My Travelography

The scene around me was hazy, dust from the cobblestone streets rising to meet the summer sun. Hair clung to my damp neck, and I blinked, looking around and stepped forward, surrounded by stone walls. It was that moment that my sandal snapped. With a groan I reached down and tugged them both off, shoving the shredded remains in my pack. As I stood up, I looked around, my embarrassment melting away as I noticed that many of those already moving through the city were also barefoot. The city was bustling; carts rumbled along the uneven pathways, their drivers struggling to navigate through the citizens who moved toward the city centre. The tunics worn by the locals were a wide variety of bright colours, contrasting distinctly with the white-washed stone that surrounded them. Mothers, veils adorning their hair, scrambled after unruly children playing amongst the crowds. Vendors of all shapes and sizes stood proudly next to their wares varying from spices to fabrics to live animals. A language completely foreign rang through the air, drawing my attention in every direction; I had never experienced a city so alive! And, as the wind, cutting with the salt of the sea, whipped down the sloping hillside into the streets, I took a deep breath.
My feet ached, throbbing against the cobblestones as I moved toward the centre. Structures emerged from the distance, their crumbling stone facades towering precariously above me. I stood in front of a library. It was three stories, decorated with ornate Corinthian columns and flanked with marble statues. Stone blocks rested to either side of me, twin messages echoing similar sentiments in both Greek and Latin. I couldn’t help but smile, my dreams had not prepared me for such absolute contentment—it felt like home.
“Sara!”
Someone called out to me, pulling me from my thoughts. All around me, the world I’d seen began to melt, fading back in time and my imagination. Suddenly tunics and veils became shorts and baseball caps, and the vendors who I could have sworn held spices were now serving ice cream to a mass of visitors, their backs turned on the sights of the ruined library. I glanced down at my bare feet, burning in the summer heat. It has been hundreds of years since that last bustling day down the main thoroughfare at Ephesus, but the wind—still smelling faintly of the sea—whipped around me all the same, bringing with it the sounds and stories of the past, forgotten to so many who were too busy with their sandals.