When I was little, I had once read the Count of Monte Cristo, which had not only convinced me that Mercedes was the sweetest name on a person, but had also developed a yearning to visit the prison island, Château d’If, where the fictional Edmond Dantes would have been imprisoned. There I was, at the Old Port of Marseille, staring longingly at an archipelago of islands a distance away. “The Château d’If est ferme — it’s closed but there is a boat to an island nearby,” I am told, and I hurriedly jump on a boat which, of course, is also named Edmond Dantes. The islands in the Frioul archipelago are dry, limestone-white, and have the texture of a crumbly bread, but the water filling its bays, oh my, I don’t think I have ever seen anything so blue. This is where Dantes must have swum to after escaping prison, where he must have met his loyal pirate friend. In these reveries, I miss my boat back to the city. “No boats until the evening,” a local restauranteur tells me, and I already feel the December chill creeping into me. I didn’t know till then how lonely sunsets feel when you are trapped in an island. At a distance, Marseille is starting to glow. This must be what Dantes must have felt like. So close, yet so far.