April | 2014 | Before I change my mind. Or my mind changes me.

During the first day we decided we want to go to the beach so on Friday we got ready to go to Venice Beach as well as Santa Monica beach! The day was half cloudy when we left our appartment but the skies cleared at after noon so the day was super warm.

The courtyard of our house was so beautiful, wish we had had a balcony or something like that so we could’ve looked at it all day.

The drive was very enjoyable, honestly one of my favourite things to do in the States is just sit in the car and drive around! And our timing was great so we had light traffic only.

When we got to the beach there was so much to see, Venice Beach is one of the places in LA I’ve always wanted to go to. But it was windy as hell, so at first I was really cold until the sun started to shine. And the seagulls were huge, eww. We just strolled around the boardwalk, looking at things and people, occassionally stopping for something to eat or drink. We spotted a filmcrew filming something that looked like a car commercial and I have to say, most of the actors involved failed badly. 😀 They were supposed to do all kinds of different motions and acts in rhythm and most of them were out of sync. But some of them were very talented, juggling basket balls while rollerskating around and stuff.

I seriously could have spent my whole day just going around the beach because, I am a boring person so I absolutely LOVE people watching. I hate doing it in my own home country because I know all the surroundings and I feel the people are very predictable, mostly because they are stereotypical Finns that I know so well. But in other countries, people watching especially together with friends is so fun. When I travel I usually just want to go and hang out at places where locals hang out and just have fun, eat and drink something good and just spend time watching people. Not all the time haha, but like every once in a while or a day or two! Anyway we spent a few hours at Venice Beach and then moved onto see the Venice Canals and the houses surrounding them as well as Santa Monica beach and pier before heading back to LA, but that I’ll leave that to part two because this is already kind of picture heavy.

We stayed in a hotel in Helsinki the day before we had to travel and as I was working late the night before so I got maybe 3 hours worth of sleep. We had about 19 hours worth of traveling to get through, which turned out to be a really long time. My previous flights have been almost as long as our Stockholm-LA flight, take 1-2 hours but if you add a 1h flight to Stockholm and 6 hours of layover, then it becomes a little bit too much. And the 6 hour layover was boring and tedious as hell, I didn’t remember Arlanda was such a bad airport. All the cafes and restaurants (or more like, the lack of these) were shit, the airconditioning was shit, the taxfrees and seats were shit. But the real challenge of the journey was the flight to LA, it was so hot inside the plane that I managed to sleep for maybe an hour? I watched Fight club and The Book Thief and something else that I can’t remember. Ever since I turned 25, seriously it must have been some magical number, I’ve been scared of flying and oh boy did the flight have turbulence so I was so scared. ;_; When we arrived in LA we were so exhausted from the waiting and the long and uncomfortable flight that I almost passed out at immigration! As soon as I got Wi-fi our friend Christa sent me a message saying her plane was over 2 hours late so we decided to just jump in a cab and head out to our appartment.

We stayed at an appartment reserved through Airbnb that was located in Hollywood. It was really close to convenient locations but at the edge of a slightly dodgier area so I would not have been very comfortable walking around the dark on my own. As soon as we arrived at the appartment my sister dozed off and I waited for our friend to arrive with our rented car.

The next morning we got up early and drove to Hollywood Walk of Fame where we just strolled around being tourists and had breakfast. Oh and I did a little shopping!

After that we just drove all around LA, visiting the Hollywood Hills, Beverly Hills, drove on Rodeo Dr. etc.! Stopped here and there for sights or food, overall it was a great day!