a special london edition nerd alert

Happy Wednesday! Congrats to you for making it halfway through the week! 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 didn’t get a chance to read yesterday’s blog post - ahh oooooh, werewolves of london - it started off a new adventure in good old Londontown by way of an early flight from Dublin, a suburban walk to my AirBnB, a successful maneuvering of the London Tube, and a busker playing 'Here Comes the Sun!' as I got off the Tube to wander around the city streets! You can click here to catch up! And if you could take 10-15 seconds to vote for me to be the next #MaximCoverGirl, I’d be truly grateful! Click here to vote for me now! Our tour of London last left us at Buckingham Palace with a nice reference to Amanda Bynes in the movie 'What a Girl Wants,' but Buckingham Palace was obviously not the only place I saw while roaming around the city... and 'What a Girl Wants' was obviously not as good an Amanda Bynes film as 'She's the Man' or 'Sydney White.'

While reading back through my journal of my time in London, I was especially excited about some of the government buildings I saw on my adventure. I wrote verbatim, “I walked through the Palace of Westminster, which was really exciting because I always loved watching BBC videos of Parliament meetings.” As my boyfriend would say, total #nerdalert. But have you ever caught a Parliamentary session on BBC or C-Span? Compared to any Congressional meetings you might watch, Parliament is like watching a NASCAR race while Congress is like watching paint dry on a NASCAR car before any races ever begin. I may be a nerd, but I’m still a nerd who likes some level of entertainment. Parliamentary meetings look like they are full of people who are alive and ready to have open, lively dialogues, while Congressional meetings often look like a bunch of college students about to fall asleep in a Philosophy lecture (and this is coming from someone who loves Philosophy). The point being that if you ever get a chance to watch how Parliament holds a meeting, jump on it. I sincerely hope it doesn’t disappoint. It’s my jam.

I continued my walk around London over various bridges and stopped to take in the London Eye, as well as Big Ben (although BB was unfortunately covered for construction purposes). With the knowledge that a lot of New York City was based on various sections of London, I will say that London is a much cleaner, more aesthetically appealing city. Didn’t see any rats or trash in the streets… but maybe I caught London on its best day. Who knows?!

Do you have a super nerdy thing you like to watch like my love of Parliament meetings? I admit that I am more nerdy than most, but I know that everyone out there has his or her own guilty pleasure. What’s yours? I’d love to know! 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 tomorrow, Thursday June 11th, and I would really appreciate your help and support as I continue to try and become the next #MaximCoverGirl! 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