Art, Anatomy and the Abyss: A Day Inside Singapore’s ArtScience Museum

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© 2026 Photos and text by CM Cordeiro

I’d meant to breeze through this museum on my first afternoon at Marina Bay, the way you tick a landmark off a list. Or really, to revisit it, since it sits along the waterfront walk beside Marina Bay Sands that I love, humidity and unforgiving heat and all. But the museum’s lotus-shaped building, all white petals reaching up toward the bay, has a way of slowing you down before you’ve even gone inside. I lasted about twenty minutes of “just a quick look” before I gave in. We had comfortable shoes; it would be a no-agenda day, or rather, a three-exhibition one.

The three shows running during my brief trip to Singapore were about the body, the ocean, and one that lives somewhere between art, science and pure sorcery. I’m always up for a little alchemy and scrying, so we began with Future World.

Future World: Where Art Meets Science

If you’ve seen a photo of someone standing inside a room made entirely of hanging lights, glittering in every colour at once, there’s a good chance it was taken here, if not at Tiffany’s The Landmark. Future World is the museum’s permanent teamLab exhibition, and it is unapologetically a place to feel small, or bedazzled, in the best way.

The other way to feel small, yet highly quantum-connected, is on a breakwater along East Coast beach just past midnight, peering at the sea of lights from the passing port ships until you can’t tell where land ends and sea begins, or where that sea of lights has merged into the galaxy of stars. It’s the place to sit and wonder whether you might be just another grain of sand underfoot, only biological. But that’s a different night. Today, the light room.

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A Morning at Kusthotellet Styrsö is Shaped by the Sea

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Morning view at Kusthotellet Styrsö in the Gothenburg archipelago

© 2026 Photos and text by JE Nilsson and CM Cordeiro

Styrsö, Gothenburg Southern Archipelago

Some mornings begin with an alarm, a rushed coffee, and a list of things already waiting. A morning on Styrsö begins differently.

At Kusthotellet Styrsö, the day opens slowly. Light moves across the water, the islands sit low on the horizon, and on this particular morning, dramatic clouds gave the sky more depth than usual. The ocean is central to the experience, not only as a view from the hotel, but as part of the atmosphere that follows you from room to restaurant, from breakfast to the spa.

It was close to midsummer in Sweden, when the long evenings seem to stretch naturally into the next day. It felt like the right time to visit this gem in the archipelago. In that soft continuity, breakfast felt like something to look forward to rather than a routine meal. The setting does much of the work: coffee, fresh textures, blue interiors, and a calm room where light, water and weather become part of the table. Through the windows, the sea gives the morning a quiet focus.

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Late Evening at the Rambla: a winter dispatch from Alicante

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Heladería Borgonesse, Rambla Méndez Núñez, Alicante, January 2026

Text and Photo © 2026 JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro

Travel  ·  Alicante, Spain  ·  January 2026

Late Evening at the Rambla: a winter dispatch from Alicante

We had not planned to stop. But the light from Borgonesse was warm, the evening was mild, and it seemed like the right thing to do.

January 2026

Alicante in January is relatively quiet. The Rambla Méndez Núñez, which in summer fills with bodies and noise, opens up in winter to reveal itself: a wide, mosaic-paved boulevard lined with bare-branched orange trees, lit softly at night, designed at a pace that invites you to slow down. We had been walking it for a while, not going anywhere in particular, which is perhaps the best way to get to know a city.

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TP Ristorante, Alicante: A Late Afternoon in the Palacio Salvetti

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Text and Photo © 2026 JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro

There are restaurants you stumble into and restaurants you return to. TP Ristorante, on Carrer Castaños in the heart of Alicante’s old town, belongs to the second category from the first visit.

The building is the Palacio Salvetti, constructed in 1887, and its foundations are still very much present: high ceilings, generous arched windows opening onto the street, stone and plaster that have absorbed a good deal of Alicante history. What the current owners have done with the interior is worth pausing over before you even sit down.

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Alicante in January: The Mediterranean’s Best-Kept Off-Season Secret

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Alicante, January 2026

Text and Photo © 2026 JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro

There is a particular kind of pleasure in arriving somewhere and realising you have timed it perfectly. Alicante in January is not the city at its loudest, and that is precisely the point.

The days run to around 16 degrees Celsius with nearly nine and a half hours of sunshine, and rain is almost theoretical, perhaps one day in ten. The crowds of summer are gone, the light is clear and low, and the city belongs, more or less, to itself. You get to slip in alongside it.

The city, experienced in layers

Alicante did not arrive at its present shape quickly. The city sits on foundations that span Iberian, Roman, Moorish, and Spanish colonial periods, each leaving something legible in the streetplan and stonework. The old town, known as El Barrio, climbs the rock beneath the castle in a pattern that follows Moorish-era paths. The Explanada de España, the grand promenade along the waterfront, was laid out in the nineteenth century and is paved with some six and a half million marble tiles in a wave pattern that local craftsmen still maintain. Walking it slowly in January, with nobody particularly in a hurry, you begin to understand that this is a city accustomed to its own beauty and not especially concerned with performing it.

Castillo de Santa Bárbara occupies the summit of Mount Benacantil, a rocky outcrop that rises 166 metres above sea level directly above the city. The site has been fortified since at least the ninth century, when it served Moorish rulers of the region. What stands today dates largely from the sixteenth century, built and expanded under Spanish Habsburg rule following the Reconquista. From the upper ramparts in January, with the air clear and the haze of summer completely absent, the view extends across the coastline in both directions, the mountains of the interior close and detailed, the marina directly below. It is the kind of view that asks for quiet rather than commentary.

The marina

From our vantage point above, the marina is the natural next destination. Yachts moored in the winter calm, the water a deep and steady blue, the Paseo del Puerto running along its edge wide and unhurried. In summer this waterfront fills quickly, boats come and go in numbers, and the pace is a different thing entirely. In January you can walk the full length of it, stop wherever you like, and take in the surrounding landscape at a genuinely languid pace. The castle above, the mountains inland, the Mediterranean ahead. It is a generous composition and January gives you the time to notice it.

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At the Fish Wharf in Winter: Kristiansand and Skrei Season

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Text and Photo © 2026 JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro

February is not the obvious month to visit southern Norway. The days are short, the harbour wind has teeth, and the summer crowds that fill Kristiansand’s famous Fiskebrygga are long gone. But come in February for one very specific reason: skrei.

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Through Old and New Shanghai: From Museum Treasures to Bund Lights

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Text and Photo © 2026 JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro

Through Old and New Shanghai: Museum Treasures to Bund Lights

Shanghai, October 2025

Some days are perfectly choreographed without having the need to plan much. An October 2025 morning in Shanghai began with ancient porcelain and ended with the glittering skyline reflected in the Huangpu River, a journey from 8,000 years of ceramic history to the electric pulse of modern China.

Morning: Porcelain Pilgrimage at Shanghai Museum East

We arrived at the Shanghai Museum East Campus in Pudong just after opening, beating the mid-morning crowds. The sprawling 113,200-square-meter building on Century Avenue is a world away from the iconic bronze ding-shaped museum at People’s Square. Where the original building evokes ancient ritual vessels, the East Campus, opened in late 2023, is all soaring ceilings, natural light, and the kind of spaciousness that lets you actually breathe around priceless artifacts.

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Where Shanghai Slows Down: Zhujiajiao in Autumn

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Text and Photo © 2026 JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro

They say the best way to see Shanghai is to leave it, if only for an afternoon. Not for another skyline, but for a place where time is measured by the quiet push of a boat pole and the patient repetition of hands at work. In October 2025, I took the easy one-hour trip out to Zhujiajiao and found it wasn’t a postcard version of the past. It was a living town, layered, textured, and gently awake beneath willows that moved with the breeze.

A watercolour sky

Zhujiajiao in autumn doesn’t need dramatic sunshine to feel beautiful. That day, the sky was more like a thin wash of watercolour, soft and overcast, with swirls of cloud-white. The humidity of summer had lifted, replaced by air that felt clean and light on the skin. The canals held a calm green, the willows stayed green too, and the whole town seemed to lean into a quieter palette.

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Julbord on the West Coast: Herring, Ham, and Holiday Rhythm

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Text and Photo copyright 2025 JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro

A Swedish julbord is often described as “a lot of food,” but it is also a meal with a recognisable structure and a set of shared habits. Many guests begin with something warm to drink, then move through the buffet in a familiar sequence, cold dishes first, warm dishes second, dessert and coffee last. Julbord is commonly eaten in “rounds,” with several smaller visits rather than one large plate.

A west coast setting, classic julbord by the sea

On the Swedish west coast, the julbord is often framed by the sea, both literally and in the menu. In Gothenburg and the archipelago, Christmas dining is frequently described in terms of herring and salmon variations, and, in some settings, more pronounced seafood and shellfish elements.

At Långedrag Värdshus, the julbord is presented as a classic “julbord by the sea,” with views over Göteborg’s archipelago. Their description highlights several kinds of herring, salmon prepared in different ways, cold cuts, and warm staples such as Jansson’s frestelse, boiled Christmas ham, prinskorv, and homemade meatballs, followed by a large dessert table.

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