Space Invader street art

Since wonder | wander | women first moved to London, we found and loved the cheeky street art of French guerrilla artist Invader. His tile artworks imitating 8-bit pixel art are dotted around this city, as well as several European cities we happened to visit.

paris la vie

wonder | wander | women are lucky to have been to some of the world's iconic cities: Rome, New York, London, Paris. These are cities we have seen in art and media, read about it in books, and otherwise have heard about our whole life. 

The Eiffel Tower over the Seine

Bern, Switzerland

For wonder | wander | women's adventures in Switzerland last year, we were invited to stay with friends who live in one of the most fascinating medieval towns in the world. Bern is a UNESCO World Heritage site, founded in 1191 on a peninsula formed by the meandering Aare River.

View of Bern from the Rose Garden

street galleries

In recent years street art has been refined from the chaotic, calligraphic expressions of the 80s and 90s into many different styles and complex forms. Many people still think of graffiti and other street art as a simple, crude defacement of public or private property.

Graffiti wall on Regent's Canal

London at sunset

London in the late afternoon is a painting. The stone and brick buildings take on a rich golden glaze, arresting in the prolific green of surrounding trees.

St. Paul's Cathedral 

The English philosopher Thomas Brown said “London is a world by itself. We daily discover in it more new countries, and surprising singularities, than in all the universe besides.”

The River Thames

London at sunset is a very different place. We have a picture of the city as perpetually overcast, blanketed in soggy clouds and damp air.

the walls of Italy

"If these walls could talk..." The story the walls of Italy tell is a story of blood, gold and a wave of artistic advancement beyond anything the early modern world could imagine. 

Siena, Italy

side streets and secret avenues

Back in the Before Times, wonder | wander | women liked to walk for the sake of it, and we especially liked to meander.

Shoreditch Town Hall

Battersea Power Station 2013 - the last exhibition

In 2013 the iconic London landmark, the Battersea Power Station, was finally about to begin redevelopment after decades of abandonment. The city held an open house event on the weekend of 21-22 September - for free - and forty thousand people passed through the massive mid-century icon over two days. wonder | wander | women were fortunate to be among those people!

Time travel: Venice, 2005

Back in the days before smartphones and easy sharing, even digital pictures took forever to transfer and convert to a web-friendly format, and film was just a headache to digitise. Even with the few I posted when Facebook appeared, all the pictures I took stayed in my archives, like buried treasure.

San Giorgio Maggiore (under maintenance)

Nearly a decade before wonder | wander | women, I went on a trip to Italy with my cousins. We had just stepped out of the train station and got our first good look at Venice. 

Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute

love letter to London

In a previous post, wonder | wander | women talked about taking online art courses as a way to get through art block and gain new illustration skills. One of those courses asked students to pick a city we wanted to illustrate, and I - naturally - chose London.

Looking at St Paul's Cathedral and the London skyline
from the South Bank

living with buildings

It's safe to say that wonder | wander | women like buildings.

We really, really like buildings. Especially weird little buildings.

storm watch: summer tempests

It's been a very violent summer, weather wise. wonder | wander | women love cloud gazing, and we are fanatic photographers of clouds in every mood, but Mother Nature has been especially photogenic this year. Photogenic and temperamental.

nature in the city: beloved garden birds

Every day back in our room in the Philippines, wonder | wander | women would look out our first floor window at the bamboo thicket and foxtail palms outside, and there would always be at least one or two birds in the branches. 

missing the sky

It's been grey days and busy times here in the city! Exciting but a little hectic.

Autumn is drawing in with a vengeance.

journal adventures

There's a secret side to all the adventures we have as wonder | wander | women. We love to share our pictures and mementoes of the places we've travelled as well as records of changing seasons in our neighbourhoods. At the same time we kept a more personal record - our journals.

Florence, part 1: Florence at night!

wonder | wander | women were incredibly lucky and got to visit a dear family friend in Florence for a few days! We took so many pictures our camera ran out of space, so we have to document our trip in a few installments. Part 1 presents Florence at night, a side the daily crowds of tourists don't always see.

they paved paradise, and put up...

...a paradise.

Brutalist architecture is called so for a reason. Distressed textures, the muddy colour of raw concrete and the stark lines of mid-20th-century* design exemplified this style. Many condemned it (and still do!) as ugly and intrusive.

London: under construction

In London, ancient and modern architecture often flow together to make the living city.

London Town: oddments and curiosities

Living close to the centre of town eliminates the need for public transport. Experiencing city life at a walking pace changes the way wonder | wander | women see our adopted hometown, revealing little details we would miss if zooming by on a bus or bike.

The Lion and the...horse; the Scottish Unicorn has lost its horn!

Celebrating the Year of the Fire Monkey!

London is pulling out all stops this Chinese New Year! Outside Asia, London hosts the biggest annual Chinese New Year celebrations.

Images from Chiswick House & Gardens, via Time Out

The Magical Lantern Festival premieres at Chiswick House and Gardens this year, and is open until March 5th. This is the first time the festival has appeared in the UK.