Hello from Croatia! (plus glowworms)

The last couple of days involved me (and Luci's family) travelling to the western coast of Croatia from Venice. Currently, we are in what is known as the "Italian" part of Croatia (Istria), where people are ethnically Italian and mainly still speak Italian as well. It is extremely beautiful here in Croatia. I feel a little bit like I am coming home, as my heritage is Eastern European, and every night we have been eating gnocchi and desert cakes not unlike the kind my Hungarian grandmother used to make. Wardrobe-wise, I am getting pretty frustrated with my very limited amount of travel clothing (and there are only so many outfits that I can wear because this summer heat doesn't allow layering at all) and I can't wait to do some proper thrifting when I get back to Sydney! OUTFIT 1 shirt - c/o Sheinside (sold out - similar) skirt - c/o Sheinside (sold out) necklace - Claire's OUTFIT 2 bikini - Asos (sold out - similar) On the way back from dinner yesterday night, we discovered this little glowing guy peeking out of some bricks (this is a terrible photo of it - the worm had cute little glowing eyes and everything - but bear with me): What makes glowworms, fireflies and jellyfish glow? A property known as bioluminescence, the glowing is created by special proteins in the animals (usually called luciferins). Luciferins undergo a chemical reaction with an enzyme called luciferase. Luciferase causes the luciferin to meet with oxygen, causing a reaction which releases light (there is a good diagram of this on How Stuff Works). Just a couple of days ago, scientists from Brazil and Japan discovered the evolutionary link between non-glowing enzymes and bioluminnescent enzymes. This is really important because bioluminescence is used a lot in scientific and medical research (making things glow makes them a lot easier to see), and means that researchers will be able to make luciferases which glow in different colours and are up to 1000 times brighter (read more). Image via Science Alert, by Doug Perrine And here is a photo of bioluminescent plankton lighting up a beach in the Maldives, just to prove how cool it is. Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr