A busy week

When I woke up this morning my body yelled”I NEED REST”. First I was a bit surprised, but when I started to think about it - it made sense. Since Raimo (my brother) and Linus (my nephew) arrived we have been to the gym and then gone shopping for hours every day, except one. That was the day we spent in San Francisco WALKING the whole day. Every second day in the gym I have run around 5 km. So if you add all that up – it is quite a lot of exercise. Back home I wouldn’t have had the energy to exercise that much, but on the vacation you have a lot more energy to spend. But the body still needs some rest. Even if the gym is a lot of fun.

So you understand there has been a lot of shopping. Mainly Linus has shopped. Raimo and I just came along and kept him company. I have bought a few things, but since I can’t bring too much with me and need to send the things I buy home, I try to stop myself. But Linus is here to shop. He is buying all the clothes he needs for the next school year and that are a lot. Because of him we have been to Gilroy with all the outlets, the Great Mall (another outlet), San Francisco with Market Street + Union square and Valley Fair shopping center. I think I have seen every sport store in every mall and you have no idea how many they actually are. I have also learned what is in and what is not when it comes to sportswear and what swag means. J

But we have done some other things also:

We had dinner with Gladys and Sören. They are, from the beginning, friends of Monica but since Raimo and I spent a week with them in Squaw Valley in 2007 we consider them our friends also. It was a traditional American barbeque with really good food and all of us ate more than we should. It is something special about the American barbeque. I can’t say what, but somehow it ads something the concept just to be here. 

We took a cable car ride through San Francisco. I have done it before, but it was the first for Raimo and Linus. It is fun to do it, even if it is a tourist trap and you need to stand in line for 30 minutes just to get on board. On the other hand – you will always start talking with some nice tourists in line.

My friend and colleague Erika came for a visit. It is funny to meet in a place so far away from home when we never manage to meet outside the office back home, even though we live only 1 km apart.

Some things we have learned during the week:

·         You can’t use McDonald’s, Starbucks or Food stores like Lucky or Safeway as landmarks. They are everywhere and look exactly the same.

·         Carpool in California is still only 2 people. Even though the rest of the world is talking about how the improve the environment, people in California still don’t want to share a ride to the office with anyone else. Lucky for us – we can use the car pool and can get from place to place quite fast even in rush hour.

·         Shopping in Outlets doesn’t automatically mean low prices. Sometimes it means exactly the same price as in the “normal” shopping malls and then you still have to add the extra time it took to get there plus the gas money. So in fact it is more expensive.

Tomorrow we will take highway number 1 down to Los Angeles. The plan is to spend one day in Disneyland and another day in Santa Monica. Shopping is banned from the schedule. There is no chance that I will try to find any shopping in LA. It is just difficult enough to drive through the city. And I need to a break from shopping. J