Feelings from the States

It’s been now a couple of days since we left California and I thought to write some thoughts about our experiences. For the most part the trip went pretty smoothly and as planned without any bigger surprises or misfortunes. Our trip went as follows: 8 days NYC, 3 days LA, 2 days SD, 3 days LV, 3 days SF and 1 day Santa Barbara. Afterwards it can be said that New York and San Francisco were my favorites. NY was literally a city that never sleeps and full of life. I also really liked that it was very easy to travel there with the subway. No matters at what time you want to get somewhere, the subway runs. Although we had the possibility to visit very many places and attractions in the city, 8 days weren’t enough and I want to back there in the near future, most preferably during summer time to see the Central Park like it’s known. In California and especially in LA you can’t do really anything without a car. The distances are so big and there’s like no public transportation. Since there are about 20 million people living there and everybody is driving a car, it takes sometimes many hours to get from one place to another. Being used to queue free traffic, LA was not for us :) We had bad luck with the weather in San Diego as it rained for the most time we were there. Besides that, in our opinions it’s more a summer city and during winter time there’s not that much to do. The beaches are definitely wonderful in the summer and there are many golf courses around the city. So if you’re a surfer or a golfer, the city is perfect!

Las Vegas was a place from which we all had the opinion that it was nice to go there once but there’s no reason to again. The Canyons really saved our Vegas trip because they’re amazing. Next time I wanna upgrade the Canyons and book a helicopter flight :) they weren’t actually that expensive, for example in a 4 hour trip from Vegas did cost around $300/person.  After Vegas we drove through the desert to Reno and after the night continued to San Francisco. We all liked Frisco a lot. The atmosphere there was really cool and the city felt kind of cosy and homely. The only negative aspect was the fact that the public transport basically is closed after midnight so it’s better to book a hotel in the city center and not outside the center like we did.. If I’d move to USA some day, the smaller cities at the Pacific would be nice places to live in. Towns like Santa Barbara, Santa Monica and Laguna Beach all were pretty beautiful with their beaches and small mountains on the other side but they’re not the cheapest places to find a home :) 

Time to continue to LA

Today it was time to leave NYC and move on to LA. One week is certainly not enough for seeing everything you'd wanna see in New York although we did see a lot of the attractions and don't feel like we would have missed something really important. One thing we all agreed was that next time we'll come during summer. The city was beautiful during winter time too, but for example the Central Park during summer is something I wanna see in the future! So this wasn't the last time in NYC for sure.. Right after today’s breakfast we ordered a cab to pick up us at the hotel to drive us to JFK for the flight to LA International Airport. We thought we’d get a free lunch or at least a snack on the plane but nothing! All you could eat was some light snacks which cost a lot, too much in our minds :) So we were starving when we got to LA and right after getting our rental car we headed to eat at Jack in the Box’s. Getting no food at the plane was not the only negative aspect about American Airlines. At first we were forced to pay $25 each for the bags since they apparently weren't included in the tickets. I'd be happy to say I don't have to fly on AA again but we're flying to Shanghai with AA. So let's give the another shot to give a better impression..

At Alamo’s the clerk strongly was in the opinion that we wouldn’t manage to load our bags into the Chevy Impala or a similar vehicle and wanted us to upgrade to a SUV. Otherwise we’d taken that but the price was way too high for us and he wasn’t in a negotiation mood and we were pretty sure that we’ll get the luggage into the trunk.. And we were right :) It was quite a puzzle and the Impala wasn’t big enough but the trunk of a Toyota Camry was just the right size! The car has not only a big trunk but it’s big in every way and we’re very pleased with it.

We had some concerns about the traffic here but the way from LAX to Days Inn at Long Beach went well, despite the problems in finding the hotel but finally we managed in that too.. In the evening we went for a drive around the suburbs here to take a first look at LA. Have to say that I just don’t get it how it’s possible to have that many fast food restaurants like it is here. There’s on every corner at least a couple of them.. But now it’s time to get some sleep and tomorrow it’s NHL time as we’re going to watch Ducks vs. Coyotes at the Honda Center in Anaheim!  

Last day in NYC

Today was our last day in NYC as we’re flying to LA tomorrow morning. After breakfast we thought it’s a good moment to do some laundry because there’s a laundromat just one block away from the hotel. After that we headed to Manhattan to visit some last places we’ve wanted to go to. First we walked to Madison Square Park to eat at the well-known Shake Shack, a outdoor burger place. Gotta say that there were the best burgers so far :9  After two very cold days it was much warmer today, mostly because of the mild wind and thanks to a blue sky with a warming sunshine. We aimed to buy stamps for some postcards from the postal office at the Rockefeller Center but due to Martin Luther King all governmental bureaus were closed so no postcards to Finland yet.. Maybe we manage to send those tomorrow at JFK.

After some donuts and coffees at Dunkin Donut’s we went to St. Patrick’s Cathedral which is a huge but typical and beautiful catholic church. Because it was the last day here, we walked all over Times Square and the surrounding blocks to have a final look at the Midtown area. We also stopped by at Madame Tussauds to check out the celebrity wax figures.. Now we’re packing our stuff for tomorrow’s flight and wondering which car we’ll get for our time in California and Nevada.

NFL Weekend and Brooklyn tours

On Saturday we started our day in Lower Manhattan at the Wall Street where we visited the Museum of American Finance. It was very interesting and illustrated properly the early years if the world’s number one stock exchange, NYSE, as well as the development phases and crashes. After the tour there we navigated towards WTC memorial place. On our way we stopped by at Tiffany’s to take a look at jewelry that expensive we’ve never seen before. The most expensive necklace we saw was worth of over 50k.

Although we’ve already been nearly a week in NYC, we haven’t walked through Chinatown yet so now it was certainly time to fix that! We found a pretty big and popular Chinese restaurant where you could take whatever you liked from the lines. The only problem thereby was there weren’t any signs about what they offered so we weren’t quite sure about the items we were eating :) But for the most part everything tasted good.. After lunch we headed to SoHo through Little Italy. In Soho we found a sports bar to watch the day’s NHL game.

For the evening we planned to drive to Brooklyn cause we haven’t had the opportunity to go there before. After a short walk there we found a small restaurant where we ate some really delicious burgers. With full stomachs we continued to a bar to watch the NFL game Patriots vs. Broncos.

On Sunday we had a pretty low-speed start for the day and it was almost 12 o’clock before we walked out from through our hotel’s doors. First we drove again to Brooklyn to eat and we found a great Italian place. The weather was sunny and we wanted to take some nice photos of Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan. We also planned to walk over the bridge back to Manhattan but we chose to take subway since it was very cold due to the heavy wind.. At Lower Manhattan we went into the skyscraper museum where was a small exhibition of the world’s biggest skyscrapers.

In the early evening we visited world biggest photo & audio store B&H which certainly was enormous. After lunch we decided to end our evening at the cinema and watched the new Mission Impossible 4 before heading back to the hotel. 

NBC and Radio City Music Hall tours

After 3 days with sunny and warm weather, the next couple of days weren’t that awesome. On Thursday it rained for the most part and although according to the forecast it should have been quite warm, it wasn’t. The weather was chilly and rainy the whole day so we looked for inside destinations to visit. First we decided to take part in NBC Studio Tour to see how the legendary TV broadcast station has been founded and developed in the past century and to see a bit how the shows are filmed and made today. After that we continued to the famous Radio City Music Hall. The tour took us across the theater to see various interesting places and we also met one of the Rockettes :)

Since it’s election time in Finland at the moment and we didn’t wanna miss our chance to have an effect on the coming president, we headed to United Nation into the Finnish embassy to vote. Olli’s cousin Johanna is working there at the moment and she gave us some hints where to go here in NYC. She proposed us a nice pub in the neighborhood so we went there to hang around and watch the Knicks’s game.

Thursday’s weather wasn’t much better, it was very windy and cold but luckily it didn’t rain. We started our morning with a long subway ride from Queens to Bronx to see something else than than just Manhattan. At some point during the ride we noticed that among the ca. 50 people in the subway car we were the only white people there. We arrived in Bronx at the Yankee Stadium and went for a walk around the stadium and the neighborhood. But we shortly noticed that it was too windy to really enjoy walking around there so we aimed back to the subway. The weather felt so cold that we didn’t wanna spend much time outdoors hence we visited some locations included in the NY Pass. We visited the Guggenheim museum and I’ve to say that I don’t understand modern art.

The target after lunchtime was the Madison Square Garden which unfortunately is not open for the guided tours around the arena due to some massive renovations at the moment. Before MSG we also visited Bloomingdale’s shopping center which is covered with all the luxury brands existing and we almost felt like being not brave enough to touch anything there. :) In the early evening we walked to Empire State Building for the New York Skyride which is a helicopter ride through the skyline in a motion simulated movie theater. The concept is really cool but it was a bit disappointing since the film was quite bad and not that sharp. After 5 pretty exhausting days, we were feeling tired so we decided to head back to the hotel pretty early to rest for the two last days here in New York before West Coast road trip. 

South Manhattan with the water taxi

Day 3’s first mission was to get to Wall Street to take a look at the Financial District. We had a little, funny incidence when changing the subway at the Grand Central Station as Ville wasn’t able to jump into the train and was forced to wait for the next one. I, Matti and Lauri thought we’d be before Ville at the Wall Street but our train didn’t go that far and we had to wait for another line and in the meanwhile Ville had taken a faster line about which we weren’t aware of. At Wall Street we still thought we were there before him but it was actually the opposite way.. We also met Olli and Maiju there who were coming from Brooklyn and continued with them walking around South Manhattan. After a while we crabber a quick snack before taking the water taxi to the West Side Manhattan via the Statue of Liberty. We certainly were very lucky with the weather because the whole morning time the sun was shining from a blue sky and it was quite warm as you can see from pictures below J

We jumped out from the ferry next to the Intrepid aircraft carrier from the cold war era. It is a museum today and we decided to visit it since it’s also included in the New York Pass. The tour contained also a submarine from the same area and on the carriers deck there were several fighter planes and military choppers.

After the tour it was time to eat and we found a great Italian restaurant that served big but pretty cheap meals. With full stomachs we headed to the NHL Store at the Avenue of the Americas but I have to say that I was a bit disappointed in it. I was expecting it to be a huge store offering a wide range of items but it was much smaller that I thought and none of us found anything worth of buying. Today we wanted to visit shops and we continued our unsuccessful shopping spring to Macy’s, the biggest mall in the world.. At first we didn’t even find men’s section but finally we managed :D Although it was huge we thought it would be wiser to wait until we get to the outlet center in California and only Ville and Matti did actually buy something. After Macy’s we headed back to our hotel after a long day and lots of hurting legs to rest for the coming days.. 

Top of the Rock

After some small departure delays at the Helsinki-Vantaa airport (our first flight to Berlin took off almost an hour after planned) we reached JFK on time on Monday at 1pm and headed to the security check. We certainly weren’t the only people there and had to stand in the queue for an hour before we got out to breathe the American air and catch a cab to drive us to our hotel in Queens.. We did only let our luggage in our room and headed to the closest subway station and drove to Times Square to find Olli and Maiju who had come to NYC already on Friday. First mission for us was to find a decent place to eat since we were starving although the airplane meals were surprisingly good. TGI Fridays’ burgers tasted good but the bill was pretty high which we weren’t aware of before eating J 

After lunch it was time to walk up the 5^th Ave for a while and have a first look at the New York skyline. The only place we visited on the first eve was the new Apple Store. We all were amazed by the size of store and the fanatic iPeople in the States! I think there were at least 50 salesmen and it looked like that many customers were spending the evening playing games on the iPads.. Because we woke up already before 4am in Finland that morning, we were pretty tired and exhausted after the long journey so we decided to head back to our hotel to get a decent amount of sleep to get rid of jet lag.

On the second day we stood up quite early after a cold but well-slept night. We wanted to experience the skyline from the skies so we went to the Rockefeller Center observation deck. Below you can find a few pictures from the deck and gotta say that the view was breathtaking!

With the New York tourist passes we got also a free, guided tour around the Rockefeller Center and Plaza. It was cool to hear some interesting details about several things around the buildings and their details. After the tour we went to visit the American Museum of Natural History. It was way too big and versatile for a 2-3 hour tour and we didn’t spend much time in wondering details J

Being a tourist is a tough job and we wanted to relax for a while and thanks to the museums wi-fi we found easily a pub located in the neighborhood which had a happy hour during the whole day-time so we went to grab a couple beers and relax for a while before continuing. After Top of the Rock we wanted to visit the Empire State Building during the evening so we headed there. Though the view was amazing in the sunny morning, it was even better in the dark as you can see in the pictures below! 

Tomorrow it's on!

Wow, the day has arrived! Tomorrow morning it’s time to catch the plane at Helsinki-Vantaa and fly via Berlin to New York’s JFK. I remember how far away this day seemed to be that one early summer day as we bought our tickets J and now it’s here.. I have a bit mixed feelings at the moment because on the other hand I’m excited that the journey is now beginning but I’m also sad cause I just had to say goodbye to my sweet S. But fortunately she’s coming to Shanghai to visit me in a couple of months which I’m looking forward to! But now it’s time to wait for the boys to come here and spend the evening hanging here together and in the morning it’s off to New York! See you Finland again in the summer..