As we’ve had to postpone our travels because of the pandemic, I believe an occasional dose of travel dreaming can be good medicine. Here’s one of my favorite European memories from Finland — a reminder of the fun that awaits us at the other end of this crisis.

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I’m in Helsinki, surveying the city from its fanciest rooftop restaurant. The setting sun glints off the cruise ships in the harbor as fish merchants take down...

On Sunday mornings in Paris, I enjoy Mass in St. Sulpice, a church with perhaps Europe’s finest pipe organ. While I’m surrounded by towering vaults, statues of saints, and centuries of tradition, it’s the music that sends me. The spiritual sails of St. Sulpice have been filled for two centuries by its 6,600-pipe organ. Organists from around the world come to Paris just to hear this organ.

As the first Mass of the morning finishes, half the crowd remains seated as the...

Guzelyurt, in the region of Cappadocia in rural Turkey, is a town that has changed little over the centuries. Exploring it, I hike steeply down into a ravine, winding through a community in the rough — where the chores of daily life seemed stuck in the Middle Ages. Then, climbing up to a hilltop perch marking the end of town, I survey the view and marvel how the honey that holds this architectural baklava together is the community of people who live here — and the traditions they...