Almost back at home - and thoughts about it all
Written on the plane back to Europe/London and almost home:
Not everything is fun while travelling. Given my backproblems, flying was the part I dreaded the most. Sitting on a packed flight is never fun, doing it for many hours when your back can't take it is another story altogehter. But a bit of resourcefulness can get you a long way. Of all our flights, I only had to sit at my own seat during two! We played games with Raine, reserving seats in the aisle & window, thus minimizing the risk that someone comes between us. I always asked for a seat next to a spare one and often got it. I had a note with me from my doctor, stating that sitting is bad for me. Once the aircraft was boarded, there were often leftover seats that I immediately rushed to before the others got them. In all I was lucky, at a few flights I got 3-4 seats all for myself! Much better than business class say I.
While travelling it is easy to get caught up in the place. What can happen is losing touch with yourself. Taking time to slow down and remember what's important allows for living your own life and only take up the impressions you want to. This is something I found useful especially in the US, were the values of life can be very different from European ones. You also cant "do" things every day, like a tourist would. In many places we deliberately tried to slow down, thus not "seeing" everything, but maybe more experiencing the places. This is one of the most important differences between a short and a long trip. If the weather is bad, who cares? It will be better next week. Anyway, when you have really nice weather for a long time, you do enjoy it, but you dont appreciate it as you do when it's rare. If you don't wanna leave the hostel; dont. You can do that tomorrow. Only when we forgot ourselves and in some places tried to see it all, we got stressed out.
Previously, when meeting people travelling for a long time (and there are many, you wouldn't belive), I always wondered what it must feel like, circling the globe, going on and on and not going home in between. Now I know. It does feel a bit like an adventure. Travel mode becomes normal, back home odd and distant. You get used to having just a suitcase of things and cheap food and you don't really mind. Now and then you dream of the amenities back home, but you know you can't have them and the freedom at the same time. What happened to me is I lost some of my realistic and reasonable views of life, got caught in the alternative reality that is travelling. It felt like a parallel universe. Was it real life, or is real life what you do at home; going to the office every day? I also picked up impressions from everywhere. If staying in Manhattan for a bit longer, I might have picked up the huge attitude of the people there ;-) What I have realized, is how important it is to do the things you want to. Even if it can be uncomfortable. Otherwise you'll become bitter and jealous, which in my opinion is among the worst things that can happen.
After 6 months of travelling I am in many ways looking forward to going back home. Maybe my restless soul really got what it needed, cos now I feel quite content about living a "normal" life. The journeys I'm planning now can easily be done as 4-week holidays. Of course, I'll take with me my new impressions and my never fading list of ideas I wanna do.
Lower East Side, Manhattan
As Raine left back home, I made my move from upscale Upper west side to one of the cheapest hostels I could find in the city, on the Lower east side (LES). Accomodation in NY is expensive, so I didn't expect much for my $35/night, but the place is among the nicest I've stayed in. Though my room sleeps 8-16 (depending on the amount of spare mattrasses on the floor) I was lucky and got a bed in a corner with curtains around it. Much of the time it's almost like a studio within the dorm. Having lots of people around me also helped when I missed Raine bad the first days. Slovenian, French, Australian, Swedish, Spanish, Swiss and Belgian people live there with me.
The hostel is within walking distance from Chinatown, Little Italy, Greenwich willage, East willage and Soho. It's also close to the deli where Meg Ryan faked the famous scene from "when Harry met Sally". You either know what Im talking about or you dont ;) With time also LES is getting a little gentrified, but mostly it's a grim mix of immigrants, warehouses, traffic, odd nightclubs and cheap food joints.
The main purpose of my stay is dancing, I do approx five classes a week (8 hours), which is about as much as this old body can cope with now. The rest of my time I try to relax, which is proving to be hard as there is so much to do. Like shopping. Everything is so cheap so now I have a very ambitious list of things I wanna take with me from here. Including a new bag to carry the things in... And walking. Manhattan is great for walking. But it always takes me much longer than expected to get anywhere, simply cos I need to stop in a million places to see everything on the way.
Manhattan does get hectic at times, especially in summer with all (the other) tourists. But there are ways to cool down. A trip to Central Park is always relaxing, it keeps amazing me how clean and nice the huge park is kept. Everyone carries their picnic waste to the bins. Or spend an afternoon reading books in the mega bookstore Borders, where you can take any book or magazine to the cafe with your latte. Or see a film. A few blocks from my place Sunshine cinemas shows non-Hollywood films of a more artsy kind. Irish music film "Once" was so amazing I had to buy the soundtrack. Or visit one of the many museums. As long as you avoid the area around Times Square, Manhattan can be very homely and is definitely the most varied city I know.
Studying mainly jazz dance in the middle of the theatre district, it wouldn't be right not to see a play or two. We saw "Mamma Mia!" with Raine which was very very good. In the same-day-lottery I won a cheap ticket to "A chorus line" and I still plan to see the play "The Year of Magical Thinking" with Vanessa Redgrave (also known as elderly teacher in the Harry Potter films).
There is always something going on. I accidently walked upon a master dance class by Nick Lazzarini, winner of "So you think you can dance". One day carrying my deli salad for a picnic in Bryant Park, mid-Manhattan, I found the park filled to the brims with people securing a place for the free Monday night movie. 5000 people with picnics and wine bottles showed up for a black-and-white 60's film! The city never stops amazing. You would think 3 weeks is enough to see it all and a bit more, but with my need also to relax before going back to work, some things will be left for the next time. And there certainly will be one.
Time.. where did it all go?
My last week in NY was, as I already pointed, more or less relaxing and trying to slow down the phase of travel. I had such a great time shopping and enjoying the great food and all the entertainment only New York can offer.
On the last wednesday I went to see the Broadway musical called Mamma mia! It's all about ABBA music and I can tell you I enjoyed every moment of the show. Perhaps the most impressive moment was when the lead singer (performing as the mother of the bride) performed the song "The Winner Takes It All". For the first time in my life I witnessed how the whole audience was silenced after the song. There is no feeling like the one heartbeat of silence after the music fade away. Everyone in the audience were stunned by the power of the performance and then the following applause broke into furious burst of exitement. It is something to remember on the years to come.
I spent my last night of my journey with Carina and we had a private "*sniff* party" with bad bad deli food (our own inside joke after the excellent dinner we had in Little Italy - the delifood you get in NY is great!). The night was topped with a visit to one of the Broadway comedy clubs. Beside the sad tone of my departure on the following morning I had a great time with Carina and we could spend my last hours together.
On the mornign of my departure I was awakened by the alarmclock, after excess sleep of half an hour ;-) The rude wakeup was followed by more or less 35 hours of travel from NY to SF then back to the eastcoast and over the Atlantic to London and Tampere - where I finaly had my first good night of sleep. On the following morning I had to drive to Helsinki where I could finaly heave a sigh and note my return home. Total travel time from NY to Helsinki was 52 hours including the night in Tampere. You don't want to try it yourself!
Heat wave baking New York
We're melting here! The temperature has been steadily around 29-35C the last few days. No worries though, we've been enjoying the day heat in the shade of central park =) Today I'm going to challenge the weather and take a walk around the village with Carina and perhaps have my morning coffee in Borders on 57th street before going there.
I've been having a great time in NY although I've been taking far less pictures than normal. The reason is as you can imagine that I already have shiploads of pictures of NY from our previous visits. This time I've been taking pictures of the people and trying to capture at least some feelings of the life in the city rather than shooting the dead cold buildings all over again. Now, the problem is that I haven't had time to upload any new pictures and the good internet places are scarse on the upper west side. This internet machine in our YMCA is good to a point but you just can't install any programs into the computer (or launch your own software if you manage to install one). If only I had my laptop with me there would be no problems with the internet as most of the cafe's have wireless and many of the places offer it for free.
For me this is the last week of my journey and I've been deliberatly slowing down the phase. I'm not going to run into every direction anymore and I have been trying to make some plans for my first days in Helsinki. Well, the first days will be washing clothes, cleaning up the flat after the couple who stayed there. There are so many things to do in the first few days. The fact that I have to be at the office the next day doesn't help a bit. After the first few action packed days I'm going to enjoy myself by going to the beach and just relax while trying to adjust to the normal rythm of life.
Now I think it is time for me to get my morning coffee..
Vancouver
After LA and San Francisco, out city hopping continued to Vancouver. Too late had we discovered that this is one of the cities that fill up quickly, so we ended up staying in a slightly more expensive place than planned. We did however enjoy the rare luxury of a TV with more than a hundred channels in our own room! (Food channel became my favourite =) This was our second own TV during the whole trip!!
The weather forecast promised rain, rain and rain, so every day it did not rain, we felt obliged to run around the city, in case it would rain for the rest of the week. Of course, it hardly rained at all... We got to see the city well though =)
Someone told me Vancouver resembles Helsinki a lot, back then I didn't belive it. But it's actually true, the climate and the feel of the city, especially at the coast, is very similar. The smell of the sea, the sounds of the seagulls. And the people are very outdoorsy in a similar fashion to people in Helsinki. But it is of course much much bigger and more cosmopolitan. We didn't expect such a big asian population.
The week was spent walking around the city, using the free gym with swimming pool that our hotel provided(!), shopping, walking along the shorelines and Stanley park in the north. We explored the different downtown neighborhoods; Yaletown, Gastown, Chinatown, Kitsilano, Granville island and more. We drank the great great hazelnut brew coffee that they served even in seven elevens. We happend to be there during Canada day, which was very different from the finnish independence day, more of a carneval. Of course the history differs a lot, and beeing in the middle of summer must help. Personally, I loved the Granville island market on a hot day with fresh berries of all kinds and very good outdoor musicians. The public library in a huge Colosseum styled building with free internet was also very nice. Last but not least; the Rockville road chocolate shop with their handmade caramel apples and enormous chocolate confectory of all kinds got me as a regular customer =)
Vancouver seems to be in constant change, as cities should, with lots of construction going on. The new architecture looks like it does in Helsinki now, only with higher towers and more volume. A good week, that only a little was outshadowed by anticipation for New York to come =)
Gay parade in San Francisco
It was about time for me to get to San Francisco and see the famous Golden gate bridge. The weather was on our side the whole time and we had some great time there. Most of my days were filled with endless walking in the streets of the spectacular neighbourhoods. Heh, I didn't even remember my legs could feel so sore and tired but I enjoyed every step.
We stayed close to Union square which is the most common place for budget travellers to stay. The location is great for what ever you do and the square area itself is also a good place to spend hours and hours. On a sunny day you can buy yourself a cup of coffee and get some salad for lunch. I used to relax on the steps of the square and just look at tourists trying to find their way in town and see how the busy looking business people were rushing around with a takeway coffee in hand.
The really fun part of our stay was the gay parade that happened to be in the city. Actually we found out that the parade is going to be there after we made the changes to our travel plans. So, the whole gay parade was just an extra bonus for us and we got some great pictures from the different parades and the people around the city.
Malibu, Big Sur & rest of the west coast
On the second cruising day we headed north from LA. Our first goal was to check out Malibu which is just half an hours ride north from Santa Monica via the south pacific freeway. I thought Malibu would be a place with a nice beach bulevard and palm trees growing on the sidewalk. Well, that's not Malibu. Malibu is a long strech of nice beach but the entrances to the beach are rare and most of the beach front is blocked by private buildings thus blocking the view to the sea. The public Malibu pier and the lagoon beach on the north side is the main entrance for the mortals to see the beach. Between the pier and the lagoon beach there is a really great point break for surfers. Unfortunately after the warm waters we've been used to the "cold" water of the west coast did not feel too inviting. We also checked out the shopping mall to see any celebs but the time was not right and I left Malibu with a slight disappointment in my mind. Perhaps we've seen too many great places not to be able to enjoy the good places anymore. Well, at least we might need some time between the places but our schedule now will not allow us that.
Anyway, from Malibu we went to Santa Barbara which is yet another playground for the rich. Instead of entering yet another narrow strech of beach front buildings Santa Barbara offered a town centre away from the beach. The beach and the central pier at it offered a great beach buleward and an excellent jogging ground for me the following morning. The whole city was almost totally rebuilt after an earthquake. When they planned the new city they decided to build the whole city as a replica of an old spanish town. You can see only red tile roofed buildings with neatly decorated white walls with mediterranean balconies and such. It's a really nice place to visit but again it is not exactly for the budget travellers.
The following day we continued the pacific highway 1 and entered a place called Big Sur. It is not really a place or town but just a long strech of coastal road turning and twisting around the mountaneous coast. We we're a bit unlucky on this part of our journey as the fog and clouds from the sea were blocking the best views most of the time. Though I'm not complaining as the narrow and twisting road is like riding a roller coaster. Plenty of fun and occational views were totally worth the time spent.
Big sur is a long ride on the coast and we arrived in Santa Cruz late in the evening. The city was getting dark when we had our dinner. We had to see the famous pier with the fun parks and all in it after the sun was set and the sight was only promising us the good time we would have had there if we would have had more time to spend. If you ever have the opportunity then you should spend a day or two in Santa Cruz as there seems to be plenty of things to do even for a budget traveller.
On our way back south from Santa Cruz we enjoyed yet another night ride on the freeway. The following day we turned away from the freeway and visited the wine country. After seeing a lot of great wine areas I was still amazed by the size of that wine country. The wine itself was not exactly my favourite but after a few tastings you couldn't care less (or be afraid when driving - just kidding!). Anyway, after Carina had her wine and I had my tiny share of the tastings we had a great picnic on the side of the road. The view overlooked a great open ranch in front of us and behind us there were yet another cattle ranch with hundreds of cows. The day was topped with a visit to Los Olivos which was yet another setting for the movie called Sideways.
