Happy Friday, readers! Today I’m excited to be sharing the fifth in my new series with you Wish You Were Here!, a monthly collection of unique, unusual and beautiful travel-related curiosities I’ve found on the internet. From places to stay and visit, books, videos and photography, to festivals, vintage travel pictures, instagram accounts, travel stories and products. Best scrolled through with your Friday morning cup of coffee, on your afternoon tea break or over an early evening cocktail. Enjoy!
1 Wes Anderson designed a train carriage for Belmond. Of course he has. Find out more here.
2 Leopoldine Doualla Bell Smith, the world’s first black flight attendant. Find out more here.
3 Agrafa, the Greek region too remote for maps. In medieval times, this region was so inaccessible that it was literally “agrafa” (unwritten) –imbuing its inhabitants with a wild and independent streak that continues to this day… Deep in the interior of the mainland, cut off from the rest of the world by mountains, lies the region of Agrafa.… “This isolation has been both a blessing and a curse to Agrafa,” said local resident Thomas Ntavarinos. “It has preserved a traditional way of life, an Eden of flora and fauna, but this is also a difficult place to live. Winters are long and brutal, and it’s easy to be cut off.” Read the full travel report on BBC Travel. 
4 Telachairs at the LA bus terminal. Via Reddit.
5 A historic spiritual sanctuary of miniature shrines on Kauai, Hawaii. “Originally the site of an ancient heiau, or Hawaiian temple, the 32-acre valley on Kauai’s southern shore later became host to iconography of another religion: 88 Buddhist shrines. Measuring no larger than a dollhouse, the series of sacred monuments were built by Japanese émigrés in 1904; each one pays homage to its larger archetype along a 1,000-mile pilgrimage in Shikoku, Japan. In the 1960s, Lawai’s miniature shrines became neglected and began to crumble. For decades they sat in disrepair as trees, grass and vines encroached upon them. Visitors to the center are invited to tour the rehabilitated shrines during a quiet, contemplative hillside walk. More found here.
6 Large-scale sculptures celebrating tea outside the Hayward Gallery, London. The installation is called Samovar after the eponymous tea brewer commonly found across Central Asia. It’s designed to reflect on the multicultural and colonial histories of tea. On view until 5 December. More details here.
7 The bird man of Chennai, India. Sekar, a camera repair man, gets up at 4am every day to prepare food for 4000 parakeets he feeds twice a day. Via here.
8 Epic Train Journeys by Monish Rajesh. An inspiring coffee-table photebook that mixes 40 well-known bucket list rail journeys with niche and little-known ideas, from the Andean Explorer in Peru through to The Ghan in Australia. Buy from Amazon.
9 Retro 70s-style travel cup, $29, Society 6. Shop here.
10 Vienna museums’ open adult-only OnlyFans account to display nudes. The tourist board in Austrian capital rails against censorship of art on social media platforms. Full article found on The Guardian.
11 A cottage fit for Winnie the Pooh in the real 100-acre-wood in the Ashdown Forest, East Sussex. The Bearbnb is situated in Ashdown Forest close to Brighton available to book for Sussex residents on Airbnb as part of Disney’s 95th Anniversary celebrations.
12 The Great Jack O’ Lantern Blaze. Every year the grounds of the Van Courtland Manor in Upstate New York comes alive with 7000 carved pumpkins in celebration of Halloween.
