A Croatia travel blog from Split — field notes across 11 regions and ninety-odd countries.

Longer way home — travel essays from Split, outward.

I’m Ščenza — Split-born software developer, twenty years on the road, ninety-one long-form travel essays from Paris and Tokyo to the Dalmatian coast. I write about places the way you’d describe them to a friend who’s about to spend two weeks there: honestly, specifically, with a memory of the first time I got it wrong.

Every guide carries a Split lens — what reminded me of home in Croatia, and what Split (and our people on the coast) could borrow from there. If you’re looking for a serious Split, Croatia travel guide, start with the love letter.

The limestone of Diocletian's Palace and the bell tower of Sveti Duje at dawn over the Riva.

Europe · Croatia

Split: a love letter, plus a guide

I have left Split a hundred times in twenty years. Every single time the plane banks over the Brač channel on the way back, I tremble. This is the only city in the world I do that for. Here's what to do with mine.

May 20, 2026

Editor’s picks

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Pastel tiled houses on a steep Lisbon street.

Europe

Lisbon, Portugal

Lisbon, the city I came back to live in

I came to Lisbon in 2008 for a long weekend, came back in 2011 for a month, and in 2019 stopped pretending and rented an apartment. Most of what is now said about the city — that it is hot, crowded, expensive, complicated — is true. None of it is the whole story. This is the rest of it.

February 14, 2025

A small zodiac approaches a cathedral of blue ice in an Antarctic bay.

Polar

Ushuaia, Antarctica

Antarctica: ten days on the seventh continent

Antarctica is the most genuinely empty continent on earth. The only realistic access is by ship across the Drake Passage from Ushuaia, Argentina. The 10-day cruise — penguins, ice, the Drake itself, the cold ocean — is one of the most distinctive trips available in modern travel.

December 30, 2024

Eiffel Tower seen from a Paris street at dusk.

Europe

Paris, France

Paris in the off-hour: the city that rewards stubborn patience

Everyone arrives in Paris with a list. I did too, in 2004, and I crossed almost none of it off. What I learned instead was that Paris doesn't perform for tourists in the afternoon. It performs at 7 a.m., at 11 p.m., and on Mondays when half the city is closed and the other half has finally exhaled.

September 12, 2024

Neon-lit Shinjuku alley reflecting in wet pavement.

Asia

Tokyo, Japan

Tokyo, slowly: a city of thirteen million that rewards patience

Tokyo is large in a way that defeats the standard travel rhythm. It is not one city; it is twenty-three wards, each a small city, each with its own grammar. The right pace is to do less, daily, and to do it more carefully.

August 19, 2024

Coloured wooden houses of Longyearbyen below Arctic mountains.

Polar

Longyearbyen, Norway

Svalbard: the polar archipelago and the bears that live there

Svalbard is the High Arctic — a Norwegian archipelago at 78° north, with more polar bears than people, a small settlement at Longyearbyen, and a coastline accessible only by sea. The Arctic in its more genuine form, with the difficulties that implies.

July 12, 2024

Lavender jacarandas in bloom over Mexico City's Roma neighbourhood.

North America

Mexico City, Mexico

Mexico City: the high-altitude metropolis that took a decade to be discovered

Mexico City was, for a long time, written off by Western travellers as too big, too polluted, too dangerous. The decade since 2015 has rewritten that conversation. The city is now, by most measures, one of the best food capitals in the world.

November 30, 2023