ahh-oooooh werewolves of london

Happy Tuesday! How are you doing? Are you taking time to check-in with yourself and give yourself the care, love, and attention you need? If not, it’s perfectly okay to set aside time for yourself to do whatever you want/need to do during ‘me time.’ Maybe it’s yoga, meditation, running, reading, tending to a pallet garden you built, dancing your silly little heart out to some Hall and Oates, sewing some pillowcases for your home decor, making a dress to match your homemade mask, or even playing animal crossing. Whatever you want to do during your assigned ‘me time,’ make sure you’re doing it and giving yourself a break. If you’ve been protesting and help support the Black Lives Matter movement, you might also need to set aside some you time. It’s ok to do so. It’s important to rest and recharge so you can start each day strong.

Yesterday’s post was a nice post on the importance of pizza in my life that was meant to help you ease into a new week. You can click here to catch up now!As promised in yesterday’s post, today we will start our journey to one of the places I’ve wanted to visit ever since I was a little girl loving Paddington Bear: London!

There were a number of reasons I wanted to travel to London during my fall break from my Masters Program at Trinity College Dublin, and one of my top reasons for choosing to visit in October was that my trip coincided with the Philadelphia Eagles playing the Jacksonville Jaguars at Wembley Stadium. We will get to that experience in an upcoming post, so get excited all you Super Bowl LII Champions Fans!

I stayed in a suburb outside London with a wonderful AirBnB host named Linda and her adorable dogs. It was a quick ride on the metro to get into the city and offered some nice peace and quiet at night. I found Linda’s house on a quiet little street off the main drag before venturing into the city so I could get cleaned up and get ready for a day of exploring and a fun-filled night.

When I got off the tube, I was so excited to see a busker playing “Here Comes the Sun” and couldn’t help but sing along in my head before very easily switching back to the song that was in my head basically since I stepped off the plane: "Werewolves of London" by Warren Zevon. I didn’t have any pounds (British money) at that point, so I ended up circling back and giving him a few when I got back on the tube later. One of the first things I was excited to see was Buckingham Palace. I wandered around the area for awhile, taking it all in, and when I asked a woman and her son if they could take my photo, it ended up that they were also in town to see the Eagles play at Wembley. It felt like anywhere I went I would bump into Eagles fans, which was a really nice feeling given the love I have for my home city, especially being away from it. I didn’t get to interact with any British guards to try and get them to smile or laugh like Amanda Bynes did in ‘What a Girl Wants,’ but I have very little doubt I will return to London soon and try again with better success.

Have you ever tried getting someone to laugh who was hell-bent on staying stoic? Or have you run into someone outside of your home city who shares the same hometown as you? It can make a really big world feel smaller, can’t it? I was lucky to run into multiple people in London from other events in my life that made the world seem so much smaller. Let me know if you’ve had a similar experience! Subscribe in the e-mail submission box below and reach out, follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and reach out to me on the “contact” page. I’m so happy you're here and that I’ve been getting a lot of really great, fun-to-read stories, questions, feedback, and food recommendations from a community all over the globe from all different chapters of my life (and from new friends I can't wait to meet one day)! The other stories of people’s travels that I’ve gotten to read via e-mail, text, tweet, DM, etc. recently bring me such smiles, and I am so grateful for all of it! I hope I get to hear all about the crazy stories you’ve been thinking about as we’ve been on this virtual journey together! Especially during this time of uncertainty, unrest, and pandemic, it's important to surround yourself with things and people (via video chats) that bring you joy; we're all in this together. I couldn’t do this without you! So THANK YOU! From the bottom of my heart, truly, thank you.

And please, I know the world is in a period of uncertainty and tension right now, and we all have more important things to do, but I would really appreciate your daily vote for me to be Maxim Cover Girl 2020. Click here to vote! Voting for round two ends this coming Thursday June 11th, and I would really appreciate your help and support as I continue to try and become the next #MaximCoverGirl! For the rest of today, Warrior votes are 2-for-1 if you're interested! Thank you for your support!

Sincerely,

Johny

P.S. - If you want to catch up from the beginning on this series of adventures, here's a cheat sheet to the posts (in order in which they were published):

1. Won't you join me?

2. grateful for starbucks and sandymount strand

3. Once Upon a December in the National Gallery

4. plant a smooch for that gift of gab

5. may the 4th be with you: Dingle style

6. cinco de mayo: the best Mexican food in Dublin

7. pizza in roma

8. mussolini’s window and the philosophers’ metro stop

9. father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife

10. it's the vatican, not the vatican't

11. spoiler alert: i did not lose my hand

12. more pizza and gelato and Neptune, oh my