all aboard the HMS Caroline

Happy Wednesday! You’re halfway through the week! How have you been? 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, sewing some pillowcases for your home decor, making a dress to match your homemade mask, or even playing animal crossing with family and friends. 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 post - "gulliver’s travels in belfast”— you can click here to read about one of my favorite, lesser-known spots to visit in Belfast. Also, if you didn’t get the chance to cast your free daily vote for me to be the next #MaximCoverGirl, you can click here to vote or click here to read about why it’s important to me (and then vote!). You can vote once every twenty-four hours for free, and I am so grateful for your support! Voting for the Quarter-Finals round ends July 16th, so I’d appreciate any and all support I can get to make my way to first before the 16th! Thank you for everything so far!! If you’re all caught up on the adventures thus far and Maxim Cover Girl voting, then sit tight, strap in, buckle up - whatever you choose! We’re continuing our tour in Belfast with another lesser-known sight to see!

When I first toured Belfast on my own, one of the stops I made was to the H.M.S. Caroline, a decommissioned Royal Army ship that saw combat in World War I and served as an administrative center during World War II. Each section of the ship, above and below deck, had little sensors you could scan using your audioguide device (and everyone who knows me knows how much I love my audioguides... knowledge is power, people). It was incredible to walk all around the ship, seeing where the crew members slept, where they showered and washed up, where the cooks prepared food, and where the crew dined. There were obvious perks to being a high ranking officer versus someone of a lower rank, but it was still really cool to see how different rooms below deck were laid out for their various purposes.

Higher ranking crew had special access to rooms with desks, comfortable chairs, and fireplaces, as well as their own sleeping cabins. The rooms with separate desks and comfortable chairs were often used for informal meetings, as well as for late night strategy planning. Additionally, high-status and mid-status crew members had access to semi-private, more formal dining spaces that featured white linen tablecloths and fine china settings. Mid-range sleeping cabins were smaller than those of the high-ranking officials but were reserved for those who held the same status rank as, say, doctors on the ship. The photo to the left of this paragraph was recreated to represent what a doctor's room might look like onboard the H.M.S. Caroline, including a private bed and shelf area, as well as a dresser and a desk. Most crew members, however, slept, dined, and showered in shared spaces without the luxuries of tablecloths or fine china. These shared spaces often included hanging hammocks for sleeping, long tables with long benches for dining, and sometimes bunk beds, as well.

When you were a kid, did you ever play pretend where you were a sailor, crew member, or captain of a ship? I definitely did, especially after I saw the movie Titanic, which we will talk about in tomorrow’s post! Let me know about your childhood games, though! 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 receiving a lot of really incredible stories, questions, and feedback from a community all over the globe! Other people’s stories 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 whatever stories you’ve been thinking about as we’ve been on this virtual journey together! Also, I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you have any restaurants/eateries/pubs/coffee shops/ice cream joints/theatres/lookout spots you would recommend in other countries or even in your current home town or city, I'm absolutely 100% all ears!! I couldn’t do this without you! So THANK YOU! From the bottom of my heart, truly, thank you.

And please, if you have 10 seconds to spare, I would really appreciate your daily vote for me to be the next Maxim Cover Girl 2020. Click here to vote! Voting for the Quarter-Finals is now live and continues everyday until July 16th! I’ll need to finish first in order to advance, so I would really appreciate your help and support as I continue to try and become the next #MaximCoverGirl by moving ahead into round 7/the Semi-Finals of the competition! Thank you for all your support! I wouldn’t have made it this far without you! Click here or on the photo above to vote!

Sincerely,

Johny

P.S. - In case you wanted to take a gander at a few more photos of the H.M.S. Caroline, here ya go:

P.P.S. - If you want to catch up from the beginning on this series of travel 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