 5-minute swim from our place.Fishing boat moored in Playa Lagun. View from the Bahia restaurant overlooking the cove.Wide sandy beach at Grote Knip, about a 10 minute drive from where we’re staying. Lots of space to move around, saw a big starfish when snorkeling.Someone contemplating jumping at Grote KnipDrink at Playa Forti. I couldn’t go to Curaçao without drinking something with Blue Curaçao in it. This photo is from Blue View Sunny Terrace near Westpunt. Across the cove is a popular cliff-jumping spot. We hoped to see people jump while we ate, but all we heard was a splash — we missed the one jump that happened while we were there.Coral beach at Playa Piskadó. Kind of painful with bare feet.Playa Piskadó, a local fishermans beachFish-cleaning station at Playa Piskadó.Fishing boats at Playa Piskadó
After spending our first day of vacation hanging around our Airbnb on the leeward coast, we were ready to explore the wild side of the island on our second day. We hopped in our rental car and drove up through the northern end of Curaçao then cut over to the eastern coast: the coast that endures the relentless pounding of waves driven by easterly trade winds.
We parked the car near the ticket stand at Shete Boka national park, then set off on foot across the Mars-like landscape to witness the crashing of blue water against sharp limestone cliffs.
The most amazing part of the park, aside from being surrounded by the magnificence of all that ocean energy pounding against ancient rock, was a formation called Boka Pistol. Along the windward coast is keyhole shaped inlet. As waves rush in, run out of room, and continue to fill the space anyway, air gets trapped in the formation, then makes a thunderous hollow boom before the water, with nowhere else to go, crashes into rock and sprays back out to sea. BOOM-pssssshhhhhhhhhh. We watched wave after wave crash, boom, and spray, each one leaving me breathless with anticipation: how loud will it boom? How high will it splash? Which direction will it shoot?
Along the coast at Shete Boka National Park, CuraçaoThe barren landscape of a desert island
Cactus and cloudsFlat pools constantly awash at Boka Pistol
Boka Pistol formation before water rushes inPistol shot of a wave crashing into the keyholeAnd the wave recedesIncoming swellBOOMAnd back out to seaI can’t get enough of this glacier blue water.Stone cairns on the land next to Boka Pistol
After the barren wildness of Shete Boka National Park, we went about as opposite a feel as you can get on the island: we got back in the air-conditioned car and drove down to the capital city of Willemstad for lunch. The city is adorable with its brightly colored buildings. I drank a piña colada with my lunch of snapper in a coconut sauce as we sat by the harbor and watched the floating bridge swing open for a catamaran to pass through. The air was still and hot compared to the strong ocean breeze up on the limestone bluffs of Shete Boka. My main wishes for our town visit were to see the colorful city and to see if pastries are a thing here, with its strong European influence. When our waiter couldn’t give me the name of a single pastry shop nearby, and I had already seen the pretty buildings, I didn’t feel the need to come back to town. I like the wild stuff better.
Willemstad and floating bridge from inside fort that guards the harbor entryWillemstad. We ate lunch under the awning along the water.
We spent our first day of vacation in Curaçao snorkeling, hanging around our airbnb, and exploring out our front door on foot. Not captured in photos are the sea turtle, corals, and multicolored reef fish we saw underwater.
Morning sunshine in the front cactus gardenMy writing spotStairway to the snorkeling spot off the back deckView from the back stairsI don’t know what this plant is but I love the little yellow pompom flowersChurchbell across the streetOur streetI don’t know what this is, but I like it
Churchbells clang on a sunny, windy morning. Palms rustle. They scrape shiny speared leaves against one another. The low rumble of a power boat carries across the water to where I sit on our back deck, in a turquoise lounge chair, straw hat flopping in the breeze, looking out over the Caribbean sea. A rooster crows in the distance. Cock-a-doodle-dooooooo.
The bottom of my ceramic mug scrapes against slate-colored tiles under my wicker chair when I lift the cup to sip coffee. I hear dishes clink in the kitchen, a cupboard door bump shut, and our daughter’s sweet voice saying “Good morning!” as my husband walks into the open air house with his frothy mug.
I smell salt air and coffee. My fingers smell like ink. Floating 100 meters beyond the railing of our patio is a small white fishing boat. The dark fisherman wears a bright shirt, neon like a traffic cone, a brilliant orange contrast to the turquoise shallows below him.
Palm fronds tick against the concrete wall beside me. A solitary car passes on the winding road out front. Tropical birds whirr and chirp.
A little yellow bird just landed on the cushion by my toes. It hopped onto the tile next to my chair, then hopped up on the white lip of my coffee cup. The bird was small, like a goldfinch, and the same sunshine yellow.
The sea’s skin is wrinkled with sharp-edged ripples as far as I can see. Swells rise and fall gently beneath them.
The church bell just rang out again. This time it’s setting off a chorus of animals. Dog barks rise all around and echo off the mountain behind us, roosters cock-a-doodle-doo, birds titter excitedly. The bell keeps ringing. More dogs, roosters, and small birds lend their voices, and more join in to answer their call, till this quiet little Sunday morning becomes a cacophony of the deep clang of a metal bell, dogs barking, roosters crowing, and birds chattering.
The final ring of the bell hangs in the air, and the local animals get in one final yip, one final crow, and a few final tweets and chirps. It is soon quiet again. All I hear are the rustle of the fronds, the scratch of my pen in my journal, and the scrape of my ceramic mug against the tile as I lift it to my lips to sip coffee.
I’ve been dipping my toes back into writing exercises, mostly drills like “set a timer for ten minutes and write all the sounds you hear.” I’ve only been writing in my journal, but we’re vacationing in Curaçao right now, a tiny desert island about 70 miles north of Venezuela, and I wanted to remember this morning.
I traveled to Belgrade, Serbia last week to produce our first ever European Support Driven conference. I did not know what to expect from Belgrade, other than knowing it was a great pleasure to work with our event coordinator, Jelena, who is from Belgrade. I was very work-focused and hardly thought about the location part except in logistical terms for the event. The city would be whatever it would be. I’d eat, I’d work, and then I’d go home to Virginia.
And then I arrived in Belgrade. Jelena picked me up from the airport and took me to the old part of the city, to the waterfront down the hill from the fortress that overlooks the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers. We ate a lazy sun-drenched lunch next to the Sava river, at a place called Sofa. She told me about growing up in Belgrade, and pointed out the bridges where there had been live concerts every day during the 90s to form a living shield so the bridges wouldn’t be taken out in the bombings. She said this all very matter-of-factly, describing the sounds of the air sirens and the bombs. Now Belgrade is a peaceful place, and she laughed because she liked that she missed school for a year during that time.
Our hotel was across the river in New Belgrade, and after our warm, drowsy lunch, she showed me some coffee and pastry shops near our hotel, then dropped me off since I had been awake for more than 30 hours at that point.
The next morning I walked to a pastry shop I didn’t learn how to say the name of until my final day in Belgrade — the shop name was written in Cyrillic. It’s written Хлеб и Кифле and pronounced Hleb & Kifle. I couldn’t decide among the pastries, so I bought (and ate) two: an almond croissant and some sort of tubular pastry that looked like a 6-inch double-shotgun barrel with cinnamon apple filling.
The morning was crisp and sunny, a beautiful spring day, and I didn’t want to go back to my room. I texted my colleague Scott to see if he was up and wanted to take a walk before we started working on conference setup that afternoon, then I crossed the river on foot and we wandered around Belgrade.
Crossing the Sava River on foot, from New Belgrade to old
One of my favorite things about Belgrade was the street art. The sun was low when I walked, so most of my photos have harsh shadows, and I wasn’t able to capture as many of the murals and graffiti as I would have liked. Our daughter is really into street art and would have loved to see all this. I wish she could have been there with me.
Graffiti on Branko’s BridgeDavid Bowie? Looks like him. Mural in Savamala neighborhood, BelgradeCity devouring its greenery. By Italian artist Blu.We saw this little piggie all over town.
We wandered streets with no goal in mind, and ended up first in a little Bohemian section of town, and then the fancier city center.
Old building we stumbled onSkadarlija – Bohemian streetManufaktura restuarant outdoor seatingCity Center pedestrian walk
After our walk, we got to work, and I didn’t stray far from the hotel until the conference was over. When it was finished, Jelena took us to celebrate at a restaurant on the bank of the Danube River in Zemun — a rustic old part of town that looks like a Hungarian village — with live music and lots of happy revelers celebrating birthdays, anniversaries, and just being with friends. It was loud and happy and wonderful. The band, set on a small stage in the corner of the bright-art-covered dining room, featured an accordion player, a guitarist, and a vocalist, and they played an eclectic mix of American and British covers (sung in Serbian), Serbian pop and rock, and traditional Russian and Gypsy songs. The large table next to us, which ordered round after round of food, sang along with gusto to the Serbian songs.
We walked the cobbled streets of Zemun to the Gardoš tower, which overlooks the rivers and the city.
Gardoš tower in Zemun
The thing I didn’t do that I wish I would have is explore the concrete Communist architecture of the Blokovi — the urban section of New Belgrade divided into 72 bloks. My friend Denise took a long walk exploring the oppressive buildings, the architecture of which is termed “brutalist,” and after hearing her talk about it and after seeing photographs in Discover the Grit and Glory of New Belgrade’s Communist Architecture, I regret that I didn’t carve out time to explore this fascinating part of Belgrade.
When I found out I was going to Nashville for a conference, I did two things: I looked up how far Ann Patchett’s Parnassus Book Store was from my hotel, and I researched donuts. I like to find gourmet donuts when I travel, and I’ve yet to read an Ann Patchett book I didn’t love. I don’t usually seek out book stores when I travel, except maybe Powell’s in Portland, but I love Ann Patchett. State of Wonder, Bel Canto, The Patron Saint of Liars, and Commonwealth are all beautifully written books. And she, the author of them, has a book store! In Nashville!
So I went. It was as wonderful as I’d hoped it be.
Look how orderly 😍
I bought a couple of books, sat on the leather couch in the middle of the store, enjoying the warm wood floors and shelves, and I wrote. I soaked in the books and the quiet for a while. Then I went around the corner to Fox’s Donut Den, got some coffee and a maple cruller donut, and I wrote some more. The donut shop was a better place to write, with the red and grey squiggly formica countertops, the bell on the door that jingled every couple of minutes as people poured into the shop, and the joyful sound of voices ordering donuts.
Maple cruller at Fox’s Donut Den
That evening, back in my room, as I spread my books and journals around me on my hotel bed, I realized, oh my God: I’m living my dream. When the kids were small, and I was a stay at home mom, my entire life revolved around caring for them. It could be suffocating, being responsible for these little peoples’ every need. I couldn’t nap, I couldn’t go away. I could barely shower or use the bathroom alone. I certainly couldn’t read a book. There was no break. I had no escape.
In those times, my dream wasn’t “Calgon take me away.” My dream was “What I wouldn’t give for a hotel room, all to myself, where nobody will need anything from me. Where I can just read my book in peace.” And here I was in a hotel room, all to myself, where nobody needed anything from me, and I was just reading my books in peace.
Living the dream
On my final day in Nashville, I visited the donut shop I had been drooling about for two weeks: Five Daughters Bakery. Go look at their Instagram and see if you don’t drool too. They have a 100 layer donut, which is really a cronut, but cronut doesn’t sound very dignified so they don’t call it that.
As I stood in front of the case, I was overwhelmed by the selection. I knew I wanted the blood orange donut. For sure. But I couldn’t decide on the croissant-donuts — would that really be something I’d like? So I asked the woman behind the counter, very originally, “What’s your favorite?” (every person who approached the counter after me, which was about 10 in the 30 minutes I sat there, also asked her “What’s your favorite?” or “What do you recommend?”) She said the vanilla bean 100-layer is a classic and isn’t overwhelmingly sweet, which is what I wanted to hear. I got one of those, too.
Would the buttery, 100-layer donut be something I’d like? Um. Yes. It was indescribably good. It was satisfying to bite into, with its crisp give. And the sweet glaze over the buttery pastry, and the crisp of the layers, and the hint of salt in the buttered layers to go with the sweet of the vanilla bean glaze and glllaahhhh.
The blood orange donut was phenomenal as well, with its crisp-chewy, golden-brown, fried-dough outside and its soft-chewy, warm-sweet inside, and the tangy citrus icing on top that had just the right balance of sharp and sweet, and omg it was so good.
Blood Orange donut from Five Daughter’s Bakery in Nashville, TN
Nashville was a cool place, I’d go there again. But these donuts from Five Daughter’s? They are a destination. They are worth planning a trip around. If you have any reason to go to Nashville and are undecided about it, you should go for these donuts if for no other reason. And also the bourbon and popcorn at Merchant’s Bistro.
Butterfly Mind 