Author’s Note: I stopped blogging regularly in 2020, but now in 2023, I am using Google Photos and Google Maps timeline to recreate a post about what we were up to each month!
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I remember clearly the night in early July when I was desperately missing being able to go to the cinema. We hadn’t been to the movies for a long time while we traveled, so we had planned to go see allll the movies once we were settled in London. Covid had other plans. So we decided to make the best of a bad situation and have a movie night at home. I was in the mood for some superheroes so we chose to do a double feature of Infinity War and Endgame. We splurged on some popcorn I made on the stovetop and some chocolate-covered raisins - one of my favorite movie theater snacks. All in all it was a good night even if sitting in our futon watching the movies on a small TV wasn’t exactly the cinema experience I was craving.
The fourth of July passed without much fanfare. I purchased a small cake at the store and decorated it with whipped cream and berries in a vague approximation of the flag. Then while Joel took a nap I watched Hamilton on Disney+ (he is not a fan.) [This has now become my tradition every Fourth of July!] I also wore my fireworks leggings and my red, white and blue festive headband just for funsies. I remember I had to go over to my colleague's house to get information about caring for his cat while they were gone over the next week, and he looked at me funny for being all dressed up. “It’s the Fourth of July!” I said. “Yeah, so?” was his response. Apparently, they don’t go in for that holiday here…lol.
Speaking of cat sitting…since we were watching the cat, we spent a bit more time at their house so we could do a bunch of laundry. (We usually tried to sneak in quietly while they were working upstairs so it was nice to not have to worry about bothering them.) I was sitting waiting for the washer to buzz when the cat surprised me by hopping up on the window! He was a cutie (but unfortunately time has erased my memory of his name!)
And speaking of animals…we were wandering through Holland park one evening (there are so many parks in London!) and we came across a real live peacock, just out wandering around! It let us get pretty darn close and was just so cool to see up close and personal.
It was around this time that we decided to order ourselves some e-bikes in order to be able to get around and explore more of the city. We knew we wanted to buy bikes when we settled in Monmouth and figured we might as well get them earlier so we could start using them now. In normal circumstances we would have used public transportation to get around London, but in these times, bikes it is! Joel did a ton of research and found two good options online - we wanted electric and folding ones as we knew we would be hauling them up and down the stairs to our second-floor flat. Here they are all plugged in in the living room!
With our exploring radius expanded, we made it out to the London Eye! This was one of the things I was most looking forward to doing in London - I love a good Ferris Wheel and so, so wanted to ride this one. Unfortunately, this photo was as close as we got as it was closed the entire time we lived in London.
We also rode by Big Ben who was deep into some refurbishment and restoration the whole time we lived there. Not exactly the iconic scene you get in the movies!
In the middle of the month, I found myself craving a taste of home - I was in the mood for Casey’s breakfast pizza! Unfortunately, there is nothing even close to that to be found here (Joel asked several British people if they knew what breakfast pizza was and they looked at him like he had two heads) so I had to make my own! It wasn’t exactly photogenic but it was pretty darn tasty. I used my biscuit recipe for the base instead of pizza dough.
We continued to take long walks almost every day, and sometimes we got lost and ended up walking further than we intended. There are so many cool things to see around London even when you can’t go inside anywhere. These interesting sculptures were somewhere just outside of Hyde Park (according to the geotag on the photo - I don’t actually remember this information!)
One day we rode our bikes out to Wembley Stadium on a bright sunny day. Again, there wasn’t much to actually do but it was still cool to see some iconic London locations from the outside.
Towards the end of the month, my mom sent me a bunch of pictures of the stuff we had stored in their basement getting packed up to get shipped to Wales! Shipping overseas takes a long time so even though everything left my parents house in July, it didn’t arrive to our new house in Monmouth until October. That same day we went on a bike ride that took us past Buckingham Palace!
The month ended with this killer sunset view from the window in our flat!
And that’s a wrap on July of 2020 in London - it was not a very eventful month. But buckle up because things are about to get moving again when we get to August!
XOXO, Bethany