4th of July

It was interesting to spend the 4th of July in enemy territory this year. Fun fact: the British accent as we know it developed after the Revolution to distinguish the upper class from the lower class. It was fashionable to speak with this posh accent. No one knows exactly how or why the Americans lost their "accent" but the most noticeable difference is Americans pronounce their "R's" whereas Brits don't.

As expected, there were only a few select July 4th celebrations publicly announced and most of them were organized by American ex-pats. One military organization was actually going to put on a fireworks show about an hour outside of London, but it got cancelled due to threats (?!). There was the option of a pot luck picnic but it was an hour away and didn't start until late afternoon which didn't make sense for Riya's schedule. So we decided to have our own impromptu picnic at our favorite park in Richmond.  (Impromptu = picking up food from Whole Foods:) It was a pretty morning and Riya was all smiles:

The next day it was rainy so we decided to check out the Museum of Natural History in South Kensington. They open at 10am and there was a line around the block when we got there, which we didn't anticipate. Entry is free but it took us a longer than expected to get inside, so we didn't get much time to hang out there but definitely worth going back. Later that day we decided to BBQ as the rain cooled everything down and it was so pretty outside.  Nothing more American than homemade sweet tea and hot dogs and burgers on a Sunday!