a love of Dublin pizza: and every other pizza

Happy Monday! 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 (a favorite in my household), sewing some pillowcases for your home decor, 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. Also, if you’re protesting and helping support the Black Lives Matter movement, you might also need to set aside some you time. That’s okay, too. It’s important to rest and recharge so you can start each day strong.

The past two posts have been a break from my travel writing. I wrote about the Black Lives Matter movement for Friday’s post, which you can read here, and yesterday’s post was a thank you for helping me advance into the second round of the #MaximCoverGirl contest, which you can read here. You can also click here to continue to vote for free daily! And as promised, today’s post will get us back on track for more European travel adventures.

My past few posts about Dublin have been about pizza because if there is anything in this world that can truly bring people together, it’s a good old-fashioned pizza pie. At this point I’ve written about eating pizza in Rome, in Dublin at Manifesto and at the Dublin Pizza Company, and in Bray with my dad at Platform. My love of pizza knows very few bounds (sorry not sorry but deep dish Chicago pizza is garbage. Maybe I’ll come around on it one day, but it’s highly unlikely), and in a time when so many things feel unbalanced, isn’t it nice to remind ourselves of the things we have in common? For me, so many truly great memories with family, friends, and loved ones include pizza: kids’ birthday parties (and, heck, adult birthday parties, too), Super Bowl get-togethers with Philadelphia Eagles allies (and enemies), late-night sorority meetings and hangouts with my sisters, risking a demerit and skipping the occasional seated meal at boarding school, late nights in Sea Isle and OCNJ boardwalk shenanigans with my closest friends, movie nights with neighbors, homemade pizza nights at home with my boyfriend, and Christmas Eve post-church pizza and wings at Branco’s with my family. Yes, both of the pizza photos of me on this blog post were taken at Branco's on two separate Christmas Eve dinners. It is my favorite pizza in the entire world.

I am, of course, leaving out so many other occasions that have called for pizza, but I think you catch my drift on the importance of it in my life. And it’s not just my life, either. How many times have you turned to the person/people you were with and asked, “wanna order some pizza?” I bet you’ve lost count, and I bet that if you asked someone you knew or someone you didn’t know, they would also not have a true number in mind. So although it’ll take a lot more than pizza to bring a divided world together, it’s these small commonalities and shared human experiences we need to remember in order to see the humanity in each other and to feel empathy for and with each other.

Tomorrow I will get back to a legitimate post on traveling. I’ve already written a lot about my time in Rome and Edinburgh and Dublin, so tomorrow I will take you on the beginning of a whirlwind trip to a city known for its royalty, theatre, and weather. You'll get to experience all the wonderful new sites and familiar faces I saw while visiting... London!!

But before we head off to London, let's get back to pizza. Do you have a favorite pizza memory you hold near and dear to your heart? If so, I’d love to hear about it! 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