I'm more interested in the experiential end of it. Yeah, it's fun to go to galleries and museums and see works of art that I couldn't see anywhere else... but often those works were created in different countries and cultures and time periods from where they're displayed. I'd rather eat the local food, participate in local rhythms (even when they're really disruptive to my own body as they are in Spain), see the local agriculture, do my best with the language.

Which is one of the reasons I don't have any real interest in visiting east Asia - the languages are so different from what I could manage, and many of them don't even use an alphabet that I could read. It would be impossible for me to have an unmediated experience there, without a whole lot of language study that just doesn't appeal to me right now - months of study for a vacation of a couple of weeks.

And the travel time is definitely an issue, even though it's not for lack of leisure time. I'm just not interested enough in anywhere, to make it worth more than 15-16 hours in planes and airports. Whenever they get that whole beam-me-up thing going though...