Venetsia kutsuu tällä viikolla! Wohoo! Perjantaina olis lähtö, alan olla aika innoissani 🙂 Joonaksen kanssa mietittiin, että ois kiva lähteä jollekin lyhyelle ulkomaanreissulle nyt kun mulla alkaa loma.
Katseltiin erilaisia äkkilähtöjä ja pitkän viikonlopun vaihtoehtoina oli lähinnä Romaniaa ja Unkaria. Kiinnosti nekin, mut sitkun näin ihan samalla hinnalla lennot Venetsiaan päätettiin, että tää on just sopiva! En oo ikinä käynyt ennen Venetsiassa ja en oo oikeen koskaan ajatellutkaan käyväni mut heti kun tää idea tuli innostuin todella. Ainoa huono puoli minkä oon Venetsiasta kuullu on sen, että siellä haisee. Mikä ei sinänsä oo ihme, sillä vanhojen talojen viemarit edelleen tiputtaa kaiken sinne kanaaliveteen. Mutta kaikki on nimenomaan kehunut sen kauneutta ja onhan paikka yks maailman tunnetuimmista turstikohteista, että ihan periaatteestahan se on nähtävä.
Ei yövytä Venetsiassa, koska sellanen ois maksanut maltaita. Ollaan yötä lähikylässä Mestressä mantereella. Bussilla pääsee kuulemma 20 minuutissa Venetsiaan ja on musta ihan hyvä olla jollain rauhallisella alueella, missä on varmaan itsesäänkin paljon nähtävää!
Kerron lisää sitten reissun jälkeen. Nyt lähden töihin. Tällä hetkellä jäisin oikeesti mielummin kotiin siivoomaan, vähän sellanen päivä mutta minkäs teet 🙂
Our mom had this sudden idea of a quick family beach trip during December and we booked a trip to Gran Canaria for January.
All six of us (me, my bf, my twinsister, her bf, my mom and my grandma) took the same flight from Helsinki to Las Palmas. We arrived quite late in the afternoon and the weather was really windy and cloudy. During the first day we just strolled around and had some dinner since it was so late.
The next day we walked to Maspalomas to visit a market. The walk took over an hour and it was pretty hot but it was nice to see the local surroundings. I was pretty much the only person in our family who bought anything. I haggled for a blue dummer dress, I was proud of myself for haggling hah!
After the market my mom and grandma stayed at the hotel and we went to the beach. It was lovely, except the sea water was ice cold! The waves were so big though that you didn’t have time to regret the decision of going to the water because you get wet in an instant when a wave hit your face.
During the evening we went to have some drinks with my mother’s friends and then dinner after that. Our drinks were so cool, they looked like kid’s drinks but boy did they taste like tequila!
After dinner grandma acted a little oddly. She was exhausted and had trouble speaking. We initially thought it was a heat stroke and she just went to bed. In the morning she was slightly better but still acted a little odd so my mom took her to the hospital. As it turned out she had had a minor stroke so she had to stay at the hospital. Luckily it was just a minor stroke and she managed to go to the hospital so everything turned out okay in the end! We couldn’t go visit her on the first days but after she switched wards we were able to.
So for the rest of the days, we just spent most of hung at the beach, the boardwalk and the local shopping centers. My sister and her bf went to Las Palmas during our last full day but me and Joonas decided to just stay at the beach whole day to enjoy the last moments of sun and warmth in months!
Our mom stayed behind with grandma because she needed an all clear from the doctor to be able to travel. She got out of the hospital the next day after we left and her insurance agency got her and mom a new hotel that was all inclusive with shows every night to see so in the end grandma was able to enjoy her holiday as well!
I had a great time, we didn’t explore or get around much but these kinds of relaxing holidays with your family are the best after stressful times!
On our last day we enjoyed a great continental breakfast at our hotel after which we spent an hour or two by the hotel’s pool and jacuzzi. We were the only ones there aside of a middle-aged couple and no wonder, it was a little chilly and windy even though the sun was shining. But the water in the pool was warm so it was great nonetheless!
In the early afternoon we walked around the Redondo Beach Pier which was a quiet and quaint place! We grabbed a random restaurant at the pier for some lunch before we headed back to the hotel to get our stuff and car.
We stopped by a mall for some last minute clothes shopping before we headed to the airport to give back our car and check-in for our flights. Luckily our planes left at pretty much the same time so we got to spend a lot of time together on the last day before we had to head to the International Terminal for our flight back to Finland and Christa had to go to another terminal for her flight back to Santa Cruz.
At this point I was happy to go home but also happy about our trip! I had a great time, experienced a lot of new things and saw some pretty awesome places. This was my third time in America, with two previous trips concentrating on Florida and New York, so being on the West Coast and the West was so different. Next time I want to go visit the Southern states or some places that are not the typical touristy places to visit!
I think before that, I will try to visit atleast London later this year but we’ll see 🙂
We started the day with our hotel checkout and some last minute Las Vegas shopping. We left Vegas a little after noon and it took us about 5 hours to get to the Grand Canyon National Park if I recall correctly. We stopped on the way for a short pitstop in a little town but other than that we just drove straight on so we could be at our destination at a reasonable hour.
We decided we want to see the Canyon during both daytime and when the sun sets so as we arrived at the Park we just rushed off to the nearest view point. The Grand Canyon is unbelievable, it stretches so far and it’s absolutely huge. But honestly, when you stand on the edge and view it, you don’t really realize you’re there. It feels like you are looking at a huge picture or a canvas is in front of you and not the real thing. It’s just so big and hard to comprehend. I could say it looks like a 2D scenery instead of a 3D scenery?? That’s how I would explain it! But it does look incredible in any case!
There were a lot of other people pretty much everywhere, so to those looking for a quiet picnic while viewing the canyon, it’s best to choose a more quieter viewing point and maybe not pick the first one you see. But for us it didn’t matter and we still managed to find a great quiet spot to watch the sun set.
We found a perfect spot right at the edge of the cliff where we had a picnic and had a nice time talking to a French-Canadian couple that were next to us. When the sun started to set it got really cold, I think the temperature dropped about 15 degrees celcius and I was freezing by the time it got dark!
After the sun set we drove back to the hotel, or more like a cottage sort of accommodation, and took our stuff to our room. The room was convenient and quaint. We then drove to another resort’s building to grab a late night dinner before heading to bed. Oh and I remember going outside for one last cigarette and just looking at the sky totally perplexed. Honestly I have never seen so many starts IN MY WHOLE LIFE. It was beautiful!
We all slept really badly because the air conditioning (which we used for heating because the room was COLD) was really really noisy 😦 In the morning the girls went on a hike down the twisty paths of the canyon but I stayed in sleeping some more and watching tv. The girls told me the view from the paths had been incredible and you could really experience how big the whole canyon was so in the end I was really disappointed that I didn’t go!
Again at about noon we checked out and started driving back to Los Angeles. I took over for half the trip because the drive was really long (about 8 hours of driving with 2 stops totaling to about 9 hours). Everything went pretty well, except for a few slow vehicles driving on the wrong side and a little accident when I accidentally pressed the break pedal when my instinct told me to push the clutch. Seriously automatic gears are easy to get used to and make driving very easy but having driven a manual geared car for years can cause some difficulty. You can’t just let go of your instict to push the clutch so I had to drive with my left foot jammed up almost under me for the whole trip so I wouldn’t accidentally push the break and potentially cause an accident!
We arrived at the hotel at about 10 p.m. and after checking in, crashed in our king size bed! It was a pity that our last full day got spent in the car but it couldn’t really be helped! And the drive was a fun experience yet again except for the last two hours when we approached L.A. and it was pitch black and cars everywhere. Ugh.
On Sunday we slept in since we came back to the hotel at about 5AM. At about noon we headed off to a nearby Factory Outlet, can’t remember which one it was. I was kind of bored since I’m not into brand stuff at all and that’s pretty much all there was :’D But I did buy a Michael Kors wallet that was on sale and literally screamed at me “I am just your style please buy me”.
We shopped until late in the afternoon and then went back to the hotel and got ready for our buffet dinner. The girls had researched all the famous buffets in Vegas and we chose to go to Bacchanal Buffet at Caesar’s Palace since it has been voted as the best one. Caesar’s Palace itself was absolutely beautiful! It was truly a pleasure to hang out at the pool area waiting for our table to be ready.
The buffet was pretty pricey at 55 dollars a head but the dish options were pretty much endless and all very high quality. I am very picky when it comes to food and a lot of the dishes they served didn’t really suit my taste or I didn’t even taste them but the girls loved everything. So I guess if you have regular eating habits this is a good place for pretty much everyone. Also the place had a lot of seafood and I don’t really eat seafood except salmon and prawns so my choices were a little more limited. The buffet was divided into different section and I got almost all of my food from the Chinese and Italian section but everything I ate from those was to die for! ;__; And the desserts, oh my, so much chocolate everywhere.
We stuffed our faces and then took our food babies out for a walk. The night air was nice and we we’re so full we decided to walk back to our hotel and just strolled around the strip, it was great! The Bellagio’s water fountain was pretty incredible to see, I could’ve spent hours just strolling around the strip, there was so much to see and the atmosphere is unlike anything else.
I really loved going to Vegas, I was hesitant about our plans at first but it turned out to be my favourite place out of all the places we went to! Would gladly go again.
The girls got up early in the morning for a run, while I, being the lazy ass that I am, stayed at the appartment and slept in. At noon we picked up some snacks from the nearby Walgreens and hopped in the car for our long awaited road trip to Vegas!
The whole drive took us about 4,5 hours with a half hour stop at a diner by the highway and the drive was very pleasant. I love to be in cars as a passenger and just drive around watching the surroundings. It gets really boring in Finland since I am so used to the sceneries next to the Finnish highways/main roads but of course the Nevada desert scenery is so much different! I didn’t get bored of the surroundings one bit during the whole drive and it was a quite a pleasant trip overall.
The diner we stopped at was such a quaint place which excellent customer service. I bet it’s been modified to suit tourists’ expectations of typical American diners but it was still a lovely place to have a pit stop and the ice cream and shake were great.
We arrived at our hotel late in the afternoon and it was huge. It’s not even one of the biggest hotels in Vegas, but it was big enough to impress me. And it had everything, from casinos to a dozen restaurants to its own theme park. Maybe the theme park was to blame for the amount of families with children that stayed at the same hotel, I would say most of the hotel guests were families and not couples or groups of friends. We didn’t expect it to be a party hotel, but I was still kinda susprised. Anyway, we had a quick rest before hitting some nearby shops for a little shopping. Then we started preparing for our night out! The view from our window would have been so great if it weren’t for the ugly construction of some hotel next to ours, but oh well. During night time we hardly saw it!
Our plan was to head off to Club XS at the Wynn/Encore hotel complex. My friend, who’s from LA suggested a few clubs to us, XS included, and Avicii was playing the night we wanted to go clubbing so XS was our first choice. The hotel was packed with people when we arrived and we had quite a difficult time finding the club, since on the official site it says that the club is part of Wynn but it was actually situated in Encore. So we had to back to Encore to get in.
The line to buy tickets wasn’t even that long, surprisingly enough! A guy approached us, can’t for the life of me remember his name anymore, and told us he wants to sell us his ticket since his wife felt ill and couldn’t come to the club. They’d just found out she was pregnant, what a bad timing for a clubbing weekend in Vegas but he seemed thrilled 😀 Anyway I offered to buy the ticket off him at a discount but I had to enter with him because the tickets were tied together so I got separated from the girls since the presale tickets had a separate entrance. We had an interesting talk with Mr. X while lining up to get inside the club, about sports, education, club policies and drinking habits! Once inside he was reluctant to leave me alone until I find the girls but I assured him I’d be able to find them. But boy was I wrong. After looking around the club’s pool area I realized I’d made a mistake. The club area was HUGE and at this stage, with the clock ticking close to midnight, it was pretty much full. My phone hardly had any service and it took me about half an hour with occassional panicking to find the girls who had entered the club at the complete other direction.
We partied near the DJ booth/stage pretty much the whole night and it was an awesome spot! We were right in the middle of all the action but we hardly got pushed or anything and this happened inside a lot because the club had thousands of people who all wanted to get to the inside area of the club rather than the pool areas. From the occassional drunk ass chicks to sleazy dudes we didn’t get bothered much and could concentrate on dancing and having fun. The only downside to being in the pit area of the inside of the club was having no access to the bar. So we opted out on drinks since we didn’t want to queue back inside but luckily some millionaire dude who had his entourage right next to Avicii’s stage just walked to us and handed my sister a biiiig bottle of champagne. Thanks mate! He also threw a big handful of 100 dollar bills into the audience, what a waste. Life just not fair is it? Anyway we had a great time and I could hardly walk while going back to the hotel, I was so tired. I highly recommend you visit XS if you visit Vegas! The place may not be suitable for you if you don’t like clubbing (duh though), spending atleast 50 bucks (the entrance was 35 and the drinks about 15) or honestly, if you feel awkward in a club full of attractive people who seem vain. :’D But for a true hip Vegas experience, I can’t imagine it can get better than this!
Here’s three small video clips from the night! Didn’t really spend that much time with my phone in my hand so it’s not much 😀
After Venice beach we strolled around the Venice canals. The area was so beautiful and some of the houses were so weird but after a while it got a little boring and repetitive. So we got in the car and drove to Santa Monica where we went to the Pier to get some dinner.
We spotted a Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. restaurant and we were sold. I’ve visited a restaurant of that franchise in New York and I loved it! This time didn’t disappoint either! Shrimps, yumm.
We hurried back to LA after dinner to visit the Griffith Observatory and see the sunset. When the sun started to set it became really cold, I guess March can still be pretty chilly in LA 😀
We then went back to our appartment and wondered what we’d do since we didn’t feel like going to sleep even though we had to leave for Vegas in the morning. We then decided to go to the Sunset strip for drinks and had a great time. Coming back to our car totally ruined our night though. We had parked our car in a residential area and didn’t see a small sign in the beginning of the street saying that from 7PM onwards you needed a resident’s permit to park there. We panicked when we saw our car was gone but then spotted a guy who was cursing and calling someone on his phone. Apparently his car had gotten towed and we called the tow place and they confirmed our car was there too. So we grabbed a taxi with him and tried to laugh about the whole situation along the way but is still sucked cause we knew it was going to be pricey. Atleast we split the tow payments in three unlike the guy with us who had to pay on his own. He was a marine on leave and had gone to LA just to see a concert for an hour, such bad luck 😀
It took almost an hour for us to get our car because we didn’t have our car rental agreement with us but we managed to get it in the end! At maybe 1:30 AM we were able to drive to the appartment and tried to brush the whole thing off joking we had just had the most expensive drinks of our lives! After that we triple checked every single sign when we parked, so I guess we learnt our lesson!
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!
At Rodeo Drive we got stuck in afternoon traffic. But it was an experience! 😀
I am getting so excited about our trip to the U.S.! I’m really looking forward to spending time with my sister and one of my best friends and just experience all kinds of new places that I’ve always wanted to visit!
Our plan is to first stay in Los Angeles for three days and three nights in an appartment near Sunset Blvd and Hollywood Blvd.
Then we plan to drive to Las Vegas and stay there for two days and two nights in a huge hotel that has… wait for it… three casinos and an inside amusement park. Sweet!
Our trip will end with one day in Grand Canyon and one night in the National Park.
Then it’s quite a long drive back to Los Angeles where we will stay for one more night and one half day in Redondo Beach!
At this point everything looks very exciting *__* It’s great to have something like this to look forward to!
Before I change my mind. Or my mind changes me. 