There are places in the world that don’t just show you nature—they tell you stories. And then there’s Lake Mashū, a mystical caldera lake nestled in the mountains of Hokkaido, Japan. Known for its mirror-like waters and often shrouded in fog, Mashū is mysterious on any given day. But once a year, it unveils something truly otherworldly: the Dragon Eye.

Nestled on a quiet street in Bloomsbury, London, far from the tourist crowds of the Thames and Westminster, there’s a modest Georgian townhouse with black railings, white-framed windows, and red brick walls. It doesn’t shout for attention—but it doesn’t need to. This is the Charles Dickens Museum, the former home of one of England’s greatest storytellers, where fiction met reality and a literary universe was born.