USA
As soon as I stepped out from the airport in San Francisco it felt like coming home. It was like I was inside all those movies I had seen through the years, everything felt familiar even though I had never been there before.
On our way into the city, Christian and I passed by the ghettos in a minibus and it was clear to me that the difference between rich and poor is a lot bigger than in Sweden. Our hotel was one street off from the heart of the city and that street was full of homeless persons strolling their carts, while the police sirens were on 24/7. As soon as you got passed that street you were suddenly in a big city center where you couldn't even believe there was something called poverty. The contrast was so big.
The first thing we ate was pizza and it was disgusting. I would quickly understand that USA is the home of burgers and not pizza. The vegetarian burgers were amazing, especially at Denny's.
We went into an old 60's diner and it felt a bit like closure for me. My dad was heavy into the 60's scene from USA; the music, movies and style. And when he passed away I used my heritage to travel to USA to fulfill a dream for us both. He had never been to USA to see it in real life, and even if it was 50 years too late I felt like he had helped me to go to USA so he could experience it through me since he was no longer with us.
It's hard to miss the red bridge called Golden Gate, which is one of USA's most famous landmarks, but my main goal was to see something else.
I had heard that Twin Peaks was located in San Francisco and I wondered if it had anything to do with the best TV show ever. We went there and no, it wasn't connected in any way, but at least I got a great view over the many skyscrapers that is the city.
San Francisco has come to be known as the epicenter both of the worldwide LGBTQ community and the hippie community and you can see the rainbow flag all over town. I love how there is so many different cultures in one place, you got China Town, Little Italy and so forth. I immediately wanted to move to USA and I would apply for Green Card as soon as I got back home but I'm still stuck in Sweden.
We woke up to a tsunami warning and people were driving high up the mountains to take shelter. We had decided the day before that we would go out to Alcatraz by boat and I refused to let the tsunami stop me from doing that. So we went there which was idiotic if the tsunami had came, but fortunately it never arrived. The prison itself wasn't much to look at, it was more the history of it that was interesting. We got a tour through the headphones but we quickly lost our path and that was a quick end to that tour, since nothing they said made any sense anymore after that. "You see a door to your left...", well no, I don't actually.
It was time to head to sin city Las Vegas in the Nevada desert and we went to pick up our rental car. Christian hadn't brought his credit card for the trip for some reason so we weren't allowed to rent it since he was the one with the driver's license. Instead we had to take a bus via Los Angeles and it took forever. I didn't mind though because listening to The Raveonettes while watching the amazing landscape was enough for me. I had done the positive mistake of buying a large soda from McDonalds too and it turned out to be 1 litre or something, so I was all set for a long trip.
Downtown L.A. was a bit scary and they even had scanners for weapons at the bus station, as they usually have at airports. The bus ride to Vegas took forever and we arrived in the early morning without being able to sleep on the bus so I was tired. We went to Luxor hotel which is in the shape of a pyramid and they were fully booked that night so we couldn't check in earlier. We gambled a bit and after we had finally got ourselves some hours of sleep we went to Hooters.
I'm probably the only male that ever visited Hooters and had a salad, the other guys there had a plate of chicken wings in front of them with greasy fingers going through them. Hooters are more famous for the girls that serves you than the food, and you could tell by the taste.
If it wasn't manly enough to be at Hooters we went to a shooting range to shoot with shotguns on Christian's request.
My arm almost flew off everytime I hit the trigger to aim at the evil clown I had choosen as my enemy. Now I felt like a real american man so I went to buy a cowboy hat at the 99 cents store, even though it costed more than 99 cent with taxes.
You can tell that size does matter in USA, everything is larger than life and if you buy a drink you get a huge drink with two bottles of beer pouring down in it at the same time.
Las Vegas is full of attractions to see, you can spend a whole day just to look at the different hotels. There are fairytale castles and sphinxes and small versions of the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower and so on.
What I didn't see was any sin, but I guess you'll have to search to find.
We watched the iconic Bellagio fountains instead.
There are also plenty of street artists to meet.
On the final day I would be going on the thrill rides on the Stratosphere Hotel. I gave my glasses to Christian who wouldn't be joining me since he's afraid of heights. The ride was going down off the edge of the hotel to simulate that you are going down for a certain death while you're dangling weightlessly 109 stories in the air. I didn't want to lose my glasses during the ride so I went up there with 50/50 sight and after 2-3 beers. I had bought a ticket in the reception of the hotel but when I showed the ticket to the guy at the ride I wasn't allowed to join it. He said it was an invalid ticket and that I had to wait for another guy to come and check it for me. I waited and waited and no one came, I asked him again and he said that I couldn't go on the ride. They were closing in 5 minutes so I got angry and went down to the lobby again and explained what had happened. They didn't understand anything since the ticket was valid but they gave me my money back since I hadn't been able to go on the ride. To this day I still don't know why, and the only thing I can think of is that I know that my eyes are sometimes going back and forth a bit to try and get focus when I don't use glasses, so maybe he thought I was too drunk or something.
We went back to Los Angeles for our last stop on the trip and it would turn out to be the best city I've ever been to, just like USA is the best country I've ever been to. We lived in West Hollywood so we went to L.A. Ink to get a tattoo but they wouldn't let me tattoo my hand since it would be my first.
I had tried in Las Vegas too but even sin city had rules about this. No one from the TV-show L.A. Ink was there and you could tell that they only go there to shoot the show for a brief period and create a hype about the place. I had given up about getting the tattoo when I tried one last tattoo parlour in West Hollywood, and he said "sure no problem!". I still regret it to this day that he didn't know about the rule, because I would rather not have four birds on my right hand today. And the pain, don't forget the pain!
Los Angeles is the home of the stars but the closest I got was to see Mario Lopez from the TV show Saved by the Bell from when I was a kid. So we went to Universal Studios to get to see the shark from Jaws, the car from Back To The Future and a fake Marilyn Monroe.
It was an amazing place and I even got to drink a Duff Beer outside of Moe's, meet the fashionista Beetlejuice and get strangled by Frankenstein.
Then we went to the famous Hollywood sign by Mulholland Drive.
David Lynch has directed a movie by the same name, so I didn't get to see the real Twin Peaks, which he also directed, but at least I got to see the real Mulholland Drive. We saw Jim Morrison's old house and a hippie spot that he used as inspiration for a The Doors song. The famous music venues House Of Blues, The Viper Room and Whisky A Go Go passed us by and then we went into Rainbow, where Lemmy from Motörhead used to spend his time. I saw the drummer from Red Hot Chili Peppers there but I couldn't manage to go up to him and tell him that I'm a huge fan, since I didn't even know what his name was. We went to the rich and famous in Beverly Hills, saw a glimpse of the Playboy Mansion and then went down to the poor and unknown drunks and street artists at Venice Beach.
I got the feeling of being in an episode of Baywatch at the beach, but I couldn't see Pamela Anderson running in slow motion to show off what she has paid for. I got the feeling of entering a Tony Hawk game when we got to the skatepark and everywhere I went I had a connection with the place even though I was there for the first time, that's what I love about USA. And that almost all the cultures of the world is collected in one big place. I'm absolutely sure this wasn't the last time I visited the country and maybe one day I will go to all the states!
_________________________________________________________________________________
I brought my friend Andreas to revisit the best country in the world, and this time I would be on the east coast for the first time. We were going to Miami which is nicknamed the "Capital of Latin America", because of the large immigration from countries like Cuba, Haiti and Latin America. We landed in the evening so we headed straight to Miami Beach. After leaving our stuff at the most worthless hotel ever (they had a keypad system to their rooms, that was so easy to figure out that anyone could open all the doors, but thankfully we got the only room which used a normal card instead), we headed out to walk Ocean Drive up and down and I was disappointed.
This time we would give downtown a chance and we headed to Bayside to eat at Hardrock Café, so we could finally taste the Impossible Burger. It's a world famous vegan burger and I can understand why, it was probably the best burger I've ever had.
Since the concierge at the hotel adviced us not to go to Little Haiti as I wanted to, we chose the more sane option of going to Wynwood instead. It's a prominent entertainment district with restaurants, breweries and so on, but what makes it worth the trip is that it's also like an artwork gallery just to walk the streets. The whole neighbourhood is drenched in art and I thought it was a cool place and I loved that I couldn't put my finger on it. Cool artsy people shared the streets with businessmen and people who looked like they were gonna be homeless in 3 months time, so I really liked the vibe. Unfortunately we were so tired from the cruise that we called it an early night, so we probably missed out on a great block party that friday evening.
Our mutual friend Amanda flew in from Sweden the same evening, and joined us at the hotel when we were about to go to sleep. The next day we went to Little Havana, which is a Cuban area of the city, but we found nothing more exciting than a pitbull eating on a cat. We decided to head back to a place called The Wharf, which is a cool outdoor place next to the Miami River where you could go to have some food, beers or cocktails while listening to music and play some ping pong. When we walked through streets of homeless people we thought we had made a wrong turn, but suddenly there it was. The Wharf was so fancy that we almost thought we wouldn't be let in because of our tourists looks. But we made it through because it was so early in the day and we had some beers by the river, until the building site on the opposite side was making so much noise that it sounded like an early Einstürzende Neubauten concert.
In the evening Andreas flew back to Sweden and me and Amanda went to Bayside for the Christmas Market. I couldn't get into the spirit when people were rollerblading around the christmas tree in shorts and T-shirts, and I wasn't that sad that we would once again leave Miami tomorrow to go on another cruise.
When we got back we went to the beach once again, and I have to say Miami is my least favorite city I've been to in USA. Not even seeing the old tattoo studio of Miami Ink, which was once a famous TV-series could change that.
* Best things about USA – it feels like living inside an awesome movie where you have a connection with everything at the same time as you feel the excitement of visiting an unfamiliar place
* Most mediocre thing about USA – there's no such thing as mediocre in USA, it's go big or go home, at least I thought so until I visited Miami
* Worst things about USA – I don't live there
Best countries in the world according to the nerd (will be updated with every post):
1. USA
2. Croatia
3. Montenegro
4. Andorra
5. Cyprus
6. Turkey
7. Greece
8. Italy
9. Spain
10. Monaco
11. Malta
12. Netherlands
13. Iceland
14. Denmark
15. Sweden
16. Lithuania
17. Macedonia
18. Portugal
19. Hungary
20. Slovakia
21. Slovenia
22. New Zealand
23. Ireland
24. Germany
25. United Kingdom
26. Belgium
27. Poland
28. Estonia
29. Czech Republic
30. Switzerland
31. San Marino
32. Kosovo
33. Romania
34. Finland
35. Latvia
36. Moldova
37. Norway
38. Ukraine
39. France
40. Bulgaria
41. Luxembourg
42. Liechtenstein
43. China
44. Serbia
45. Bosnia And Herzegovina
46. Albania
On our way into the city, Christian and I passed by the ghettos in a minibus and it was clear to me that the difference between rich and poor is a lot bigger than in Sweden. Our hotel was one street off from the heart of the city and that street was full of homeless persons strolling their carts, while the police sirens were on 24/7. As soon as you got passed that street you were suddenly in a big city center where you couldn't even believe there was something called poverty. The contrast was so big.
The first thing we ate was pizza and it was disgusting. I would quickly understand that USA is the home of burgers and not pizza. The vegetarian burgers were amazing, especially at Denny's.
Big isn't always better
Since San Francisco is so steep we rented segways for the first time ever, and it was amazing! We saw Alcatraz, the old maximum high-security federal prison located on an island, from afar and the only bad thing was the weather.
We went into an old 60's diner and it felt a bit like closure for me. My dad was heavy into the 60's scene from USA; the music, movies and style. And when he passed away I used my heritage to travel to USA to fulfill a dream for us both. He had never been to USA to see it in real life, and even if it was 50 years too late I felt like he had helped me to go to USA so he could experience it through me since he was no longer with us.
It's hard to miss the red bridge called Golden Gate, which is one of USA's most famous landmarks, but my main goal was to see something else.
I had heard that Twin Peaks was located in San Francisco and I wondered if it had anything to do with the best TV show ever. We went there and no, it wasn't connected in any way, but at least I got a great view over the many skyscrapers that is the city.
San Francisco has come to be known as the epicenter both of the worldwide LGBTQ community and the hippie community and you can see the rainbow flag all over town. I love how there is so many different cultures in one place, you got China Town, Little Italy and so forth. I immediately wanted to move to USA and I would apply for Green Card as soon as I got back home but I'm still stuck in Sweden.
We woke up to a tsunami warning and people were driving high up the mountains to take shelter. We had decided the day before that we would go out to Alcatraz by boat and I refused to let the tsunami stop me from doing that. So we went there which was idiotic if the tsunami had came, but fortunately it never arrived. The prison itself wasn't much to look at, it was more the history of it that was interesting. We got a tour through the headphones but we quickly lost our path and that was a quick end to that tour, since nothing they said made any sense anymore after that. "You see a door to your left...", well no, I don't actually.
Nowadays it's easier to leave Alcatraz
It was time to head to sin city Las Vegas in the Nevada desert and we went to pick up our rental car. Christian hadn't brought his credit card for the trip for some reason so we weren't allowed to rent it since he was the one with the driver's license. Instead we had to take a bus via Los Angeles and it took forever. I didn't mind though because listening to The Raveonettes while watching the amazing landscape was enough for me. I had done the positive mistake of buying a large soda from McDonalds too and it turned out to be 1 litre or something, so I was all set for a long trip.
Downtown L.A. was a bit scary and they even had scanners for weapons at the bus station, as they usually have at airports. The bus ride to Vegas took forever and we arrived in the early morning without being able to sleep on the bus so I was tired. We went to Luxor hotel which is in the shape of a pyramid and they were fully booked that night so we couldn't check in earlier. We gambled a bit and after we had finally got ourselves some hours of sleep we went to Hooters.
I'm probably the only male that ever visited Hooters and had a salad, the other guys there had a plate of chicken wings in front of them with greasy fingers going through them. Hooters are more famous for the girls that serves you than the food, and you could tell by the taste.
If it wasn't manly enough to be at Hooters we went to a shooting range to shoot with shotguns on Christian's request.
My arm almost flew off everytime I hit the trigger to aim at the evil clown I had choosen as my enemy. Now I felt like a real american man so I went to buy a cowboy hat at the 99 cents store, even though it costed more than 99 cent with taxes.
You can tell that size does matter in USA, everything is larger than life and if you buy a drink you get a huge drink with two bottles of beer pouring down in it at the same time.
Las Vegas is full of attractions to see, you can spend a whole day just to look at the different hotels. There are fairytale castles and sphinxes and small versions of the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower and so on.
What I didn't see was any sin, but I guess you'll have to search to find.
We watched the iconic Bellagio fountains instead.
There are also plenty of street artists to meet.
On the final day I would be going on the thrill rides on the Stratosphere Hotel. I gave my glasses to Christian who wouldn't be joining me since he's afraid of heights. The ride was going down off the edge of the hotel to simulate that you are going down for a certain death while you're dangling weightlessly 109 stories in the air. I didn't want to lose my glasses during the ride so I went up there with 50/50 sight and after 2-3 beers. I had bought a ticket in the reception of the hotel but when I showed the ticket to the guy at the ride I wasn't allowed to join it. He said it was an invalid ticket and that I had to wait for another guy to come and check it for me. I waited and waited and no one came, I asked him again and he said that I couldn't go on the ride. They were closing in 5 minutes so I got angry and went down to the lobby again and explained what had happened. They didn't understand anything since the ticket was valid but they gave me my money back since I hadn't been able to go on the ride. To this day I still don't know why, and the only thing I can think of is that I know that my eyes are sometimes going back and forth a bit to try and get focus when I don't use glasses, so maybe he thought I was too drunk or something.
We went back to Los Angeles for our last stop on the trip and it would turn out to be the best city I've ever been to, just like USA is the best country I've ever been to. We lived in West Hollywood so we went to L.A. Ink to get a tattoo but they wouldn't let me tattoo my hand since it would be my first.
I had tried in Las Vegas too but even sin city had rules about this. No one from the TV-show L.A. Ink was there and you could tell that they only go there to shoot the show for a brief period and create a hype about the place. I had given up about getting the tattoo when I tried one last tattoo parlour in West Hollywood, and he said "sure no problem!". I still regret it to this day that he didn't know about the rule, because I would rather not have four birds on my right hand today. And the pain, don't forget the pain!
Los Angeles is the home of the stars but the closest I got was to see Mario Lopez from the TV show Saved by the Bell from when I was a kid. So we went to Universal Studios to get to see the shark from Jaws, the car from Back To The Future and a fake Marilyn Monroe.
It was an amazing place and I even got to drink a Duff Beer outside of Moe's, meet the fashionista Beetlejuice and get strangled by Frankenstein.
Then we went to the famous Hollywood sign by Mulholland Drive.
David Lynch has directed a movie by the same name, so I didn't get to see the real Twin Peaks, which he also directed, but at least I got to see the real Mulholland Drive. We saw Jim Morrison's old house and a hippie spot that he used as inspiration for a The Doors song. The famous music venues House Of Blues, The Viper Room and Whisky A Go Go passed us by and then we went into Rainbow, where Lemmy from Motörhead used to spend his time. I saw the drummer from Red Hot Chili Peppers there but I couldn't manage to go up to him and tell him that I'm a huge fan, since I didn't even know what his name was. We went to the rich and famous in Beverly Hills, saw a glimpse of the Playboy Mansion and then went down to the poor and unknown drunks and street artists at Venice Beach.
I got the feeling of being in an episode of Baywatch at the beach, but I couldn't see Pamela Anderson running in slow motion to show off what she has paid for. I got the feeling of entering a Tony Hawk game when we got to the skatepark and everywhere I went I had a connection with the place even though I was there for the first time, that's what I love about USA. And that almost all the cultures of the world is collected in one big place. I'm absolutely sure this wasn't the last time I visited the country and maybe one day I will go to all the states!
_________________________________________________________________________________
I brought my friend Andreas to revisit the best country in the world, and this time I would be on the east coast for the first time. We were going to Miami which is nicknamed the "Capital of Latin America", because of the large immigration from countries like Cuba, Haiti and Latin America. We landed in the evening so we headed straight to Miami Beach. After leaving our stuff at the most worthless hotel ever (they had a keypad system to their rooms, that was so easy to figure out that anyone could open all the doors, but thankfully we got the only room which used a normal card instead), we headed out to walk Ocean Drive up and down and I was disappointed.
The next day we had a better start of the day when having a great breakfast at Havana 1957, an authentic Cuban restaurant, and then we went down to the famous beach. We saw a homeless man on the beach with 40 seagulls around him so we chose a spot far from him, but for some reason he packed up his things and came right next to us. So we moved again, and it felt like he was gonna pack up his things once again and come to us, but this time we got lucky. I mean the beach was alright but Miami couldn't live up to the west coast, so I was happy to leave to the Port of Miami, known as the "Cruise Capital of the World". There we would go on an almost two week long and awesome cruise in the Caribbean Sea before we returned to Miami.
This time we would give downtown a chance and we headed to Bayside to eat at Hardrock Café, so we could finally taste the Impossible Burger. It's a world famous vegan burger and I can understand why, it was probably the best burger I've ever had.
Since the concierge at the hotel adviced us not to go to Little Haiti as I wanted to, we chose the more sane option of going to Wynwood instead. It's a prominent entertainment district with restaurants, breweries and so on, but what makes it worth the trip is that it's also like an artwork gallery just to walk the streets. The whole neighbourhood is drenched in art and I thought it was a cool place and I loved that I couldn't put my finger on it. Cool artsy people shared the streets with businessmen and people who looked like they were gonna be homeless in 3 months time, so I really liked the vibe. Unfortunately we were so tired from the cruise that we called it an early night, so we probably missed out on a great block party that friday evening.
Our mutual friend Amanda flew in from Sweden the same evening, and joined us at the hotel when we were about to go to sleep. The next day we went to Little Havana, which is a Cuban area of the city, but we found nothing more exciting than a pitbull eating on a cat. We decided to head back to a place called The Wharf, which is a cool outdoor place next to the Miami River where you could go to have some food, beers or cocktails while listening to music and play some ping pong. When we walked through streets of homeless people we thought we had made a wrong turn, but suddenly there it was. The Wharf was so fancy that we almost thought we wouldn't be let in because of our tourists looks. But we made it through because it was so early in the day and we had some beers by the river, until the building site on the opposite side was making so much noise that it sounded like an early Einstürzende Neubauten concert.
In the evening Andreas flew back to Sweden and me and Amanda went to Bayside for the Christmas Market. I couldn't get into the spirit when people were rollerblading around the christmas tree in shorts and T-shirts, and I wasn't that sad that we would once again leave Miami tomorrow to go on another cruise.
When we got back we went to the beach once again, and I have to say Miami is my least favorite city I've been to in USA. Not even seeing the old tattoo studio of Miami Ink, which was once a famous TV-series could change that.
* Best things about USA – it feels like living inside an awesome movie where you have a connection with everything at the same time as you feel the excitement of visiting an unfamiliar place
* Most mediocre thing about USA – there's no such thing as mediocre in USA, it's go big or go home, at least I thought so until I visited Miami
* Worst things about USA – I don't live there
Best countries in the world according to the nerd (will be updated with every post):
1. USA
2. Croatia
3. Montenegro
4. Andorra
5. Cyprus
6. Turkey
7. Greece
8. Italy
9. Spain
10. Monaco
11. Malta
12. Netherlands
13. Iceland
14. Denmark
15. Sweden
16. Lithuania
17. Macedonia
18. Portugal
19. Hungary
20. Slovakia
21. Slovenia
22. New Zealand
23. Ireland
24. Germany
25. United Kingdom
26. Belgium
27. Poland
28. Estonia
29. Czech Republic
30. Switzerland
31. San Marino
32. Kosovo
33. Romania
34. Finland
35. Latvia
36. Moldova
37. Norway
38. Ukraine
39. France
40. Bulgaria
41. Luxembourg
42. Liechtenstein
43. China
44. Serbia
45. Bosnia And Herzegovina
46. Albania
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