The world we imagine is almost always different to the reality, and our grand imaginings of destinations inevitably affect the experience.
Every place is three places. A trinity, separate but indivisible.
A place is first the place you imagine, then the place you see, and then finally the place you remember. They are all distinct, they're related, all different, though none of them remain the same.
The place you imagined is changed by the place you see, and that in turn changes as everywhere does. And memory is as ethereal as a performance that alters with every retelling....
The world we imagine, we remember, is seen in a circus mirror. Whole continents shrink to mere specks. Some places are just blurred outlines, others grow disproportionately large.
The centre of the universe may be a random but memorable city: the place of your birth, somewhere you were happy, where your family emigrated from, like those Dark Age maps where the world revolves around Jerusalem.
And there are fanciful lands full of monsters and misbegotten beasts.
(A.A. Gill)