Autumn 2025 unfolded as a season of return and departure, of unpacking and repacking, of settling in and setting off again. It began on a volcanic island in the middle of the Atlantic and ended somewhere between Bangkok traffic and London frost. In between, we moved house, celebrated birthdays, wandered cemeteries by torchlight, revisited Barcelona, carved pumpkins, saw one of my favourite bands, and quietly adjusted to the reality of being back in London after nearly a year abroad.
It was not a calm season, but it was a meaningful one.
Season in Numbers
Flights: 9
Countries visited: 7
New flat: 1
Pumpkins carved: 2
Birthdays celebrated: 3
Cemeteries toured: 2
September — São Miguel and Starting Again
We began autumn in São Miguel in the Azores, where we had arrived on August 23rd to spend time with my mum and soak up the last stretch of summer. Having a family home there changes the rhythm of travel entirely. It is not about checking off viewpoints or chasing novelty. It is about returning to the same roads and restaurants, the same coastal light, the same sea air that smells faintly of salt and vegetation. There is something deeply reassuring about knowing where you will have your morning coffee and which stretch of coastline feels best just before sunset.
I recently wrote a full post about this trip, but what lingered with me most was the feeling of continuity. São Miguel is one of the few places in my life that feels stable year after year. The hydrangeas bloom, the Atlantic churns, and we return. There is comfort in that repetition.
On September 6th, we landed back in London in the evening and checked into an airport hotel because the next morning was moving day. We had been storing our belongings in a storage unit in Barcelona since November 2024, and it felt surreal to retrieve the physical evidence of our previous London life. After meeting our new landlords to collect the keys, we headed straight to the storage unit to meet our man with a van and begin hauling everything into our new flat.
Moving always feels both chaotic and symbolic. You are not just rearranging furniture; you are deciding how you want to live. That first evening, surrounded by boxes and with no idea where anything properly belonged, we ordered pizza and ate it sitting on the floor. It is our unspoken tradition: pizza is the first meal in any new home. Something is grounding about it, something that says, “We’re here. We’ve arrived.”
The next few weeks were consumed by unpacking, reorganising, and slowly shaping the flat into something that felt like ours. Books were shelved. Kitchen cupboards were negotiated. Pictures were debated and eventually hung. After almost a year in Barcelona, it felt strange to be rebuilding a London routine, but there was also comfort in rediscovering familiar rhythms.
On September 19th, we paused to celebrate Victor’s birthday properly. I took him to Donia, where the food was vibrant and generous, layered with bold flavours and thoughtful presentation. It felt indulgent in the best way. Afterwards, we went for drinks at Dram, easing into the evening and allowing ourselves to feel momentarily settled rather than mid-transition.
We also began re-engaging with London culturally. At the Design Museum, we visited More Than Human, an ambitious exhibition exploring how design might shift its focus beyond human needs to consider ecosystems, animals, and the planet as a whole. The exhibition brought together artists, architects, technologists and designers grappling with the climate crisis through their work. Installations ranged from immersive seaweed environments to research on granting legal rights to rivers and landscapes. It felt expansive and urgent without tipping into despair. I left thinking about how much of modern life is built on human convenience and how radical it might be to design for coexistence instead.
A few days later, we returned to one of my favourite Kensington spaces, Japan House London, to see Pictograms. The exhibition traced the evolution of visual symbols, from ancient carvings to Olympic iconography to emoji. Japan’s role in shaping contemporary visual language is often underestimated, yet its influence is everywhere. There was something beautifully simple about walking through an exhibition dedicated to clarity and communication without words. After months of transition and movement, I found myself craving that kind of simplicity.
October — London Month of the Dead and Lingering Nostalgia
October is, without question, my favourite month of the year. London does autumn exceptionally well. The air sharpens, the light softens, and the city seems to lean into its own history.
We began the month with the London Month of the Dead, attending a torch-lit evening walk at West Norwood Cemetery. Wandering among Victorian monuments by flickering light felt theatrical but also contemplative. The cemetery, one of the Magnificent Seven, holds elaborate mausolea and the graves of notable figures like Mrs Beeton and Henry Tate. The evening ended in candlelight storytelling inside a restored chapel, the atmosphere suspended somewhere between reverence and gothic drama.
The following week, we visited Highgate Cemetery for a guided tour inside some of its restored mausolea. Highgate’s Egyptian Avenue and the Circle of Lebanon always feel cinematic, but stepping inside the mausolea added another layer of intimacy. There is something deeply human about the desire to memorialise, to build permanence into stone. Autumn seems like the appropriate season to confront those impulses.
In between these events, we took a quick trip back to Barcelona to retrieve the last of our belongings. Walking past our old flat was unexpectedly emotional. Barcelona had been a distinct chapter—sunlit mornings, a slower pace, the novelty of rebuilding life somewhere new. Standing outside that building, I felt the weight of transition more acutely than I had anticipated. I reassured Victor that nostalgia tends to soften over time, that something can remain special without needing to be revisited constantly. Still, it was bittersweet.
Back in London, we leaned fully into seasonal rituals. We rented a Zipcar (a service I will genuinely miss) and drove out to Stanhill Farm to pick pumpkins. On another day, we walked from Cookham along the Thames towards Maidenhead, enjoying crisp air and long stretches of quiet countryside.
We also visited the Hunterian Museum, which felt suitably macabre for October, and spent an evening at Kew Gardens for Halloween at Kew. The illuminated trail through the gardens was immersive and unexpectedly joyful, the kind of spectacle that makes you temporarily forget how dark it is at 5 p.m.
Victor’s parents visited toward the end of the month to celebrate his mum’s birthday. We had Sunday roast at The Guinea Grill, followed by dinner at The Camberwell Arms another evening. On Halloween itself, our nearby bakery, Toad Bakery, collaborated with Bake Street on Día de los Muertos pastries, including two types of pan de muerto and an inventive croissant–tamale hybrid. It felt like the perfect culmination of a month that celebrated both spookiness and sweetness.
The morning after Halloween, we travelled to Birmingham to celebrate a friend’s birthday in her new home. It was our first time visiting since she had moved, and while we explored parts of the city, the real highlight was simply spending time together.
November — Music and Southeast Asia
In early November, we saw The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die, one of my favourite bands. The show was cathartic and loud in a way that felt necessary before another stretch of travel.
On November 8th, I flew to Bangkok for work. What began as a conference extended into nearly a month of movement: Bangkok, Singapore, Hong Kong, Ho Chi Minh City and back again. I spent my birthday in Hong Kong, working during the day but allowing myself a celebratory dinner and a quiet moment of reflection in the evening. There is something strange about spending your birthday abroad for work—both exciting and slightly disorienting.
After wrapping up work commitments, Victor joined me in Bangkok, and from there we began a two-week journey through Thailand’s Isan region. That trip deserves its own detailed post, but it was rich with food, landscapes, and experiences that contrasted sharply with the London autumn we had just left behind.
We landed back in London in the early hours of December 8th. After nearly a month in Southeast Asia’s humidity and colour, stepping into cold, grey air felt surreal. Yet there was comfort in returning to a flat that now felt ours fully.
Autumn 2025 began with unpacking boxes and ended with unpacking suitcases. It was a season defined by thresholds—between cities, between routines, between climates. If anything, it reminded me that movement and rootedness are not opposites. Sometimes they coexist, shaping each other quietly in the background.
Did this autumn feel like a return for you, or the beginning of something new?
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