FROM THE EDITOR

History books educate us with facts and figures and an attempt at reason. Fiction takes us back in time with evocative words and finely researched descriptions. But it’s travel that truly brings the past to life.

Can the passing of time be more keenly felt than in Egypt, where I touched the walls that were etched in hieroglyphics almost 5000 years earlier? Or in the Galapágos Islands, where I sat and eyeballed a marine iguana, a species that has been around for millions of years and morphed from a land animal to a sea creature to ensure its survival?

When I visited both of those places, I felt as though I had stepped through a portal into another time. Isn’t that the wonder of travel? To stand in one spot and marvel at what else came before you?

Rome’s grand Colosseum and its ghosts of gladiators past never fail to give me the shivers. La Grand-Place in Brussels has hardly changed in the past three centuries, which makes it so easy to imagine the food market that inspired the surrounding roads to be named Cheese Street and Butter Street.

I’ve been thinking about time – and the power of travel to transport us back to another era – while we have been putting this issue together.

Time has never felt more precious. Some of us are desperate to carve out significant time to have the overseas trip we’ve been dreaming of for so long. Others want to have quality family time and create new memories to relive again and again. And then there are those who want to cram more of everything into one trip – to gorge themselves on unique experiences and storm the senses with something that feels new.

I’ve said it before. Travel feels like the best thing to do with our time. It offers the greatest bang for our buck; the most memorable reward.

So how are you going to spend your time? Are you going back in it or are you propelling forward?

Wherever you’re going, I hope it’s incredible.