Ontem aconteceu-me o impensável (comprar um[a espécie de] guia turístico e ter intenções de o ler de uma ponta a outra)

Yes, other islands off Dubrovnik are just as beautiful, but they seem to hold nothing. Here you live in a flower bed of Greek mithology and poetry, to which sooner or later you sucumb because you realize that all these fruits of the brilliant human imagination are not fanciful chimeras but simply facts - the facts os greek life and nature. And it comes with quite a shock to realize that the roots of our own cultures are buried in this rocky soil. There is no help for it, we are all Greeks, as Shelley once said.

Lawrence Durrel, The Greek Islands, Faber & Faber, 2002