Happy Friday, readers! Welcome to the next instalment of Wish You Were Here!, a monthly helping of unique, unusual and beautiful travel-related discoveries to inspire your holiday mood. Grab a snack, stay hydrated and you’ll be alright. Enjoy!
1 (Above) Lake Powell in Utah. Found on Destination Dame
2. London’s hidden green spaces under the M4 motorway. Photographer Andrew Meredith champions urban exploration and captures the scruffier parts of London’s green spaces in his new series documenting hidden walkways under the M4. Beneath the M4 focuses on the public paths that run under the elevated section of the M4 motorway, which cuts through Boston Manor Park in the Hounslow borough of west London.
3. Rosebud Motel notepad. Write home from everyone’s favourite place to stay in Schitt’s Creek. Buy from here. Find more fictional movie hotel notepads here.
4. One of the Borromean Islands of Lago Maggiore in north Italy, Isola Bella is 320 metres long by 400 metres wide and is divided between the Palace, its Italianate garden, and a small fishing village. Open to visitors, the island also plays host to the annual Stresa music festival. Found via the Gallica BNF page.
5. Drive and Listen – the best website ever for armchair travelling there ever was. How it works is, you choose a city from the drop down menu then sit back and enjoy the ride,alongside ambient sounds of the street, and the option to tune into your chosen city’s local radio station. Tune in here.
6. An infinity rock pool overlooking Westward Ho beach in Devon, England. This old Victorian seawater rock pool has recently been refurbished after being left abandoned for years. Found on Instagram. Find out more about the Westward Ho! rock sea pool, here.
7. She was the first female to circumnavigate the globe. Jeanne Baret joined the around-the-world expedition disguised as a man, calling herself Jean Baret. She enlisted as valet and assistant to the expedition’s naturalist, Philibert Commerçon. According to accounts, Baret was herself an expert botanist. Read more of her story found on Wikipedia.
8. A tea house pavilion art installation in Tokyo. As part of a public art project, nine pavilions popped up in Tokyo recently, each designed by an artist or architect. This one on top of a grassy mound is called Goan and was created by architect, Terunobu Fujimori, and his students. Found here.
9. An Accidentally Twin Peaks diner, better known as Hunter & Gatherer in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. Despite my excitement on discovering it, I just read that it didn’t survive the pandemic and is now closed. All we have is this beautiful photograph by My Boots Photography.
10. Travel the world like Anthony Bourdain. Skip the touristy spots, he said in his new book, World Traveller: An Irreverent Guide: “If you spend all that time waiting to get into the Eiffel Tower, you’ve completely wasted a day”; and forget the concierge: “They’re going to send you to the place with the clean bathroom. Some of the best meals I’ve had, you need a hazmat suit to go to the bathroom.” Buy from Amazon or Bookshop.
11. The annual water lily harvest in Vietnam. Photographer Trung Huy Pham recently captured the annual harvest in a vivid series taken in the Long An and An Giang provinces in Vietnam. Found on This is Colossal.
12. The Chongqing Meixin Village in China.
1 Comment
Hello, I just discovered your blog. Lovely, interesting, lots of places to look at and to discover. Thank you. I just saw that you put pictures of my island, Isola Bella in Italy where my grandmother was born and grew up. I spent my childhood running around. 🙂
All the best. Trisha