Jul 4, 2010

Days 0 and 1

Day 0, The flights and arriving to L.A

After not a very well slept night we woke up at 4 am, packed all the final things, got in a taxi and drove to the airport. Our flight to London left Helsinki at 8 in the morning. The flight was fine, even though Aleksi wasn’t feeling exactly the best at the landing part… Just before landing to London around 9.30 am (local time) we saw Buckingham palace and the London Eye, yay!

We spent just about an hour or two at the airport before getting in the second plane leaving to Los Angeles. The plane was huge, there were two floors! The flight was a lot longer than the first one but luckily there were these small TVs for everyone, for listening to music and watching TV series or movies, so there was some activities during that long flight 11 hours flight. From the plane we saw (the most likely) Salt Lake City, which was pretty cool ‘cause we aren’t actually gonna visit it this time.

We arrived in L.A at 3 pm local time, went to get our luggage and got our from the airport to get a bus to the car rental place. Our car is so awesome! It’s a white and very big minivan, Chrysler, which has seats for 7 persons. So there’s a lot of space for us, and that’s good. The trunk is huge. After putting in our 4 big suitcases we hadn’t used even half of the space. Yay, extra space for souvenirs! ;)

Daddy got our Matti (the navigator guy) and we drove to the hotel. During that drive we saw the palm trees, Mc Donald’s and Burger King signs, hundreds of cars, latino people and of course, the L.A city. That all was so cool and unreal that I had to ask myself if that wasn’t just a dream!? We got into Hollywood Hotel from where dad had booked two double bed rooms for us, one for me and my brothers and the other for mom and dad. We took our suitcases in the rooms and went to eat ‘cause we all were starving! We found a Wendy’s fast food restaurant and ate hamburger meals. There was glasses and a moustache included in my kids’ meal, so we had a blast trying them on ‘cause we all looked like Pensseli-setä. (Google it if you don’t know.) Hehe. After laughing our eyes off (not literally) we walked back to the hotel and checked out the pool area. It was nice. We took a drive to the hills from where we saw the whole city. It was cool. Then we got back to the hotel, went in our rooms, changed on our pyjamas and went to sleep at 8.30 pm, which is 6.30 am in Finland. At that time, we had been up for 26 and a half hours, whoa… we had no problem falling asleep.



Day 1, SHOP ‘TILL YOU DROP

Waking up in L.A for the first time in 14 years… yeah. We went downstairs at 9.30 am to eat breakfast; toasts, eggs, some random sausages, cereals, waffles with maple syrup, coffee, lemonade and orange juice. Not bad. After eating we left the hotel and drove about an hour, 83 kilometers, to Camarillo Premium Outlet Center where we spent the whole day. There were over a hundred factory outlet stores, for example Adidas, Nike, Puma, Guess, Tommy Hilfiger, Papaya, DKNY, Levi’s, Vans, Converse, Forever 21, Gap, DC… is that enough? ;D

We left from the first store, Converse, with 3 pairs of shoes, and at the end of the day we had maybe 20 plastic and paper bags full of new shoes, clothes and bags on the trunk. Girls back home, you would have LOVED Papaya, at least I did! I left the store with 2 dresses and 2 tops. You know, it’s funny paying with dollars instead of euros, but I guess I’ll get used to that during this month ;)

We bought cinnamon-sugar Pretzels and diet cokes for “lunch” and at 6 o’clock we went to get some dinner. Everyone except me ate Chinese food but I got a chicken teriyaki Sub with French fries. These meals here, gotta say, are huge! Two people could share one and still get their stomachs full, easily.

We got to the hotel maybe around 8.30 pm, took some photos of the many bags we have and updated this blog ;) I’ll just add some pictures and then we’ll go to sleep! Good night :)


9 comments:

  1. ooooh kuulostaa IHANAALTA!(: ja ois kiva saada kuva autosta! :D ja kivasti shoppailtu, rakastan outlet-ostareita!

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  2. jooo helmi! tosi kiva kun ehit kirjottaa tällasta blogiakin matkan aikana :)):)

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  3. Vau Iisa! Ihan sairaan ihanan kuuloista ollut sulla. Ja olisin kyllä varmaan tykännyt ihan mistä vaan kaupasta siellä. Äwwsss, pidä sairaan hauskaa ja muista shoppailla paljon, sillä shoppailemaan pääsee vasta seuraavan kerran. ;)) Tuun kyllä vielä lukeen tätä blogia tarkasti – ja auto kuulosti ihanalta, ihan noin by the way. ;)

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  4. on se niin reiluu :) kuulostaa sika kivalta ja oooh se outlet pleissi, mä vaa olin suu auki tääl ku luin et mitä kaikkii kauppoi siel oli... :DD mut hei pitäkää hauskaa vielä lisää ja nii, päivitä tätä ahkerasti ja laitas kuvii lisää :) noi on just kivoi! :)

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  5. Hey! I'm like really really busy right now here at Wake Forest to comment anything so I just wanted to say "Hi!". It's really stressful, I don't even have any time to update my own blog! :P

    Talk to you soon!

    PD: Pretty nice pics! ;D

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  6. Landevkonloppu takana, lystiä oli! Mukavaa tietää, että ihanaa on sielläkin.. Auringonkadulla kaikki ok samoin mummulla, just soittelin. Rakkaita terveisiä teille kaikille ja turvallista matkaa!

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  7. jeep, kiitos kaikille kommenteista :) tääl on iha huikeeta ja matka vaan jatkuu! kiva tietää et on lukijoita, kirjottelen lisää taas kuha kerkeen! :)

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  8. oh iisa FU! all those bags and brand names... was it even expencive? and you HAVE to show me everything you bought when you get back :P

    gosh it would be cool to be there, i'm like soo jealous you get to see and experience all that :D! but i guess i'll have to settle to Finland at least for now. but yeah, have fun and take a lot of pictures (i said to myself while reading this that i would need from 5 to 10 memorycards if i was there :D)! :)

    p.s. btw your english is (as you know) too awesome, it sounds like you ARE from America, not from finland
    p.p.s. and yes, english is catchy, so i think i'm gonna comment everything in english here :D

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  9. haha maria :D gotta say, outlets + sales = not that expensive.. i got a pair of converse shoes at 14,95 dollars :P not bad at all..!

    i got my laptop with me so i get to siirtää all the photos from the camera to here in the end of each day, so the memory card won't get too full, which is great :)

    aaand thanks! :D yours is too :) i'll show you every piece of clothing i've bought once i get back to finland :) / :( (!!!!!) whoa, now that looks too complicated, hope you understand it ;) too many smileys

    anyway, regards! <3

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