Spring ended by the sea in Calafell, and summer seemed to start right where we left off. After a weekend with Victor’s family, we drove back to Barcelona. I barely had time to settle in before heading to the airport again. That afternoon, I flew to Brussels for work, kicking off what turned out to be a very busy start to summer.
Those first days set the tone for the season. A lot was going on, but also music, exhibitions, long days in London, time with friends and family, and eventually a return to somewhere that felt deeply familiar. Summer seemed to arrive all at once.
June
Brussels, Barcelona and Primavera
I landed in Brussels in the afternoon for a quick work trip, checked into my hotel and headed out for dinner at Le Tournant. I had visited Brussels on holiday before, so I was not trying to squeeze much sightseeing into such a short stay. Instead, I settled in for a really lovely dinner on my own. There is something slightly thrilling about solo dining when travelling, especially at a good restaurant, and I thoroughly enjoyed taking my time over the food and wine.
A really interesting work event took up the next day, and by the end of it I was ready to head straight back to Barcelona. Brussels had essentially been a quick hello and goodbye. Or at least, I thought I was saying goodbye.
Just as I was getting ready to leave for the airport, a notification appeared on my phone saying that flights until around 9pm had been cancelled due to an unexpected air traffic control strike. What followed was a fairly frantic attempt to work out how on earth I was going to get back to Barcelona. I had plans that evening, including a Primavera a la Ciutat concert to see Blood Orange, so every delay made the situation increasingly frustrating. Eventually, after a lot of searching and rearranging, I managed to get onto another flight. By the time I landed at Barcelona Airport, it was around 1am, and I did not make it back to Victor’s parents’ house until roughly 2am. Blood Orange was, unsurprisingly, long over by then. Missing the concert was disappointing, but at that point I was mostly relieved to have made it back at all.
Luckily, Primavera still had a lot to offer. The next day, I went to Razzmatazz to see Mogwai, who were excellent, and then to Sala Apolo for Melt-Banana. Mogwai were atmospheric and expansive, while Melt-Banana were the opposite—frantic, noisy, and chaotic. It was a wild mix for one night, but a great way to get back into Barcelona after the travel chaos.
From Thursday to Saturday, it was time for the main Primavera Sound festival. Before heading over on Thursday, we had lunch at Embat, one of my favourite restaurants in Barcelona, which was a great way to begin three days of music.
By Sunday, we were worn out. We spent most of the day recovering, then pushed ourselves to go to one last Primavera a la Ciutat concert: Black Country, New Road at Paral·lel 62. It was the perfect end to a packed few days, though I barely had time to rest before I was packing again.
A Few Days in Athens
On Monday at noon, I flew from Barcelona to Athens for work, and I arrived in the afternoon, spent a short time at the hotel, then went out to stroll. A small advantage of travelling for work is that you sometimes end up with an evening to yourself in a city which you would be happy to visit even if you weren’t going there for work, and that is exactly how it is with Athens for me.
For dinner, I went to Atlantikos in Psyri, where I ordered house white wine, a Greek salad topped with an enormous slab of feta, grilled prawns and grilled thrapsalo. Everything was simple, fresh and completely delicious.
Afterwards, I stopped at Fresko for thick Greek yoghurt with pine honey and walnuts, which felt like exactly the right way to end the evening.
My work visit mostly took up the following day, but once I was back in central Athens I managed to squeeze in a visit to the Ancient Agora. There is something slightly surreal about finishing a normal working day and then wandering among ruins that have been there for more than two thousand years, but Athens makes those contrasts feel entirely natural.
That evening, I went to Falafellas near Monastiraki for one of their huge falafel wraps, then had dessert at Kokkion. I picked a scoop of dark chocolate and a scoop of kaimaki, a traditional Greek ice cream made with mastiha and salep, which gives it a unique flavour and a slightly stretchy texture. The two together were excellent.
Then came another hectic travel day. I flew back to Barcelona and, later that evening, on to London. After moving between Calafell, Brussels, Barcelona, Primavera, and Athens so quickly, I was more than ready to stay in one place for a while.
London Takes Over
Once we were home, the rhythm of the month changed completely. June stopped being about airports and became much more about London: exhibitions, long walks and squeezing as much as possible out of the lighter evenings.
One of the highlights came almost immediately when we went to the Friends Preview of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. We have spent years visiting museums and galleries together, but this particular visit became memorable for another reason: we bought our first piece of art. It felt both strangely grown-up and genuinely exciting to take that step after so much time admiring other people’s collections and talking about the things we liked.
The next weekend, I went back to the Royal Academy with one of my best friends to see the Michaelina Wautier exhibition. Later in the month, Victor and I went to Tate Late at the Tate Modern, which is always one of my favourite ways to visit the museum. Walking through the galleries on a Friday night makes the whole place feel different—less formal and more connected to the city.
The final weekend of June became an especially London one. On Saturday, we walked around Westminster and Pimlico before heading to Tate Britain for the Hurvin Anderson exhibition. The following day, we swapped central London for something much greener and followed part of the Wandle Trail, walking alongside the river through south London. After such a frantic beginning to the month, it felt good to end June with the simple pleasure of exploring our own city on foot.
July
Birmingham and a Busy London Summer
July began with another train journey, although thankfully one far less dramatic than my early-summer travel. On Friday, we took the train to Birmingham to spend the weekend with friends. It was less about sightseeing and more about catching up, eating, talking and simply spending time together, which made it a lovely change of pace.
Back in London, the calendar filled up quickly. On 11 July, we went to the Barbican to see Nourished by Time, and a few days later we swapped music for books and headed to the British Library for its Fairy Tales exhibition.
Then, on Friday 17 July, we went to Zoo Nights at London Zoo, something I look forward to every summer. The evenings are adults-only, which makes the whole experience feel much calmer than visiting during the day, and it is a brilliant chance to see some of the animals without the usual crowds. This year, we finally got to see the zoo’s new capybaras, as well as some impossibly cute baby meerkats. Wandering around the zoo in the evening light with a drink in hand has become one of those little London summer traditions I am always happy to repeat.
The following morning, we set off on one of my favourite kinds of London days: a very specific themed walk. Using Stefi Orazi’s A Walking Guide to Modernist Estates, we followed a route from Archway to Belsize Park, exploring some of the housing created during Camden’s remarkable period of social housing construction in the 1960s and 1970s.
The walk took us through projects including Highgate New Town in Dartmouth Park and Mansfield Road in Gospel Oak, giving us a completely different way of looking at parts of north London we had walked through before.
We stopped for lunch at Cafe Palestina before continuing towards Belsize Park, and when the walk was finished we added one final stop at the Freud Museum. The museum is set inside Freud’s final home, where he lived after fleeing Vienna in 1938, and seeing his study still arranged around the famous psychoanalytic couch felt unusually intimate. It is quite a small museum, but one packed with objects, books and details from his life and work, and it was fascinating to move through a space that still feels so personal. Architecture, a long walk, lunch and a museum is basically my ideal Saturday.
The next day was given over to music again, this time at Queen Elizabeth Hall, where we saw My New Band Believe and caroline. Both were excellent, and by this point July had settled into a rhythm of concerts, exhibitions and weekend plans that made London feel particularly full of possibilities.
Twelve Years
Towards the end of the month, our anniversary began to weave itself into the calendar. On 24 July, we returned to the Royal Academy for the Friends Preview of Richard Dadd.
The following evening, we went to the Bridge Theatre to see The Oresteia. It was amazing, easily one of the theatrical highlights of the year, and afterwards we headed to 2210 by NattyCanCook for dinner, which became our early anniversary celebration.
The following day, we were back out again for the Wes Anderson exhibition at the Design Museum, before reaching the actual date of our anniversary on 27 July: twelve years together.
Twelve years is a slightly staggering number to write down. So much of these seasonal digests, and really the blog as a whole, records places Victor and I have explored together. There are the obvious milestones and big trips, but there are also twelve years of restaurants, walks, concerts, museums, family visits, changing homes and completely ordinary days threaded between them. Celebrating our anniversary in the middle of such a busy London summer felt very us.
The month ended on a more bittersweet note. On the final Friday, I went out for dinner with colleagues to say goodbye to one of my work friends, who was preparing to relocate from London to Singapore. The following day, I went with the same friend to another colleague’s home, where we spent the afternoon making summer rolls and painting glasses. It was much quieter than most of the month, but also one of those lovely afternoons that remind me that the memories defining a season are not always the biggest events.
August
Cinema, Shakespeare and Norwich
August began with something enormous, quite literally. On 2 August, we went to the IMAX at the Science Museum to see The Odyssey, which felt like precisely the kind of film that deserved to be watched on as ridiculous a screen as possible.
A few days later, we were back in central London for something rather more traditional, heading to Shakespeare’s Globe for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. There was something particularly appropriate about seeing it there in August, with the open-air theatre and the city still in full summer mode around us.
The next morning, we left London altogether and took the train to Norwich for a slightly delayed anniversary weekend. Norwich had been sitting on my list for a while and turned out to be very much my kind of city: compact enough to explore largely on foot, but packed with medieval streets, old buildings, independent shops, museums and plenty of good food.
We had such a lovely weekend wandering around, discovering somewhere new, and enjoying having nowhere in particular to rush to. After the pace of June and July, it was a nice way to properly celebrate our anniversary, even if it came a couple of weeks after the actual date. I came away liking Norwich enough to warrant a post of its own, so there will be much more on that another time.
The Last London Days
Back home, art remained one of the threads running through the season. On 14 August, we went to the National Gallery for the Zurbarán exhibition, adding yet another gallery visit to what had become a very art-heavy summer. Looking back, the months were punctuated by these exhibitions: the Royal Academy, Tate Modern, Tate Britain, the British Library, the Freud Museum, the Design Museum and now the National Gallery. London seemed to keep giving us another reason to build a day or evening around seeing something new.
The following week was quieter and more personal. From Wednesday into Thursday, I stayed at my friend Ioana’s, where we had dinner and hung out at home. It was not the kind of thing that looks particularly momentous written into a calendar, but those evenings matter just as much as the bigger events. The next day, I met one of my mentors for lunch at Franco’s, another long London lunch tucked into the final few days before we packed again.
And then, on Saturday 22 August, it was time to leave London for the rest of the month.
Ending Summer in the Azores
We flew to Ponta Delgada, where my mum picked us up from the airport, and we began just under two weeks in São Miguel. The Azores occupies a very different place in my life from most of the destinations I write about. It is not somewhere I visit; it is tied to family, childhood memories and a sense of home, which completely changes the rhythm of being there.
We based ourselves in Caloura, spending the trip moving between familiar places and discoveries. There were swims in natural pools, beaches, waterfalls, tea fields and drives through São Miguel’s impossibly green interior. Still, there was also plenty of time spent with family, eating together and enjoying being somewhere that did not require us to fill every hour.
That balance became one of my favourite things about the trip. Some days revolved around a particular place we wanted to visit, while others unfolded around a swim, lunch somewhere good or a drive that turned into several spontaneous stops. We returned to places I have known for years and still managed to find corners of the island I had never properly explored. There was seafood, coffee, tea, volcanic landscapes, the Atlantic almost always somewhere nearby and that particular São Miguel weather that can move through several seasons in the space of an afternoon.
More than anything, though, the trip felt like a change of pace. At the beginning of June I had barely seemed to stop moving, bouncing between countries, airports, work commitments and concerts. By late August, we were still travelling around the island, but the movement felt completely different. There was no rush to get to the next flight or the next event. We could wake up and see where the day took us.
Closing Note
Looking back, summer felt full in the best way: music, art, travel, long London evenings, time with friends and family, and plenty of meals shared along the way. It began at full speed and ended somewhere deeply familiar in the Azores, with a lot of life packed in between.
But some of the moments that feel most like summer were the simplest ones: warm evenings at home, the barbecue going, food on the table, and nowhere else we needed to be. After all the movement of the season, those quieter moments felt pretty perfect.
So that was summer: busy, joyful, sun-soaked and full of life. What did summer look like for you?
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