Korčula is an island off the coast reached by a crowded ferry during a trip Poppy Wright expected to be the best vacation she and Alex Nilsen had ever taken. The island’s glittering water, sunset excursions, and dinners overlooking the sea provide the journey with striking beauty, but the conditions of their stay and the presence of a third companion frustrate the privacy Poppy and Alex need. The result is a place remembered through a sharp contradiction: the trip is beautiful and miserable at once.

Setting and Accommodation

R+R books two apartment-style hotel rooms overlooking the water. Bernard, an employee of the magazine, mistakenly assumes that he and Alex will share one room, although Alex is Poppy’s guest and Bernard should have his own accommodation. He says he has two bedrooms by accident, and Poppy and Alex eventually give up trying to explain that the extra bedroom was intended for them. Their sympathy for Bernard helps settle the misunderstanding, but it also leaves them sharing a trip whose arrangements neither expected.

The apartments are sleek and modern, finished in white and stainless steel, with balconies facing the glittering water. Inside, however, the walls are paper-thin: each morning Poppy wakes to three small children running and screaming in the apartment above. A dead animal somewhere in the wall behind the laundry-closet dryer adds a persistent smell. Each day, after Poppy reports it to the front desk, a teenage boy comes to deal with the problem while she is out. She suspects he opens the windows and sprays Lysol; by the time she returns, the lemony scent has begun to fade and the odor has returned. The polished rooms promise a restful coastal stay, but the daily nuisances make that promise hard to inhabit.

Excursions and the Island’s Appeal

The trip does deliver the landscape Poppy and Alex came to see. They kayak at sunset, tour family wineries inland, and eat seafood together each night. On their last evening, the three dine at a restaurant overlooking the sea as pink and gold light spreads across the water and gives way to deep purple. The scenery is not incidental to the trip’s appeal: these shared outings are beautiful enough to make the vacation feel, at moments, like the ideal Poppy had anticipated.

Yet the excursions are nearly always shared with Bernard. He joins the kayaking and winery tour, comes to dinner every night, and proposes a nightcap afterward. Alex privately jokes that Bernard might be God, while Poppy laughs into her wine; Bernard, taking her laughter as a possible sign of allergies, offers her an embroidered handkerchief. The episode captures the social mismatch that shadows the island’s pleasures: Bernard is generous and well-meaning, but his unflagging company leaves Poppy longing for an hour alone with Alex.

Friendship and the Trip’s Contradiction

Korčula follows a period in which Poppy and Alex have quietly stepped back from their friendship after Tuscany. Instead of exchanging daily messages, they have begun catching up only every few weeks. Poppy recognizes that returning to their former closeness without addressing what has changed would be too easy, and unfair to Alex as well as to Trey. She has waited two and a half months for a chance to speak plainly with Alex, without holding back, tiptoeing around him, or trying not to touch him. On the island, Bernard’s constant presence becomes an obstacle to that conversation.

Poppy’s description of the trip as both the most beautiful and the worst they have taken is borne out by its competing details. The water and evening light offer the splendor of a vacation she had hoped for; the noisy rooms, recurring smell, and lack of privacy make it difficult to enjoy that beauty without qualification. On the final night, after the three have become very drunk at dinner, they return to the resort exhausted and part ways. Fifteen minutes later, Alex knocks on Poppy’s door. Korčula therefore becomes not a simple retreat or an uncomplicated romantic setting, but the beautiful, inconvenient backdrop to a long-awaited private moment between friends whose closeness remains unresolved.