California State Route 1 to Monterey

Auringonpaistetta ja kevään tuoksu joulukuussa

Malibu ja luksusasunnot 

Maisemia, joita jäin kaipaamaan

Valtavia moottoriteitä, hirvitystä päästöistä

Merileijonia, ja vettä vaakasuoraa 

Valtameri mikä kiiltää silmänkantamattomiin 

Big Sur 

Jyrkänne ala- ja yläpuolella

Metsiä, joillaisia on nähnyt vain elokuvissa

Palmujen rivejä rantaa pitkin

Santa Barbara

Autossa istuminen ei oo koskaan ollut yhtä mielenkiintoista

Enkä ole koskaan kuullut samoja biisejä radiosta niin monesti

Kaikkea on hiukan isommin ja enemmän.

Every little girl's dream

I'm not ashamed to admit that the highlight of my Californian trip was Disneyland. I have been dreaming of visiting this place especially since my trip to Copenhagen. In Copenhagen I fell in love with the Tivoli in the city centre. I love the old amusement park vibes both of these places have. And as I have mentioned earlier it was actually from Tivoli where Walt Disney for his inspiration to built Disneyland to the place that used to me lemon trees.

I think Disneyland exceeded my expectations. Althought I was prepared for the commercial Disney being everywhere, I actually liked how the worst of it (stores and such) was hidden from the plain sight. I'm really not an amusement park person, as I'm usually too sissy to go to any rides. However, in this park I enjoyed all the rides a lot, and went to all with my brother and mom (who both love rides, faster the better)

We got a ticket to only the Disneyland park and not to the California adventure park, and it was very much enough. We spend the whole day in the park (from 9:30am till the fireworks) and I still think I didn't see everything. 

Bright colors and van Gogh

Since I can remember, I have always loved visual arts. Doing it and seeing it. 

One of my favorite things to do as a child was to draw and in junior high I was dead sure I would love to become an art teacher when I grow up. 

Well I didn't grow up to study it. At least not yet, there is still time.

In recent years I have fallen in love with modern, colorful and fun paintings. 

I see them all around my instagram feed. Prints and murals. 

Little did I know, my mom took me to the promised land of murals when we up and left to the Venice Beach. 

Major heart-eyed emoji moments with these. The whole city was filled with murals of all kinds. These are my favorites I found.

Just cant go wrong with bright colors or some van Gogh.

The 1st glimpse at Venice, LA

Ohhoh. Kolme ja puoli kuukautta ilmeisesti siinä meni. Pyörityksissä. Tässä sitä kuitenkin taas ollaan, kevät lukukauden ensimmäinen päivä pärähti mulla käyntiin mukavalla kahdeksan aamulla. Jostain syystä aamulla pimeäkään ei haitannut (lieneekö vielä jetlägi, joka auttaa heräämään aikaisin).

Osaksi energiasta on kiittäminen lomaa (ja chai-teetä), jotka lämmittivät yhä mieltäni. Joululomani vietin auringoisessa (joskin hieman lauhkeassa ja tuulisessa) Californiassa. 

Ah, sitä tunnetta kun ilmassa tuoksui aurinkoinen ilma ja meri (joo-o, oon aika varma että valo tuoksuu tietylle).

Lähdin matkaan ilman juurikaan taustatietoa. Ihana äitini oli tehnyt kahdeksi viikoksi toimintasuunnitelman ja lähdin matkaan ilman erityisiä ennakko-odotuksia. Oikeastaan ainoa asia, jonka olin suunnitellut näkeväni oli Disneyland, hevosia ja merinorsuja (kiitos evoluutio psykologian luennoitsijani viimeisestä vinkistä)

Aloitimme reissun Los Angelesin Venice Beachiltä. Enkä olisi itse osannut paremmin valita kohdetta. Venice oli rakkautta ensisilmäyksellä kun automme pysähtyi hotellin parkkipaikalle. 

Auringonlasku, rantaviiva ja upea muraali hotellin seinässä. Oh yes. 

Onnistuttiinkin näkemään varmaan loman kaunein auringonlasku heti ensimmäisenä iltana.

Päätettiin myös että vuokrataan pyörät seuraavalle päivälle ja hurautetaan Santa Monicaan. 

Siitä seuraavalla kerralla. 

Tämä loma otetaan pureskeltavina paloina. 

Beach of the Beach (Miami)

As I said last time, there was two reasons for going to Miami, the heat and The Heat.

And what is better place to enjoy the heat than the beach. I'm not much as a sunbather myself, so there is no pictures of me laying in the sand. Instead we found a another activity to do: biking. Our hotel (Tradewinds Apartment Hotel) loaned bikes for free to the guests so we decided to pick up on that and go for a ride along the beach. As the weather was not particularly sunny (for tanning purposes) biking was an excellent alternative.

And what can I say. Miami Beach's beach is beautiful.

The main attraction, basketball (Miami continues)

Yeap. I'm going to post all the Miami related things in following weeks.

So here is the main reasons why we chose to go to Miami this time: sun and The Heat. And by the heat I don't refer to the weather, but to the basketball team, which happens to be my little brother's favorite. For sure, AAA-stadium was not my idea of perfect destination. But it happened to be guite cool. Although our seats were way too high and I have terrrrible fear of height and vertigo. In spite of that I gathered once again that sports in the States are more than just sports, they're whole package shows and great entertainment. Even when the teams just had a short time-out, something happened. Videos, games, lotteries and Miami Heat Dancers. I found myself enjoying the game quite a lot.

So I think this could become my USA trip tradition: always trying a new sport to watch. I think next up is American football, since I have covered baseball and basketball now. And I also have a awful penkkiurheilu -fever (I have no idea how to translate penkkiurheilu, I think the closest is "spectator sport", something I rather watch than participate in). So next up in my sport list is to go and watch here in Finland my favorite sport, volleyball.

So here are some pictures from the Miami Heat game and the Miami Hurricanes game:

MaybeI'll slowly develop an ability to follow sports. Or not.

Every holiday needs little art (Miami)

I wouldn't say that Miami is the place to go if seeking for great museums and a lot of art. At least compared to some of the places I have travelled, such as Rome or New York. But there are still some cool art stuff to see even in Miami Beach. And although our agenda for this trip was not art (but more like the basketball) we still came across some pretty cool art and history.

Mostly I would say that Miami Beach itself is a "art museum" with all its Art Deco buildings. But besides that we also visited The Wolfsonian FIU museum, which portrays a lot of sort of "propaganda" art and such. I think the mission statement of the museum says it all:
The Wolfsonian uses objects to illustrate the persuasive power of art and design, to explore what it means to be modern, and to tell the story of social, political, and technological changes that have transformed our world. It encourages people to see the world in new ways, and to learn from the past as they shape the present and influence the future.

For some reason I always find propaganda posters really fascinating. Two of my favorites in Wolfsonian

We also walked in a gallery in Lincoln Road, which actually happened to be the ArtCenter South Florida. Inside the center you could see the unfinished paintings of the artists working there as well as their finished work and even them as they were working on a piece. I wished we would have known about this place little sooner and got there when more artists were working. However, it was still a great experience. Especially if the process of making art interest you, as it does interest me. Somehow unfinished works seem to be the most interesting ones usually. Anyhow, I could have been there forever, but as said we weren't there for the art, but for the sun and basketball.

  Artist's workplace Wish I could have seen the space of this artist, unfortunately she was not there at the moment

One of my personal favorites at the ArtCenter. The light in live was really amazing. 

Little pieces of art will also in Miami come across you if you just keep your eyes open. Bear in a museum park near our hotel and downtown Miami street art (details were really amazing in those graffitis)

Key West breeze

In short, when you travel only about three hours from Miami to south you'll end up in Key West. It is an island just 90 kilometres from Cuba. The town has a lovely old fashioned feeling to it, which I always fancy. Even though it rained the whole day, I still kind of liked it and wished to be there for longer, as in anywhere in USA there is just toooooo much to see and experience.


The trip to Key West from Miami doesn't cost itself that much (around 50 euros I would say). However as you get there, there is a lot of different kind of activities you can do. The agency which we used offered for example parasailing, snorkling and glassbottom boat (around 30-50 euros depending). As it was raining and we weren't really prepared for anything special we decided to do the glassbottom boat. It happened to be such a bad weather that the boat did not go their usual route, which ended up being pretty boring. We also thought that the "glassbottom" would have been more impressive. I would definitely recommend this to a nicer weather or for a person who loves biology, because the presentation offered a lot of education.
Your tourguide said that the perfect day in Key West would include something fun in the sea and something in the city. One option for only walking through the city as we did, would have been a trolley ride with these lovely old-timey trollies.


Mallory Square is on the water front of Key West and the place to watch the sunset in the evening apparently, even though we didn't get to see that much because of the clouds. But there was lot beauty too see without it also, street performers and the sea, plus these old-fashioned popcorn stands and booths. And it is also the place to buy real sponges!