There are places on this planet that our children may never see—not because they will no longer exist on the map, but because what made them extraordinary will be gone. The Franz Josef Glacier in New Zealand has retreated 3 kilometers since 1900. The Great Barrier Reef has lost more than 50% of its coral since 1995. The Maldives are sinking by about 3 millimeters a year in a rising ocean.

There are travel experiences that have no equivalent in ordinary life. Not monuments or museums — monuments can be photographed, read about, imagined. No, the experiences that have no equivalent are those that engage all the senses at once in a direction you didn’t expect. European Christmas markets are among them.