AK Monthly Recap: July 2025

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This month brought a beautiful summer in Prague. This year we’ve been having a cooler-than-usual summer, and this July was particularly lovely, with temperatures that made it so easy and pleasant to spend time outside.

Let’s take a look at what I got up to in July 2025!

Enjoying a morning walk to the Kendrick mural in Frankfurt.

Destinations Visited

• Prague, Czech Republic
• Nuremberg and Frankfurt, Germany

Highlights

Seeing Kendrick Lamar and SZA live in Frankfurt on the Grand National Tour! Kendrick Lamar is one of my favorite artists of all time, and I really like SZA, too. I got tickets to see them in Frankfurt in July and in Warsaw in August.

I LOVED THIS CONCERT. LOVED IT. So much good music, fabulous show design and choreography, and both Kendrick and SZA were incredible. And it was so good being surrounded by fans — almost none of my friends are hip-hop fans so I’ve always felt a bit alone in that regard!

Quick visits to Nuremberg and Frankfurt. I’ve visited Nuremberg in December for Christmas markets, but had never visited during the summer, and it was so pleasant walking along the river and taking in the architecture! I was just there for a few hours each way on the way to Frankfurt.

Frankfurt was a new destination for me — a big, skyscraper-filled city with a “new old town” built post-WWII. While some parts were on the seedier side, I had a great time exploring when I could — including the new Kendrick Lamar mural by the river!

Fun times in Prague. I’m thrilled to share that Kasarna Karlín has reopened — one of my favorite unusual things to do in Prague. It’s an outdoor courtyard with a lot of bars and food places and events. We went to an outdoor evening screening of The Big Lebowski! I went in pajamas. It felt apt.

Pizza beans. Let me just say that this is my favorite new recipe in the world, from the always excellent Smitten Kitchen, and I will be making it whenever Charlie is out of town, as he does not share my enjoyment of beans.

A great return to a regular fitness routine. 2025 has been rough in that regard, between six weeks in Mexico and the US (lots of heavy food), dealing with my hip injury (tough to do anything but walk at an average pace), and hosting friends and family for a few weeks in Prague in May (lots of long days and meals out).

But I am BACK on the mat, BACK to lifting weights and cardio sessions, the numbers on my Apple Watch are improving all time, and I’m feeling better and sleeping better than I have in months.

I also discovered yin yoga this month, which has become a weekly staple for recovery. Yin is different from other forms of yoga — you hold positions for two minutes or longer, and it targets your connective tissues in addition to muscles.

Also: my hip was hurting after the July concert, but I did yin yoga a few hours before and the morning after the August concert and I had ZERO pain — and I had a standing ticket at that concert! This really works.

Frankfurt’s new old town? Nice! Frankfurt’s train station? EEK.

Challenges

Um…the neighborhood surrounding Frankfurt’s train station at night. I already wrote about this to my email subscribers (not signed up? Sign up here!). Frankfurt, in general, is a safe place to visit. But the area around the train station is QUITE seedy.

How seedy? There was a group of men smoking crack a block from my hotel, day and night. When I came back from the concert at night, several men followed me or approached me in an intimidating way. It really freaked me out, but I found a group to walk with the rest of the way home.

Honestly, I think that neighborhood is the worst neighborhood I’ve experienced anywhere in Europe. Strong words? Yes. Do I mean them? Also yes.

In short, most of Frankfurt is fine — but I would only recommend walking alone at night in the train station’s neighborhood if you’re both street-smart and city-wise.

That’s not all the challenges that happened this month, but that’s all I’ll be saying today.

Most Popular Reel on Instagram

My most popular reel of the month was Traveling with a Bestie — What’s it Like? with Cailin, with clips from our Krakow trip! Just a fun and jokey reel from our time there.

But there is another reel I’d like you to see, which got ALMOST as many views — it’s me talking about how the Irish Famine is so much like what’s happening in Gaza today.

You can see it here:

The genocide of Palestinians in Gaza is an absolute nightmare, and it infuriates me that our government is bankrolling it and so many of my fellow Americans are cheering it on.

I made this in hope that the many Americans who support the destruction of Gaza and also happen to hold Irish ancestry take a moment to think, “Hey, that literally happened to my family. And it was bad. And maybe I shouldn’t want that to happen to anyone else.”

And maybe if they’re up for some critical thinking, maybe they’ll realize there is too much AIPAC money in our government, maybe the Israeli government has been the bad guy all along, and maybe we need to make some changes in who represents us in Congress.

Thinking about Gaza and feeling so helpless makes me feel like I’m wrung inside out. My heart is shattered for the Palestinians who deserve to live in peace and safety, as well as victims of conflict in Sudan, in Congo, in Haiti, in Myanmar, and everywhere.

What I Watched This Month

I am not a horror movie person in the least — but my friends wanted to have a 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later double feature one night before watching 28 Years Later that weekend.

These are zombie movies — but honestly, they’re fantastic. Days and Years, specifically. You can skip Weeks if you want to.

28 Years Later picks up after the Rage Virus decimated Britain, and focuses on a small community living in peace on an island off the coast of Scotland. And I am shocked how deep this movie got! It made me think so much about isolation, about death, about community. Remarkable, really.

What a surprise that my two favorite movies of 2025 are both horror movies: Sinners and 28 Years Later.

Oh, and we also saw the latest Jurassic Park. Me, mainly for Jonathan Bailey, whom I adore. But I regret to inform you that an American accent does NOT suit him. The only moment in the movie I was attracted to him was when he briefly lapsed into his own accent while saying, “No, I’m saying it’s a sin to kill a dinosaur.”

What I Listened To This Month

I’m listening to all 500 of Rolling Stone‘s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, which I am enjoying immensely. I am loving discovering new artists and listening to albums I’ve somehow missed my entire life until now!

In July, I listened to albums 318-286. So crazy to think that I am now 200+ albums in since December!

Here are the highlights:

Favorite Discovery: Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea by PJ Harvey. She’s an artist I’ve heard mentioned over the years, but I’ve never listened to her music until now. And WOW — she is incredible!

The songs on this album are dynamite! Love her songwriting, voice, and instrumentation. There are some nice collabs with Thom Yorke on here, too, which I appreciate, having become a Radiohead fan as a result of this challenge.

Other Favorite Discoveries: Random Access Memories by Daft Punk, The Velvet Rope by Janet Jackson, Full Moon Fever by Tom Petty, Tonight’s the Night by Neil Young, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below by Outkast, El Mal Querer by Rosalía.

Favorite Revisited Album: Californication by Red Hot Chili Peppers. One thing that surprised me at the beginning of my long-term travels was the pervasiveness of this album all over Southeast Asia! You couldn’t go anywhere in Thailand without hearing “Californication” or “Scar Tissue” or “Otherside.”

This album has all of the fun and California-ness of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but I felt like the songwriting goes a bit deeper on this album and feel like a wild, cohesive journey. Like you’re being shot into the sun.

Favorite Songs: “The World Has Turned and Left Me Here” by Weezer; “Hyperballad” by Bjork; “Cranes in the Sky” by Solange; “Good Fortune” by PJ Harvey; “Got ‘Til It’s Gone” by Janet Jackson, Q-Tip, and Joni Mitchell.

Get the playlist: I’m creating a playlist of my favorite songs from the 500 albums — maximum one per album — on Spotify. You can listen to it here.

Lowlight of the Month: Closer by Joy Division. I know, shots fired, Gen X people are going to come after me for this. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t enjoy one single aspect of the album. It felt aggressively meh to me.

Random Music Thoughts: It’s so sad that this is only the eighth month I’ve been listening to the top 500 albums, yet the third month that an artist I listened to in this challenge passed away. This month, it was Ozzy Osbourne. I listened to Black Sabbath’s self-titled album (#355) and two more of their albums are coming up.

It was so nice seeing how the world came together to honor Ozzy. How amazing was it that he was able to have that final concert with his fans? What a special gift.

Lewis and Murray celebrated their fifth birthday this month!

What I Read This Month

After a year of barely reading, this month I read a ton of books — mostly in the self-improvement category, as part of a challenge I’m doing. I’ll tell you more about that in next month’s recap.

The Forgotten Girls: A Memoir of Friendship and Lost Promise in Rural America by Monica Potts (2023) — Monica Potts and her best friend, Darci, were two of the smartest girls growing up in their rural Arkansas hometown. Monica got out, went to college, and built a career. Darci fell into drug addiction. This memoir tries to figure out what went wrong and what few options there are for rural American women today.

There is a lot that I liked about this book — I always devour pieces about poverty in rural America. And its premise sounded a lot like a female/white/rural version of Wes Moore’s The Other Wes Moore, which I read long before he became governor of Maryland!

But this book also made me uneasy. It made me feel as it Potts was exploiting Darci, who was in the throes of addiction and may not have understood how public this would all be (and that it would include her real name). And Potts railed against her hometown for most of the book, then casually dropped that she and her partner moved back and she didn’t want to share why — really? Just strange.

Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice Not to Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol by Holly Whitaker (2019) — This is a book for any woman who is considering reframing her relationship with alcohol. So much of the alcohol industry and recovery industry is geared specifically toward men, and this book is radical in aiming toward the specific needs of women.

Holly Whitaker is a fantastic writer, and that’s what brought this book to the next level. It’s part self-help book, and part memoir — oh, and her life was a HOT MESS before she got sober. It’s entertaining in that aspect, in a bit of a horror movie way.

I did notice in the Goodreads reviews that several people pointed out that her methods were most accessible to women who have more money to spend. She writes from that point of view. And I do think they’re right (though I also think none of those reviewers realize that you can do yoga is not expensive — you can literally do it for free on YouTube).

She also writes WAY too much about her trips to Italy, and as someone who writes about her own trips to Italy for a living, you’ve got to know when to share and when to pull back on that kind of stuff.

Either way — if you’re considering drinking less or giving up alcohol altogether, I strongly recommend reading this book.

Everyone was out and about in the paddle boats in Prague!

Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds by David Goggins (2018) — Okay, this was my hate-read of the month! David Goggins went from an abusive childhood to becoming a Navy SEAL and ultra-endurance athlete, and he shares how he pushes himself into doing the most difficult physical challenges.

I’ll keep it simple — this is a man that should not be emulated. He is a deadbeat dad and four-time divorcee who constantly puts himself in danger thanks to not preparing appropriately for these physical feats. He ran an ultramarathon with no prep, only drank protein shakes, and put himself into kidney failure.

This man needs therapy, not devotees. He’s also incredibly sexist and the book is full of sexist language that infuriated me.

Micro Skills: Small Actions, Big Impact by Adaira Landry and Resa E. Lewis (2024) — This is a collection of broad but shallow tips on how to perform better at your office job. I didn’t find this as helpful for a solopreneur like myself, and I tend to prefer books that go deep on one topic as opposed to trying to cover a little bit of everything.

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell (2019) — This book was NOTHING like what I expected it to be. A lot more philosophical and academic about getting yourself to do nothing rather than something actionable.

Read People Like a Book by Patrick King (2020) — Uh, this book is very, very bad. Don’t even bother with this one.

Štrbské Pleso in the High Tatras, Slovakia

Coming Up in August 2025

August began with me and Charlie traveling to the High Tatras of Slovakia for my 41st birthday! This was exactly what I wanted this year — a peaceful location in nature, an easy journey by train, and staying in a fantastic hotel. We had a blast and want to do more trips like this.

The only other travel this month will be a quick trip to England for our friend’s bonfire party, which we attend every year.

Other than that, I’ll be chilling out in Prague as I get ready for the BIG travel adventures of September.

What are you getting up to next month? Share away!