A Medium-Sized American Road Trip

We are in Finland, the land of healthy bread and surly people! But there is still the tale of our last almost-two weeks in America to tell. Here's some pictures and text!





Upon our arrival to Flagstaff, we saw the smoke from the impressive but dangerous fires that had been raging for days around Flagstaff. Locals told us this was the most dangerous forest fire there in decades, and an area in Flagstaff had been evacuated, but in the end no houses had burned down. The fires were already more or less contained when we arrived in Flag.


( More )

I am in Texas! We've had three days of amazing scenery and unbelievable heat, and now we've arrived at apparently extremely cool (if also hot) Austin, TX. More later, but this just to let everyone know we're alive.

We have a car! Or we will, tomorrow, provided that our quote isn't missing a major extra fee or something. We started our round of asking around at a Budget office just next door to the hostel, and their offer was $1450 for three weeks. The last place we called, sounding all like "yeah, we're just asking around, so you better give us a cheap-ass price" gave us an offer of $750 for the same amount of time. Including tax, all the insurances, and a GPS navigator. Cuh-razy!

So tomorrow we head east! So excited to start part two of this adventure. Now, for some more Japanese food.

I am in Hollywood! Juuso is here!


But starting from where I last left off: on Saturday, I took the morning easy, chatting with Juuso online and then heading for the beach again. The weather was perfect, not quite too hot, the sun veiled by a thin layer of fog but still peeking through there. I bbq'd myself for as long as I dared on the beach (I'm not a big suntanner type, and usually I just get bored of lying still long before I have any chance of being burned), then headed for the water. It was pretty cold, cold enough for all the surfers to wear wetsuits and nobody but children to actually swim, and I hesitated for a while before deciding that hey, it's the Pacific, I'll have to swim in it at least once. And when I got used to the water, it was actually quite lovely. I was heaved up and down in the waves, had a great time, and left the beach refreshed and feeling like I have an inch-thick salt glazing on me. (In Helsinki, we swim in the Baltic sea, which is nowhere near as salty as the oceans.)

After a shower and some more lazing around, I sighed, strapped on or grabbed all my packages, and headed for another one-and-a-half-hour, hot, uncomfortable bus ride for the center. The buses here function very well and are cheap enough, and the drivers are usually helpful, but the buses are crowded, the distances huge and the traffic slow.

Finally I arrived in Hollywood, though. It was surreal, coming from the relative peace and quiet of the beach and suddenly finding myself on the Walk of Fame, all the tourists and the stars on the ground and everything. I made my way slowly in the heat to my hostel, settled in, and decided to go for a small walk. The surreality of it all continued when I walked just around the corner, as instructed by nice new roommate Tessa, and saw the famous Hollywood sign. There it was, on the side of a hill, just like I've seen it in so many disaster movies seconds before it is ripped off by a storm / masses of water / a giant monster.

Then I headed to Amoeba Records, a huge, gigantic and excellent record store just around the corner from Hollywood Boulevard. I spent a good hour or so there, browsing through the bug selection of used cd's, and managed to walk out with only four of them. Finally, I checked out the famous hand- and foot-prints of the stars in front of the Chinese theatre. Schwarzenegger and Monroe and Downey Jr., there they all were.

In the evening, I sat with German Tessa, a nice Australian couple, a New Zealand guy and assorted other people on the patio, drinking first beer and eventually Jim and Coke, a truly American experience. The Australian couple left the party shortly to go to Hooters, which neither of them really wanted to do, but it was on their American checklist. I might have to do the same one day.


On Sunday, I woke up rather early, took care of some business online, and then baked the perfect pancake. See, USA Hostel Hollywood had a pancake breakfast where you made your own pancaked, and while I'd pretty much messed up my first two American pancakes, my third try was a perfectly round, thick, just small enough, golden brown beauty, which I ate con mucho gusto.

Then German Tessa, another German girl called Lena, and I decided we're all headed downtown, so we might as well go together. We successfully took the Metro train to Union Station, chatting about all kinds of stuff, and then walked a long, long way via Little Tokyo to the historic core and finally to the Museum of Contemporary Art. I really liked Tessa, she was intelligent and friendly and cultured; Lena seemed very nice, too, but she talked much less, possibly on account of being many years younger than Tessa and I.

We stopper in a restaurant Little Tokyo, and I had fantastic deep-friend prawns for lunch. And we marveled at the Mexican shops near the core and took a lot of pictures. We happened upon a film set where they were shooting an episode of a show called Rizzoli & Isles, of which I'd never heard, but it was nice to see it, all the actors and cameras and extras and volunteers helping to inform passersby. We admired the old buildings in the historic core, but the atmosphere of this city has generally failed to impress me this far. There was just something about San Fran that I immediately liked, and something about LA that I don't like that much. Fianlly, we walked to see the Museum of Contemporary Art and the futuristic Walt Disney Concert Hall. I went in the museum but the other two didn't care to, so I just enjoyed myself alone in the company of Mondrian, Giacometti and especially Jackson Pollock, whom I absolutely love.

The rest of the evening was a quiet one. I was tired after spending so much time in the heat, and caught up on writing my paper journal, had takeaway sushi at the hotel (I simply do not get tired of Japanese food), chatted with Tessa about art, and went to bed rather early.


Yesterday, it was finally time to pick Juuso up from the airport! I first checked out of the hostel and into another one, which had had a private room available for us, and after a minor hassle, took the Metro plus bus combination to the airport. My timing was excellent, since I had to wait approximately two minutes before Juuso walked out of the gates to kiss me and hug me and awwww.

He was exhausted after the trip and confused about being in a new place all in the sudden, and I was confused about losing my solitude all in the sudden; I'd missed him, but I'd also had so much fun alone! And as he already mentioned, he'd had a pretty tough week back at home, while I'd had an exhilarating week away, so we were on pretty much different wavelenghts.

So we spent the rest of the day easy, napping, catching up, eating bad Chinese and hiding away in the rather claustrophobic hostel room. That was good, and we both went to sleep early.


Today's been another lazy day, but we're on pretty much the same wavelength already, both relaxed and easy. We've had Japanese food (oh yesss), walked around Hollywood a bit, and not done anything special. Juuso's taking a nap right now, and the plan is to maybe arrange to rent a car tomorrow, and leave the day after, but no pressure if we can't be bothered or if it's a terrible hassle.

But I'm so looking forward to getting out of this city, heading east, seeing the desert, being on an adventure with my love! Oh yes.

So what have I been up to?

Weeeell, on Monday night, I just hung out at the hostel with three English guys and three Australian girls, feeling slightly but not too self-conscious for being the only non-native English speaker. Plans were in the air to eventually leave and go to a bar or something, but we just ended up running to the neighboring liquor store several times and staying up at the hostel until the wee hours. Such is hostel life.


I kick-started Tuesday morning with a long shower and loads of caffeine, which helped me to get up enough energy to walk to the Comics Art Museum with English Adam. We spent quite a while there, admiring all the comic strips, discussing what's funny and what's not and what we have read and should read. Especially a, um, was it 60's Japanese Batman strip was amazing: so beautifully drawn I could have just hung any page on my wall, but the plot seemed to be absolute fluff, containing a political murder attempt using a giant sea monster.

We had Chinese food after that, and visited a few shops, and then just hung out the rest of the night.


Wednesday would be my last day in SF, and I was sad to go. I'd had so much fun in the city and I'd met some amazing people, and all that just came to an end too soon. But I had my bus ticket already, and anyway new adventures awaited. Adam and I hung out that day, too, making a long walk to the very beautiful neighbourhood of The Haight. Lower Haight is an old are full of mostly wooden houses from right after the great earthquake of 1906, and Haight Ashbury is a hippie area packed with record stores, vintage clothes shops, bars and tattoo parlours. We walked a whole lot, took some pictures, admired the neighbourhoods, visited a couple stores but didn't buy much anything, and had a good time. San Francisco is great for days like that, just wandering around and seeing what you can find around the next corner.

In the evening, I had the hostel dinner, and then it was time for me to leave town. I got to the very dodgy-looking bus station, after some misunderstandings got my bus ticket (I'd lost my confirmation email, the guy at the ticket desk was talking on two different phones at the same time as he was serving me, and he had a very unclear accent), I got my ticket, and eventually went to the waiting room. The Greyhound staff eventually told us that the 11 pm bus, which I had the ticket for, was way full, but there was plenty of room in the 10 pm bus, so I got to leave earlier than I'd thought and I didn't have to wait around. So all good and well.


And yesterday morning I awoke in Los Angeles! The night had been short and cold; the air conditioning was on way too high, I hadn't brought enough clothes, and when I got to leave earlier than I'd thought, I forgot to refill my water bottle, so I was really thirsty for the first part of the trip until we stopped at a junction. So really tired, I made my way to the hostel using two buses. It was relatively easy to find the right buses, but the trip here to Venice Beach, where my first LA hostel is, took well over an hour in crowded morning buses, which was pretty nerve-wreching with my big baggage and tired brain.

I got to the hostel, though, and waited around writing in my paper journal and chatting to Juuso before I could check in and have a nap. Eventually I got into my room, slept peacefully for about an hour, and then went for a walk.

Venice Beach is a place where all kinds of freaks, street artists, musicians, surfers, skateboarders, medical marijuana doctors and general alternative people gather. It takes a certain mindset to feel at home here, but I walked along the venice Boardwalk (the most happening beachside street here) for a while, got to Santa monica, checked out the posh shops and a good Mexican restaurant there, and walked back, exhausted.

I was feeling a bit stupid and confused about the sudden change in cities and atmospheres, and absolutely beat from the badly-slept nights, so I took the rest of the evening very easy. I had to stay up until midnight to phone my bank, though, since because of about three stupid coincidences I haven't been able to get money out lately, and actually Juuso had to send me some today on MoneyGram. But I got my bank stuff mainly sorted out. And then I went to sleep peacefully for ten hours, disturbed only by the persistent alarm clock of a Kazakh girl in our room.


Today I took the bus to where the hostel said I could get my MoneyGram bucks out, but ended up being directed to walk to six different shops after that, all a block or two from each other, and in the end what should have been a little routine thing ended up taking hours. But after that I just got back, relaxed on the beach, took a long shower, and am planning to take the rest of tonight easy.

Tomorrow, Hollywood!