Your guidebook writers acknowledge that there’s been a great deal of debate about how exactly an eighth continent appeared in our midst. Amid some circles, there’s talk of the landmass as an intergalactic spaceship, its presence entering our reality like a sparrow flying through an open window. There are speculations that it rose from the sea like the lost city of Atlantis. Others have suggested that the continent emerged from a parallel dimension as close to our own as the skin of an onion. If these esoteric philosophers are right, it raises a host of more disturbing questions. After all, if continents can appear at will, might a ninth continent soon emerge, pushing its way through our skyscrapers, its museums and discothèques crashing into our living rooms like icebergs?

To confound matters further, there’s the question of the new continent’s coordinates. Though it was first sighted by fishermen off the coast of Spain, by the time they’d reported it to local authorities, the continent had already disappeared. Boatloads of newscasters, government officials, oceanographers, and a hoard of interested tourists hovered around the sighting, finding nothing. Then, later that evening, the continent reappeared, floating off the eastern cape of Africa, this time captured on film and broadcast for the world to see. The continent behaves, it seems, like a great sea tortoise. It disappears beneath the waves at will, taking cities and towns, taxicabs and hostels with it, only to reappear in a distant ocean with saltwater running down its avenues and falling off its sidewalks.

Your guidebook writers admit that every time we board a flight to the continent it’s accompanied by a sinking fear. Perhaps our longed-for destination will have departed once again, or worse still, will have disappeared completely, and we’ll be left only with postcards. Some days it feels like our guidebook is nothing more than an attempt to catch the elusive fluttering of the continent’s new cities and pin them to the page like butterflies.

But lest we grow weepy, let us turn our focus to the fact that the new continent is still here, alive and well, vibrant with fish markets and flower stalls, and we’d be wise to worry less about the continent’s disappearance than celebrate the reemergence of its cities and citizens who are ready to welcome us to their dreamlike continent. Yes, if like us, you occasionally wonder whether this world is a dream, then the destinations contained within this selection are the ideal vacations for you.

The Emporiums of Sonom

One might hunt forever in search of the island of Sonom whose borders are perpetually wreathed in a mist so thick that the idea of building an airport was long ago abandoned. The only way to arrive to the island is by ship, and only the most experienced captains can navigate the fog to arrive at a coastline where a thousand herons stand as tall as a procession of the queen’s guards.

There are few cafés and restaurants to be found on the island, and no museums or cinemas. But though the destination appears duller than most, travelers soon discover Sonom’s Dream Emporiums, made of white moonstone, which are as plentiful as monarch cocoons in late summer. Within these oval mosques, beds are heaped with pillows and feather duvets, and waiters circulate the perimeter, filling tall glasses with a milk-colored potion. Sip the milk, lay back against your pillows, and you’ll soon discover a second set of streets outside the emporium’s doors. Here, along the main boulevard, kiosks sell lemons while washerwomen dunk comets in sudsy basins. There’s a shop where enormous beetles sandpaper planks of maple, and high above, an airship unrolls its ladders to climb. A small child tugs your hand to show you an enormous moth he’s captured in a bird cage. A woman with chestnut hair takes your chin and leans toward you. Bells clang in the distance and The General raises his rifle, lets off a shot, and you find yourself seated at a candlelit banquet table where black bears sing haunting melodies.

All this and more awaits you in the Emporiums of Sonom. However, it’s worth noting that though the milk is cheap, the sleep destinations are rather expensive. You’ll find yourself signing IOUs whose receipts unroll into the streets. We mention this as a warning, for we all return home having spent very little actual cash, and yet the trip to Sonom exacts a toll on our lives. We’re plagued by nightmares where we work endless hours, scrubbing dishes in the airship’s kitchens to pay off our debts.

Even more mysterious are our daily encounters. Sitting on the train, we see a man reading a newspaper, and it’s not until we’ve stepped onto the platform that we remember him as The General. As for our restaurants, they’re filled with strangers who we feel we intimately know. At a corner table sits a woman we once loved. The server is as familiar as our own mother. After visiting Sonom, it seems that our waking world is full of people we once knew deeply. We’ve been husbands, wives, sisters, and children to one another. We’ve gone for walks through extravagant gardens and danced to otherworldly melodies at distant parties. We’ve shared evenings with nearly everyone. No wonder we purchase our tickets to return to that island, happy to be leaving this world where we hardly know anyone.

The Hotel Androga

The Hotel Androga was constructed in 1634 by Prince Vorheim, who ordered a castle be built as a present for his beloved. It was to be filled with flowers and light, and the candelabras and vases which adorn its walls attest to this brief history of love. Alas, shortly after construction, the prince was cuckolded by his betrothed, who fell in love with a magician of darkness. Together, they fashioned a sharp thorn which pierced the prince’s dreams and left an unreachable wound within. The thorn proved to be so well-crafted that the young prince would often wince from pain during his waking hours, and he spent the rest of his life cultivating a garden of sleeping herbs in hopes of reaching the splinter embedded within his nightmares. In his moments of waking, he oversaw the final construction of the castle, which he determined should function as a citadel of loneliness. Its windows were narrowed, its halls darkened, its vases filled with thistle.

Here, the young prince grew old, rarely emerging, and upon becoming king, he ruled little, made no speeches, and died without leaving so much as a single portrait behind. The castle remained abandoned and in disrepair until the late nineteenth century when, with the sudden influx of tourism, it became a visitor’s center and later the grand hotel it is today.

Though the marble has been polished, the brambles burned, vases refilled with irises, and the stone bedrooms spruced up with curtains and Wi-Fi, a feeling of loss remains within its chambers. It’s not uncommon for visitors to check into their rooms and experience a sudden weariness that keeps them from exploring town. They stay in bed, watch television, clip toenails, sleep. Such melancholy hangs over the banquet hall as well, which provides a complimentary continental breakfast in the morning and Michelin-starred dining at night. And yet, despite the wonderful food, travelers find themselves besieged by an oppressive quiet. They gaze at their young children and already see them leaving for college. Many hesitate to reach for the hand of their beloved, taking instead a bite of their buttered toast and listening to the echo of chewing inside their skulls.

When they depart the hotel, they leave with a belief that all their struggles have amounted to very little. It was their childhood, they say, or their failed marriage, the job not taken, the investment they should have made. All who have visited spend their days weeping into pillows, incapable of even the simplest act of rising from their bed and opening the windows to welcome the world outside, this place they once called home.

The Mountains of Montblau

If your travels have brought you as far as the northernmost mountains of Montblau, you’d be remiss in not taking the last step. The trip to Montblau is not for the faint of heart; there are no busses or gondolas, no car rentals or mopeds to lease, or any other way to scale the three-thousand and fifty-one steps of the mountain but to climb by foot. Located over the center of an inactive volcano, the Temple of Montblau consists only of a thin walkway which corkscrews into the belly of the volcano, extending ledges here and there upon which the monks of Montblau stand. It’s not advisable to descend this path—many tourists never return—rather, we recommend The Observation Deck, where reclining chairs have been arranged so visitors may close their eyes and listen to the sounds of the musicians as they play the City of Montblau into existence.

If you’ve never witnessed the ooradin, Montblau’s most revered instrument, you may wish to keep your eyes open. These elongated aerophones, akin to the Australian didgeridoo and the longhorns of Switzerland, produce their enchanting tones by similar musical physics: Notes blown into the tube travel to the end of the chamber where they are refracted, creating hypnotic resonances and otherworldly melodies. Any similarities to the didgeridoo or longhorn end there, for these hollowed crystalized stalactites extend for miles, and their echoes are sent through multiple passageways, each note imbued with earthly resonance, so that a single note is fractured into a chorus of symphonies. The monks—whose beards, it should be mentioned, seem as long as the ooradin—are masters of their instruments. Having trained their entire lives for this monastic life, they breathe one circular breath, and their continuous notes entwine with the ensemble.

Listening closely, one becomes aware of strange noises within the melodies. One hears a laugh and envisions the face of a young woman riding a bicycle down a meadow lane. Her hair is loose, and the spokes of her wheels click as birdcalls rise from the fields. There’s the sudden clean sound of a knife slicing through an apple. From the other room, the din of guests. A turntable is playing a jazz record, and outside the windows of the dining room, where bread has been buttered, men have been kissed, and children have gone crawling beneath the table, one sees a city. It is night and the darkness is spotted with streetlamps and passing cars. Flames alight cigarettes at clubs where young men and women flirt. They leave for apartments and studios with unpainted walls, and here they’re seized by love and fall out of love and stumble from beds and doorways to console themselves on the corners of the world. Listening even closer, one hears thunder, followed by rain falling on rooftops. A woman on a street corner opens an umbrella; from an apartment window a hand emerges, grasps the shutters, and pulls them closed. Inside, candlewicks sputter, tea kettles whistle, and far above, planes cross the sky. Each slice of bread, each baby’s cry, each gasp of love is held in the monks’ breaths, and when the children are tucked within blankets and that other world slumbers, the inhabitants close their eyes and sleep for the monks of Montblau, who never rest, but breathe one long breath until their dying day.

We’re sure you understand the tragedy of every monk’s death. For with them go the lives of a whole city. The buildings crumble and birds fall from the sky, grass withers and trees rot, and nothing is left but the quiet reverberations of a note cut short. Within the darkness of an abandoned ooradin lies a chamber of galaxies in a state of suspension, each life longing for the music to begin again, for the lights to burn brightly, for the flames to dance on the wicks of candles, and the record player to begin spinning.

Traveler, we urge you to visit Montblau while you still can. The monks have grown old. There have been deaths, and their replacements have yet to arrive. The monastery attracts fewer musicians these days. The youth near Montblau want to leave their small town; they wish to become movie producers and actors, bankers and lawyers; they long not for the songs of the ooradin but the hum of electricity. The temple becomes quieter every year, its visitors less frequent. Soon, it’s said, Montblau will be silent.

The Artists of Snee

On rainy days, when cobblestones shine like turtle shells and perched gargoyles hunch their shoulders in the downpour, one can find the artists of Snee along the riverbank. Nearby restaurants pull in chairs, sweep tables of wine glasses, and shut their windows, while tourists, caught unprepared for the sudden showers, seek shelter in curiosity shops. But those who know better open their umbrellas and set out for the small booths along the river where one can find the artists of Snee painting canvases beneath dripping awnings.

What greater magic is there than to catch sight of the painters’ easels, wherein we glimpse our own futures? Here’s a portrait of the city at night. Through the window of a hotel, we see a figure in the arms of a new flame, and we recognize our own faces. There’s an open bottle of wine on the table, and our cheeks are flushed with love. In another painting, we see Lake Argos, where our children have taken paddle boats onto the pond. There, on the shore, we find ourselves surrounded by friends. We’ve spread out picnic blankets, and suddenly a champagne bottle is opened, and the cork, a small brushstroke of brown oil, arcs across the sky.

A car lazily passes in the late afternoon rain; wet echoes of tires caress the buildings. Above the city, the sky grows lighter. Couples emerge from restaurants where they’ve hidden, and young men return to their bicycles and start toward home. We see all of this in the oils: each tourist walking along the river; our own silhouettes painted in precise reproduction; the miniature canvases lined up beneath the artists’ awnings. A patch of blue emerges between the clouds of a canvas, a couple of doves shake rain from their feathers, and from the cafés, tables and chairs are placed back onto the sidewalks—all of it captured perfectly.

The last drops fall, the late afternoon sun emerges, and the artists lower their paintbrushes. They wrap up their canvases, collect coins from cigar boxes, and pack their goods until there’s only one artist left. In his canvas, we see ourselves standing alone with our umbrellas. The river, its canals, and its bridges refract the late sunlight. We watch as we close our umbrella and walk away, back to our hotels, and our lives lived so deeply within the canvases.

The Gardens of Élani

In cities built with love, the curvature of avenues reveals the hearts of happy planners. Rivers meander through city centers like dancers, and one sees picnic blankets and parasols cast along the banks. Here, bicycle bells ring as young women return home with flowers in their baskets, and high above, windows are open to song and the scent of freshly baked cardamom rolls. But such is not the case with Élani, which was designed by dour old men who couldn’t wait to busy themselves with lukewarm coffee and stale cigar smoke. The patriarchs cursed the city with their fiscal decisions, slapping down a building here, a grid of avenues there, scribbling in some streets, and calling it their master plan.

The city suffered from its history, falling into disrepair and decrepitude as the centuries weighed down its buildings which slumped like hunchbacked old men. And it was only when the city was set for demolition that a man arrived to Élani’s town hall with his blueprints rolled tightly within a parchment tube. It’s said his shoes shone like two half-moons. It’s said he approached the mayor with an offer. By morning, the broken sidewalks would be gone, the miserable parking eliminated, the lifeless apartment buildings resurrected as if newly born. There’d be polished cathedrals in the morning sun, arcades, and a river with small boats for the multitudes of tourists who’d soon flock to Élani’s gates. All this would happen overnight, he promised, without a penny from the town. The only stipulation: a public garden containing a wide-open field.

Not a penny? the mayor asked, already gazing at the builder’s blueprints.

And so, all who awoke the next morning found themselves living in the kind of city they’d only dreamed of. They marveled at the cheese shops and fountains that had appeared overnight. Flower sellers were lined by the river, bicycles were there to be loaned, music was everywhere, and there, in the center of town, were the beautiful Gardens of Élani, the gravel walkways raked, the spruce trees mulched, the rose garden buzzing with bees.

By now, most travelers are familiar with the famed botanical gardens. We’ve all seen the photographs in coffee-table books and art galleries, and when we arrive at Élani, we are told by the hotel concierge, the merchants, and bakers that the gardens aren’t to be missed. The rose garden contains over seventy-five varieties, each seemingly more fragrant than the last; there are rows upon rows of tulips; you must see the Queen’s Pond with its floating lilies, the hanging wisteria by the ice cream stand, the orchids and wild asters.

But listen closely: No matter which gate you enter, you’re bound to make your way to an open field at the center of the park where the sun falls kindly, and the manicured lawn is spread like a blanket inviting you to kick off your shoes and recline. Resist. If you pause but a moment, the pollen of the gardens will fill your breath as it lulls you to sleep. For slumber is the gateway to the builder’s second city, and once entered, the doors of the field clang shut above.

You’ll awake to the different, darker city of Thlax. Some say it’s the city of the dead, but those of us who live here don’t feel deceased. There are still stores and carousels, apartment buildings and lampposts, but the lights of this city feel murky as though we’re trapped beneath a pane of fogged glass. For a while we pounded against the belly of the field which loomed above us. We could see the tourists in the gardens, the bicyclists who pedaled past, but there was no way to make them hear. And so, like all the other tourists trapped here, your guidebook writers have learned to accept Thlax as our new home, a city from which one never departs.

The Beaches of Masipora

How many of you have gazed at mirages created by hot summer sun shimmering on blacktop, where far along a highway’s horizon one sees the heatwaves where land becomes liquid? For anyone familiar with this most common mirage, you’ll immediately recognize Masipora for what it is: Nothing more than a receding illusion on the horizon, a trick of heat and light, a trap fashioned by the atmosphere to make us think we are drawing closer to its skyscrapers and amusement park rides, its restaurants and bistros, its citizens who wave to us from its borders.

The most common lament of tourists trying to reach the beaches of Masipora? But they’re all waving to me. And though it takes nothing more than common sense to dispel our illusion (consider for a moment: The white sands would already be on every travel channel and glossy magazine cover if they could be reached), we can’t help but want to arrive at the coastline which haunts us with its presence. We are, of course, all grown adults here. Wise enough not to go wandering into the endless stretch of deadlands and mud-cracked desert where only a few trees rise, brittle from age and dry wind. We know to avoid squinting at the horizon for too long, where we swear we see a large sign announcing the town of Masipora. We know to turn back when the road ends, rather than leave our rental car abandoned on the side of the road and heft our luggage, our children, our husbands, wives, and travel companions with us, don’t we?

Yes, certainly all this is true. We’d turn back if it weren’t for the jovial citizens we see awaiting, beckoning us with waving hands. Come join us, they call, their voices lifted in friendship, their taverns open with waitresses carrying foamy heads of beer. And, yes, your tour guides have gone walking, blind and ravenous for Masipora’s embrace, all the while dreaming of the joys we’ll experience in that marvelous town: its beaches where we’ll play in the waves like children, the bistros where charcuterie will be freshly sliced and served with cured olives, the bars where our glasses will be filled and refilled, and the chestnut trees beneath which we will picnic, watching the sun set over Masipora’s peach-colored waves. We’re coming, we say, stepping further into the desert with our parched mouths.

Alas, we’ve lost many of our finest guidebook writers this way.

As for the rest of us, those saved by locals living in border towns who routinely search the area for foolish travelers like us, we acknowledge how difficult it is to return to the familiar hotel rooms we’ve booked. Having witnessed that strange and marvelous destination that exists so close to our own, we sense its presence wherever we go. As dusk settles along our hometown streets, we remember Masipora, and beneath the laughter of our spouse, we know there’s another world as densely packed with people as a pocket watch is filled with gears. Even now, as we write these words, we sense that below them is another world filled with white sand where young men and women wave to us, its cafés filled with friends we’ve yet to meet, everyone ready to welcome our arrival. We lean closer, we smudge the ink, searching for this beautiful destination we’ve yet to visit.