Why London is a good place to isolate during corona virus
It seems counter intuitive to be isolating in a big city like London during a health crisis, but as anyone who has been an expat knows sometimes we end up in places we don’t expect to be! It’s turned out to be a positive experience for us - even though it seems like many of the normal residents of London are busily heading off to other locations.
London is such an old city with so much history and I find something immensely comforting about walking the streets and knowing that people have been living here, walking the same streets and surviving other pandemics for thousands of years. Just walking to the shops is interesting as there is always something happening along the way and I get to have interesting chats with my children as they notice details of the buildings or changes to the behaviour of the birds and squirrels.
The weather is definitely helping me to feel comfortable with snuggling in and BBC has some fantastic comedy series that I’m catching up on which is nice. As a family we just binged on the series ‘The Durrells’ about a British expat family that move to Greece - gorgeous scenery and lots of animals, with witty family friendly humour. We’ve spent some nice afternoons curled up. The traditional British snacks of tea and crumpets goes very well with a snuggle on the couch and some TV.
The city also has so many lovely big parks and is set up with green space that we can use to explore and stretch when the house gets too much. Because the city is quite dense and people have lived in apartments for so long, every piece of land is used and there are generous parks to help people deal with the density. The weather with lots of rain and patches of sunlight make it almost impossible not to have verdant lawns and beautiful plants. To make sure we have social distancing we are mainly using these during the day when local kids are at school, as my kids are still remote schooling. (Small proviso, the wealthier suburbs do have better access to green space and I’m told that there can be a some less than great parks in the poorer areas/estates).
Museums and other public attractions are still open, albeit at a much reduced capacity and requiring distancing and prebooking. Obviously there are a lot fewer tourists and we’ve generally found the kids have had pretty good experiences at tourist sites, especially ones that are usually very busy and hard for the kids to get a good view of when at full capacity.
So, if you find yourself isolating in London (or any big city) think of it as an opportunity to see the city in a different way and enjoy a different aspect of London life.
