Hi everyone and welcome to Women Who Travel, a podcast from Connie Nass Traveler.

I'm Meredith Carey and with me as always is my co-host, Thala Eric Oklou.

Hello.

Last month, we published a list of 101 ways to have fun this summer to celebrate and maximize

the renewed sense of hope many of us are feeling about the season.

And on the podcast today, we're talking to two of the most fun people that we know about finding joy this summer. Joining us from L.A. is Marawa Ibrahim, a professional hula hooper,

roller skater and owner of I Wanna Go to Paradise. And from Nashville is Jersey Banks,

co-founder of Urban Cowboy Hotels and the Dive Motel.

Thank you both so much for joining us.

Thank you for having us.

So we're only in June, but the summer already feels quite different from the summer of 2020, in that, for one thing, it feels more joyful.

How are you both planning to make the most of the sun and newfound freedoms that

we have this summer? And do you have any travel plans? Personally, I'm really, I'm trying to stay

close to home. I'm not, you know, normally a typical year pre-COVID would have been,

it would have involved quite a few flights. My family's in Australia

and my work's in London and then I'm living in L.A. So I would at least make that triangle

once a year. But now that I'm kind of used to being in one spot, I'm trying to keep everything

very local, staying in L.A., maybe a little bit further out, a lot of trips to the beach, a lot of like rediscovering things in my own neighbourhood. I think that's what a lot of people I talk to have been taking away is that finding that you don't need to jump on a plane. There's actually, you know, so many things in your own hometown that you didn't know that existed that you might not have had time for, which is great. And to that point, things that are only just opening back up or feeling sort of some

semblance of normality, we've been home for a year, but our neighborhoods have felt quite

different, and now we get to start to explore them again.

Yeah, I kind of second that.

I feel like we had, you know, kind of a long winter because last

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