Monterey and Santa Cruz

Yesterday we decided to take a day tour to Monterey and Santa Cruz. They are two cute cities along the west coast. Monterey is famous for its nice aquarium and Santa Cruz for its Boardwalk/Amusement Park + the wave surfing (O’Neill Wet suit and surf clothes are from Santa Cruz).

I have been to the Monterey only once before and that was 1987. It is sure to say that the area had changed a lot since then. They have developed it to a really nice tourist trap. It is filled with little shops, restaurants and coffee places where the prices are a little bit higher just because of the location.

Our focus was the aquarium. I snorkel a lot (not yet diving, but maybe later) and it is nice to be able to see all the fishes that you see when snorkeling in a controlled environment. You have more time to take descent pictures (my underwater camera is very slow and the fishes usually have moved before the picture is taken). Now we were able to take some nice shots. See below.

We had lunch in Bubba Gump http://www.bubbagump.com/ - a restaurant that is inspired by the movie “Forrest Gump”. Or rather everything in the restaurant is about Forrest Gump. J Cool place, but somewhat pricy for the kind of food that they serve.

In the afternoon we took a walk on the Boardwalk in Santa Cruz, but since we spent last week on Disneyland all the rides seemed to be rather boring. The only one that we considered riding is the old wooden roller coaster, but since there was a line we decided it wasn’t worth it. Please be reminded that we stood in line for more than an hour TWICE when we wanted to do the Space Mountain ride in Disneyland. But that one is worth waiting for. J The boardwalk I have visited many times before, but it was 10 years since the last time. During that time the traffic has multiplied many times and the small town charm I thought it had back then was now gone.

We ended the evening back home with a nice dinner and “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1”. We are preparing for to see the last Harry Potter this weekend.

Highway No 1, Disneyland and Santa Monica

We have had 3 very intense and GREAT days. :-)

We started with a drive on Highway No 1. I have driven it many times before, but I still love to do it. It is so beautiful. It also adds to the experience to bring along people that see it for the first time and it was the first time for Linus. Linus loves to take pictures, as I do, so we ended up making many, many stops.  We had our lunch stop on the perfect place: Nepenthe. Check it out on the link: http://www.nepenthebigsur.com/  All in all our drive from Sunnyvale to Los Angeles took 12 hours. But it didn’t feel so hard, because of our many picture break stops. And some of the pictures you can see below.

The next day we spent on Disneyland. Once again – I have been there many times before, but I don’t seem to get tired of it. To my surprise we discovered the day before we started our trip that they have built another park next to the original one, but since we had decided to spend only one day there, we went for the original park.

We did most of the major rides before lunch and saved “Tomorrow land” with my favorite ride, the Space Mountain, to the afternoon. That was a mistake. For all the rides in the morning we didn’t spend more than 20 minutes in the line. But when we came to “Tomorrow land” all the major rides had 60-75 minutes lines.  What can you do? If you want to do the ride, you need to stand in line. Luckily both Raimo and Linus agreed with me that the rides were worth the wait. We actually ended up riding the Space Mountain twice. :-)

Before we started our trip down to Los Angeles we were told that one of the major freeways in Los Angeles, 405 - the Santa Monica Freeways, was closed for construction. If you know anything about LA, you know that a thing like that will cause a LOT of traffic on all other freeways. Our plan was to spend the next day on our trip in Santa Monica. With the construction work in mind we were prepared to spend a lot of times in traffic jams. To avoid the traffic jams as much as possible,we decided to take small roads through LA. Strangely enough we didn’t notice any extra traffic at all.

We spend one day on the beach in Santa Monica and Venice beach. Raimo and Linus checked out the basketball games on the beach and Linus also played with some of the guys. I decided to rent a bike and drove back and forth on the beach to check out people and the surrounding. It was a great day in every way; weather, food, activities and even shopping for Linus. J

After our day on the beach we started the drive back to Sunnyvale. Once again we were prepared to hit the traffic chaos and once again we managed to stay out of it by driving smaller roads around. It took us only 6,5 hours back including a break. We arrived in Sunnyvale at 00.45 in the night, very tired.

After all that driving we did NOTHING today. We only went to the gym, did the laundry and shopped for food. Tomorrow we till drive to Monterey and Santa Cruz. And I will tell you about it on the next blog.

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

The rest of the family has arrived :-)

On Wednesday the rest of the family arrived: my brother (Raimo) and my nephew (Linus). It is the first time ever when all the siblings plus the only “nibling” (new word for child of a sibling) is gathered in one place. It has been difficult for us since my sister (Monica) lives in California (since 30 years) and I have spent the last 15 years of vacation on other exotic places. But NOW we are finally here. It is about time – Linus just turned 16 and I don’t think he wants to travel with us “oldies” for that much longer. J

I spent Monday and Tuesday cleaning the house to prepare for the arrival of the two. I can’t say that I enjoy cleaning, but sometimes you just need to it. So there wasn’t that much to blog about in the beginning of the week. ;-) Cleaning isn’t and will never be interesting.

Before they arrived I went and checked out the gym across the street.  Raimo, Linus and I share the interest for exercise! The gym is big, not very new, but has a lot of –for us – new machines! I tried it out a couple of times before they came and decided it was good enough and bought membership cards for the summer. Luckily Raimo and Linus really liked it. They liked it so much so we have been there the last 3 days. All our bodies ache since we are using new machines and my body is in total chock. I haven’t been to the gym for more than a month.

Linus likes to shop – A LOT!  Raimo and I like to tag along. Monica is working, so she is excused. So our days at the moment looks pretty much like this:

·         Breakfast No 1

·         Gym

·         Shower

·         Breakfast No 2

·         Shopping

·         Late lunch

·         More shopping

·         Late Dinner

·         Almost falling asleep at the dinner table

·         Surfing/e-mailing if there is any energy left

Today we have decided to take a day off shopping. We are invited to a common friend for dinner. We are really looking forward to it and we don’t want to be tired when we are there, so we need to save some energy. We will hit the gym though. J

One of my successes this week was that I bought all my winter hiking clothes (around 40% cheaper than in Sweden) and sent them to New Zealand. It wasn’t a lot, around 2,5 kg, but that is a lot more to carry in an already very full back pack. It cost USD 58 to send it, but it is worth the price NOT to carry it via Fiji to New Zealand. I will send some clothes to Sweden also. It is too much fun to shop here I California, especially since they have my sizes (and my size is actually one of the smaller ones ;-) ). In Asia they don’t carry sizes for big Scandinavian women. ;-)

Anyhow – I’m looking forward to a lot of fun days with my family. J

Vacation break?

Can you have a vacation break? It feels like I have had one the last couple of days. Yesterday I spent organizing my stuff, checking my finances, answering some job e-mails, went food shopping and so on. Today I went on a 45 min jog in the morning and the rest of the day I have spent cleaning. You see; my sister and I have different opinions about what is clean and since I will stay here for a month I decided to do some cleaning. I’m not even halfway through, so I will continue tomorrow.

All these things are not very exciting things to do and definitely not vacation stuff. But I have a feeling that I need to take this kind of “vacation day off” once in a while during my long vacation. With too many new experiences every day I think my brain will go on into overload mood.

I have found a gym nearby. It is just across the street and is called “Supreme Court”. Funny name! I checked it out the other day and tomorrow I will try to negotiate a good price for us: my brother, my nephew and I. We will spend the next 3 weeks here, so it would be good to have a good gym nearby.

I might be in for a disappointment here in California. I was planning to have another trip to Yosemite – one of my favorite hiking places on earth, but today when I checked for hotel rooms I couldn’t find anything available. I know I should have booked this earlier, but since my brother didn’t book their tickets until late, I didn’t dare to book it. I will be so sad if I can’t go there.

Tomorrow will be another day of cleaning and maybe some shopping. It all depends on how much more time I need for the cleaning. Anyhow - the plan is to have it all ready by Wednesday when my brother and nephew arrive. Then I can start to have vacation again – with my whole family. :-)

Grand Canyon – The way to see it

In an earlier blog I told you about the struggles we had to decide how to see Grand Canyon. Without repeating myself too much I can tell you that we chose to go from Las Vegas to Grand Canyon in a helicopter for 2 reasons:

·         We didn’t want to spend 10 hours in a bus

·         It is too hot at the moment to do anything else than a helicopter tour over the Grand Canyon (hiking, biking, horseback riding can’t be done in the heat)

To do the whole trip in a helicopter seemed to be the best way to spend time and money. WE WERE RIGHT!!!!!

We had in total a 2,5 hour helicopter ride that gave us nice views the whole way. The highlight was of course to fly in over the Grand Canyon. It felt nice to fly pass the Grand Canyon Sky Walk, which is the biggest attraction for those who take the bus. We saw that and so much more.

We landed next to the river and had Champagne and snack break. The view was amazing and if it hadn’t been so hot I would have loved to spend more time there.

I think that pictures speak louder than words, so please see below some of the things that we saw.

Las Vegas – the place NOT for me

Las Vegas isn’t really my cup of tea. I’m an outdoor chick that likes down to earth REAL things. I love places like Costa Rica where it is all about nature and animals. Las Vegas, where everything is fake, is just a little bit hard for me to swallow. But I have really enjoyed 4 things:

·         Penn and Teller Magic Show. Usually I never watch magicians, but these were really good and had quite an unusual show.

·         The fountain show outside Bellagio Hotel. It is quite spectacular and really classy.

·         You are never far away from a nice and clean toilet when walking on the Strip. ;-)

·         I don’t feel fat ;-)

But the rest of Las Vegas is for me:

·         Casinos with too high noise level due to all the slot machines and a smell of old cigarettes

·         Too sweet overpriced drinks (even Margaritas are really sweet)

·         Too much neon lights

·         Copies of everything beautiful in the world, like the Sphinx and Pyramids plus the Eiffel Tower

·         A lot of badly dressed men (I don’t like sandals and socks together with baggy worn-out t-shirts and Bermuda shorts, especially not as evening wear):-)

·         Overpriced American food that is badly made. All American chains have restaurants here and the ones we tried are both more expensive than they are in California and they served worse food.

We found one exception when it comes to restaurants: Wolfgang Puck Pizzeria and Cucina. They served really nice Italian food. The waiters were also really sweet, so they get our recommendations!

 I’m really happy that I decided to come to Las Vegas, but this is a place that I don’t want to come back to. One time is more than enough for me. If I never see a casino again, I will still be happy.