Sunrise – walk home from the Airbnb in Belsize Park to our lovely home in Hampstead Heath on Monday morning. Enjoying hot tea and crisp newspapers in our comfy window seat, waving to the swans in the pond under our kitchen window, picking up cleaning products and detergent, putting on a wash, doing grocery shopping at M&S and a health foods store down the road, running to work along the canal in glorious sunshine while listening to the newest episode of The High Low podcast. The first night in our new home. The first time we wake up in our new home – and do morning yoga and the 5 Tibetans in our yoga studio (which will eventually double as a guest room). Sanoop’s first batch of homemade chai. Running to work for the second and third time and knowing the way. Receiving photos from Sanoop while I’m at work and he’s wandering through the Heath in bright sunshine. Returning home to the flat at night. All of those little steps that makes it feel more like home.
Danish London Girls. One of my best friends is in town from Sydney. She and I got to know each other in London, around five years ago, when we both worked for the same company here. She is Danish as well. She comes round to the office for lunch on Monday, and on Tuesday, we meet our other old Danish girlfriends for wine and nibbles at Caravan in Exmouth Market – and it feels just like the old days; in a good way. Everyone keeps evolving and maturing into more balanced, vibrant, confident versions of themselves, I think, but we all get along just as well and with the same sort of banter and energy as we did back in the day. Talking about high and low, laughing, listening…
Holiday! After work on Wednesday, we run the last few cosy Christmas errands in Oxford Street, and early the next morning we head to Denmark to spend a week with my family. They are finally here – the holidays. After a quick, packed, wild, spectacular December in London. This year has just been altogether … spectacular. We welcomed the year from India (with our families), and then had Singapore as a starting point for most of the year. I went to Malaysia once (for work). Thailand once (for barre teacher training). We went to India again (to see family). Indonesia twice (with family; for a wedding). Australia thrice (business and pleasure – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Europe four times (skiing and staying with nuns in Italy; working from London, Denmark and Erfurt; experiencing London together for the first time; wedding and road trip in Denmark; wedding in Barcelona and road trip in Menorca). We then relocated to London. And I went on that day trip to Dublin. The final trip of 2018 is the coldest and warmest of the lot: Christmas in Juelsminde, something I’ve been missing and looking forward to for three tropical years! Next week is about presence, hygge, family … and dreaming of travelling to even more, equally wonderful destinations in the new year! We’re staying at the same Airbnb as we did in the summer, a cosy little wooden cabin down the road from my parents’ flat. There’s a fireplace, and it quickly becomes Sanoop’s big hobby to build and watch one fire after the other, haha. We go for windswept walks on the beach, enjoy lovely meals and glasses of wine at my parents’ place or in town, curl up on sofas and chairs with books, magazines and tv, share deep talks and blissful silence, head up to Aarhus one day for a lovely afternoon spent wandering around the narrow cobbled streets of the Latin Quarter with my parents, drinking mulled wine at one cosy cafe, eating smørrebrød at another and gazing across the Christmas lights from Salling Rooftop. It all feels very Christmassy!
Camilla's highlights 