Last days in LA

As the school ended at Cal State East Bay, we continued our trip to Los Angeles. So far we have spend eight days here and my trip is coming to an end. It feels kind a weird to head back home. These almost four months have been pretty remarkable in my life. I've seen so much in a such a small time. Met new people, had such a fun time.

I'm gonna keep this text short and write some sort of a "financial statement" later. The following photos are taken from LA, mostly in West Hollywood. We rented an apartment from an Emmy-award winner Mark Zoeller. He is an artist who has drawn i.a. Family Guy. Apartment is about five-minute-walk away from the famous Hollywood Walk of Fame.

So far we've seen some NHL (Kings vs. Ducks), Venice Beach, Santa Monica Beach, Laguna Beach, Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, Malibu, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Hollywood-sign and Downtown LA. And of course, tried to relax as much as we've could before heading back home. :)

Los Angeles is huge and if you think a vacation here - rent a car! Distances are something you cannot understand before you actually see it with your own eyes. And once again the traffic is crazy.

Around 1 600 miles

Stone Temple Pilots - Interstate Love Song

Thanksgiving is a big holiday here in the US. Since we Europeans with reinforcements from Canada and Australia didn't had anything that special going on with it, we decided to do a road trip. The plan was following: At first head to Grand Canyon National Park, AZ and then continue to Hoover Dam at the border of Arizona and Nevada. Finally arrive to Las Vegas, NV and spend three days there.

So we got our cars from Hertz and started our trip. It took 12 hours to get from Hayward to Grand Canyon National Park. Don't know how much the elevation was during the trip, but it had to be pretty much. Our Chevy Malibu was drinking gas like a maniac. We had to refuel like four times.

Even though the drive was long, it didn't felt that bad. We had three to four drivers on each car so we could easily split it. I think Nik in the other car took the driving challenge pretty seriously, since he drove their Camry total of 750 miles in a row. Roads here are basically interstates or highways, which means that the traffic is one-way only. But as far as I'm concerned, the traffic here is crazy. You have to be causious all the time. This one guy in front of us had his Infinity SUV sideways on the highway and at the same time other Chrysler was goin sideways 60 mph on the grass. I actually wonder that no one crashed. We made up rules in our car that the backseat can do whatever they want, but the one on the front seat has to keep company to the driver so that he would not start to sleep while driving.

When we finally arrived and the sun started to rise it was obvious to see that the terrain in Arizona is totally different compared to California. It's pretty flat, dry and the growth is totally different. The views on the Canyon were amazing. We got there just in the break of dawn so it was all different shades of orange and red. We were all pretty tired so we decided to continue to the Hoover Dam. The place was huge! We didn't stay there for too long as all of us started be ready for Vegas.

Finally, Las Vegas, Nevada. As we started to see the tops of the hotels such as The Mandalay Bay, MGM Grand and Caesar's Palace we were super excited. Vegas is something you have to see and experince yourself. Out of 25 biggest hotels in the world, 19 of them are located in Vegas. Gambling, Bars, Restaurants... The Las Vegas Strip is the place to be. And if you didn't knew yet, the Strip is the main street of Las Vegas. That is the place where all the biggest hotels are located. And it is crazy. Everything is so exaggerated! Our hotel Hard Rock Hotel & Casino wasn't located on the strip, but it was new and cheaper compared to other hotels. And it only took like five minutes to go to the Srip with a cab.

We stayed in Vegas for three days and we had a great time. Like I told you guys earlier, the traffic is rancid. There isn't that many railroads or public transportations, so basically everybody has their own cars. And we got pretty "nice" experience of it. When we left Las Vegas, the first 30 miles took as long as two and a half hours. It's a crazy feeling to drive a four-line highway 15 mph... The Highway looks like a chain of pearl. It's like several miles only car lights 'til horizon. Luckily the traffic started to decrease after few hours of drive. This was the time to get another bully - dense fog. Like a lightning from the sky it all went grey and foggy. You could hardly see 10 meters in front of you. And this kept going for like 300 miles, sometimes better sometimes worse. The tactic was to tailgate the car in front of you. It was pretty weird to see only two red dots in front of you and just keep your fingers crossed. Luckily the higways here are ruler made, so there is not any big turns or something like that. And we didn't saw a single animal on the road.

Finally we arrived to Hayward at 04:45 am. So far this was one of the coolest experiences in my life.

Yosemite

On Thursday morning the Finns headed out to the Yosemite National Park. The park is located approximately 190 miles east from Hayward. Compared to the Pinecrest we visited earlier, Yosemite is lot more bigger and popular (over 3 point something million visitors every year). The elevation changes between 3,000 and 7,000 feet which basically means 2,2 kilometers.

After we entered the park, a Park Patrol vehicle started to follow us. After five minutes of driving, the Officer flashed her beams and pulled us over. "Ok guys, I pulled you over for number of reasons...". Probably she wasn't that satisfied with the finnish way of handeling a car :) Luckily she just checked our driver's licenses and let us continue our trip.

Due to lack of time, we only visited the Tunnel View and Glacier Point on thursday. But the views were something you cannot believe before you see them by yourself. Elevations, mountains, waterfalls... The view made me feel like I'm in some sort of science fiction movie. Totally amazing.

Later night at our hotel Cedar Lodge, El Portal the weather guy totally surprised us. We had saw some warnings about Winter Storms, but we ignored them totally. On Friday night would snow up to 7 inches and temperature would be as low as 32 fahrenheit (0 celsius). So when we woke up, we noticed that the forecast was accurate. It was cold, trees were snowy and the views even cooler (literally) than on Thursday!

Compared to Pinecrest, we didn't do as much hiking In Yosemite you can basically drive to the view points and then continue to the next one. But you really have to drive. For instance, distance between the Tunnel View and Glacier Point is over 20 miles. I'm not quite sure, but I guess we were pretty lucky. Once the snow came to the ground, they started to close roads in Yosemite. This means that if we wouldn't visited Glacier Point on thursday, we wouldn't be able to see it on Friday!

After Yosemite we drove to Sacramento to see the Capital Bulding of California. It was pretty neat! Tomorrow we will head to Oakland to see some NFL. Oakland Raiders vs. Denver Broncos. The Colosseum is supposed to be sold out, which means almost 40,000 fans!

Las Vegas countdown 24 days ;)

Santa Cruz - Carmel by Sea, San Jose

Last week we had a midterm in real estate management. This ment that we didn't had class on thursday and hereby our weekend started on wednesday evening. Midterm wasn't that difficult. Calculations were pretty easy but I had some difficulties with the vocabulary. A funny thing was that you actually have to buy a blank test sheet by yourself. Even thought six sheets cost only USD 1,70, it still feels a bit weird compared to the system we have in our university in Finland. Well, U.S. is the home of capitalism so these guys know pretty good how to make money on pretty much everything :)

Monday was the game day! We rented a minivan which actually was a 2011 GMC Yukon with a V8. I think that car is one of the coolest rides I've ever driven and I don't even want to think what the price for that one would be in Finland... So, we continued to San Jose to see Sharks vs. Ducks. The game was pretty neat, atmosphere was awesome and the HP Pavilion sold out. Ducks won 2-3, Selänne 2+0, Koivu 0+2, Lydman 0+1. It was a good day to be a Finn.

On thursday we decided to visit Santa Cruz, because we had heard a lot of good about it. On thursday morning we went to Enterprise to get a car. A 2011 Dodge Avenger, which we got a 10 percent discount because the previous customer had tried to cover his/her smoking with pretty cheap perfume... Cars here in the U.S. are not comparable to cars we have in Finland. For instance a basic VW Passat has usually a 3.0 V6 engine here. Most of the cars are pick-ups. And those things are big. If you put a BMW X5 next to Ford F350 it basically looks like a Toyota Yaris.

We took the legendary Highway 1 which goes next to the Pacific Ocean all the way Los Angeles. Santa Cruz is approximately one and a half our south from Hayward. The views on the Highway 1 are something you cannot believe before you see them with your own eyes...

Santa Cruz was a bit of a disappointment, though it is a very nice looking place. It seemed to be a tourist attraction and because the schools were already started, there was not that much of people. We booked a hotel room from Super 8 and continued our trip to Carmel by Sea. A funny detail in our hotel was the coffee. This small single-portion coffee had all the text in english such as "brewed for the...", but the only text to express what the bag contains was written in finnish "KAHVI".

Carmel is a small town approximately 45 minutes from Santa Cruz to south. As a little nice-to-know-information, Clint Eastwood is the former Major of the town. The legendary Pebble Beach golf course is also right next to it, on the north side. The town was pretty small, upscale apartments, nice cars, luxury shops. If you go by, I suggest that you quickly visit the place.

On friday morning we continued our trip to San Jose. Since we were in Silicon Valley, we just had to type "Google" and "Microsoft" to our navigator. I think we didn't even found the real headquarters, because the whole area was so big.

We got a midterm in organizational behavior this wednesday. Lots of reading, but fortunately the whole subject is in my opinion pretty interesting.