Day 1: To Harrods without sleep

Our bus to the airport left 3am so I didn’t get any sleep before that. We flew with the new Finnair A350 airplane and the movie selection was too good (Now You See Me 2 is everything!!) for me to even try sleeping. My sleepless night plan however backfired right away in London… We got safely and without problems to our hotel where the staff informed us that our room would be ready in four hours. Too much time to kill for me who hadn’t slept and for my sister who just happened to be sick.

We left the hotel with a map and no plan. Our first mission was to find food and then while having mini picnic in the Hyde Park we tried to plan our afternoon. The decisions was hard because both of us just wanted to go and sleep in the hotel. In the end we decided to visit the luxurious Harrods.

Maybe not our best decision…

If you haven’t visited Harrods let me tell you it is amazing fancy shop where you would imagine rich people shopping. Fortunately there was a lot of tourists beside us so our “travel day straight from plane” styles almost fitted in the huge department store.

I have three tips for visiting Harrods:

1. Get lost. There is no way you can find all the sections, floors and places. There is so many rooms full of stuff that it just is impossible.
2. Visit the food/tea/sweets floor. So beautiful!
3. Get amazed by the toys they sell. It may sound funny to recommend Harrods’ kids’ floor but it is the dream of every human. Good looking girls and boys are showing how to use the different toys. There is anything kid can hope for.

So after a while my sister started to complain she was too tired (why is she always sick when we travel together?) so we returned to the hotel and surprisingly our room was ready almost hour in advance. It was time to rest for a while.

At the evening I left my sister to sleep and went for evening walk in Hyde Park. I would walk around there forever. The funniest thing in that park are the animals (and people taking photos with them). When you approach the birds with your camera huge gang of different birds immediately come for you to find food. Scary and cool at the same time!

My nature photographer side went crazy so here is some Hyde Park photos:

Day 2: Super Tourists Bus Touring

What would holiday be without hop-on-hop-off bus tour? Because my sister was still sick we decided to take our first day easy and go around the city on bus. It wasn’t as easy as we tought it would be… But maybe didn’t come as surprise for you because a lot of things go like that with me.

In the bus company’s website it said their office is in Baddington station. Well it wasn’t. We went to the station, saw place with the bus company’s logos and went in. Then I told I want to buy the tickets but the clerk informed me we were in the wrong place. The ticket counter was outside the station “next to the subway. The fast food subway.” With those directions we found the right place.

After that we bought the tickets, tried to find the bus stop and finally our touristy day was ready to began. First stop King’s Cross Station. Or the station known for its Harry Potter 9 3/4 platform. Our first mission was to find breakfast. Sounds easy but it’s not…

We went around the station trying to find something breakfasty (can your ever say it like that?). Somehow we ended up going to Japanese place and eating huge bento boxes. It was so good! I recommend. The restaurant name was Wasabi and they had restaurants all over London. Cheap and tasty.

Conveniently we were able to see the ‘Harry Potter take your own 9 3/4 platform photo here’ -place. It was our next thing to do. We waited for 20 minutes and the line hadn’t moved at all so we gave up. It was good decision because when we visited the Warner Bros. studios there was identical photography point.

So it was time to continue our bus tour. We saw many interesting buildings and drove around London. Next time we meant to drop of next to Tower of London but accidentally forgot so our next stop was London eye and Big Ben.

Nothing eventful happened here. Just us taking some photos and looking all touristy, someone playing Star Wars songs with bagpipes and a lot of polices and protesters next to the Big Ben. After getting our cool photos we took the bus and continued towards the amazing shopping paradise called Oxford street.

It was almost hour of sitting in the bus before we finally we on the right stop. At this point it has started to rain and we had to run towards the shops. The luck was on our side because we found Primark right away and were saved from the storm.

Primark was heaven. Cheap and cool clothes. I bought fake leather jacket, cozy sweater and jeans (that will cause me problems later on…) After exiting the shop with too many bags it was already dark and we were almost dead. It was time to take metro back to our hotel.

Coming soon…

London diary pt. 2, review of Harry Potter Warner Bros. Studio Tour and additional photo diary for all the London photos I couldn’t fit to those posts. I release new post every Friday so I will write and publish them some time soon. And to end this posts here is some London photos from my Instagram:

Have you ever visited London and maybe the places I went into? And are you as in love with this city as I am?

I hope you will have a good weekend!
With love,

Viivi Severina

But now back to today’s topic!

Disneyland

Where? Paris, France

How to get there? Take train from center Paris.

When to go? Check out the official website for what is happening in park. There is different themes depending on when you visit. (For example Halloween.) Go at morning because you will spend whole day but don’t leave the park too early because they have amazing firework show at the closing time.

How much does it cost? If you have time and want to safe money, try to find perfect deal for you. The prices are changing a lot but usually it’s about 50€ or more for one day.

Why to go?

Well, it’s Disneyland. Do you need other reasons?

I have always been the girl who loves stories and fairy tales. Disney movies were the start of everything so when I got to visit Disneyland year ago I was totally thrilled. My three years younger sister was almost as keen to see the magical land of happy endings as I was.

My younger brother instead wasn’t that into it. He was complaining and following behind us with my dad when we explored the huge park. So maybe not good place for teen boys but I recommend Disneyland for families with young children and all ages of true princesses.

8 Reasons to Visit Disneyland

1.Time to return back to your childhood! My childhood was full of Mulan, Pocahontas and Mickey Mouse. Even now years later my inner child was screaming from happiness when I saw in real life all the characters I used to love. So many memories came back to my mind.

2.Perfect photography material. Don’t we all want to brag about our amazing experiences? Taking cute photos with Disney characters or crazy photo in front of the scary rides will be guaranteed social media hit among your friends.

3.Shooting game rides. I don’t know if there is official English name for these (please inform me if you know…) but I mean the rides where you sit in small moving car and have laser gun to shoot targets. You get points depending how many/what targets you hit.

Well whatever the name is I loved these. My sister is super good at shooting (scary right?) so we competed which one of us was better. I can’t recall who won so it was probably my sister. My brother and dad didn’t have a change against us.

4.Alice in wonderland Labyrinth was my favorite place in whole Paris Disneyland. I used to think this was boring movie when I was child. But I always identified myself with Alice. (Fun fact: Alice’s name is Liisa in the Finnish version of this story!) You will not get lost in this labyrinth but there is change of finding interesting paths and corners.

5.Cool Rides (aka the ones where children aren’t allowed) are one side of Disneyland. I’m not friend of them so can’t really tell you if it’s good reason to visit. I listed it here because the people coming out of them seemed happy. Roller coasters are scary…

6.Fireworks. One word: fireworks. Every day ends with amazing show in Disneyland. At the closing time you should try to find good place to see the princess castle. There will be light shows, story time and firework show beyond compare.

7.To buy souvenirs and hunt for the perfect stuffed animal. There is souvenir shop in every corner of Disneyland. You can’t even exit some of the rides without walking through one.

8.To end up in crazy ride you didn’t want to go… And hate it but feel like you will survive from anything after that experience. Some of the rides in Disneyland are crazy. Or maybe it’s just because I hate theme park rides?

Well however if you are as scared of dying when the ride accidentally breaks down just when your ride it (very likely…) don’t go to the big tower where someone is screaming constantly. Because I’m dummy we went there with my sister.

There was today’s Wanderlust Wednesday! Have you visited Disneyland in Paris or elsewhere? Or is it on your bucket list?

I’m currently traveling around Finland and even traveled to Estonia. Those stories will be out this weekend and later on. And of course new Wanderlust Wednesday is going to come out in week. So see you soon!

With love,

Viivi Severina

I have never done official bucket list for myself. Until now all the things have just been on my head. Today I put all my dreams on paper and now I want to introduce my official bucket list for you!

• Visit all the continents (Currently: 3)
• Go to at least 30 different countries (Currently: 10)
• Don’t have permanent home but live in hostels
• Couchsurfing
• Around the world trip on cruise ship
• Ride hot air balloon in Cappadocia, Turkey
• Swim in infinity pool
• Travel to 15 different Finnish cities and make blog posts about them
• Go to safari
• Travel around Europe by cheap buses
• Visit the Amazon
• Spend night in the glass igloos (Finland)
• Visit abandoned amusement park (maybe will share this story with you in future)
• Do volunteer work and help animals
• Wash elephants
• See the pyramids and ride camel  (I rode camel once on family vacation)
• Hike E10 trail/Finland from South to North
• Be up all night on beach
• Island hopping on Thailand, Philippines, Singapore
• Live week without internet
• Travel through Russia by Trans-Siberian railway
• See a broadway musical
• Get lost in big garden labyrinth
• Spend night in lighthouse (did this once when younger)
• Visit Easter Island
• Bungee jump (with my fear of highs this may never happen)
• Interrail around Europe
• Be vegetarian for month
• Sleep in an ice hotel
• Add a lock to Love Lock Bridge in Paris
• Go to fashion show
• Spend night in a tree house
• Hike to top of the mountain and see sun set and rise
• See Venice by gondola
• Do Working Holiday year in Australia or New Zealand
• Hike to Mt. Fuji
• Go to kpop concert in South Korea
• Visit North Korea
• Luxury holiday in beautiful seaside resort
• Road trip through USA
• Go to Disney Cruise (because why not?)
• Live at least three months in Germany
• See cherry blossoms in Japan
• Get five hundred readers for my blog (it’s good to have impossible goals right?)
• Attractions to see:
  • Machu Picchu
  • Taj Mahal
  • Stonehenge
  • Grand Canyon
  • Berlin Wall
  • Dead Sea
  • the Great Wall of China
• Festivals to attend:
  • St. Patricks day, Dublin
  • Floating Lantern Festival
  • Halloween treck, Transylvania
  • Oktoberfest (learn to drink beer)
  • Las Fallas, Valencia
  • Festival of colors/Holi Festifal
  • La Tomatina, Bunol (Spain)
• Cities to visit:
  • Brighton, UK
  • Busan, South Korea
  • Berlin, Germany
  • Budapest, Hungary
  • Sydney, Australia
  • Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
  • Moscow, Russia
  • NY, USA
  • Bali, Indonesia
  • Krakow, Poland
  • Jerusalem, Israel
  • Havana, Cuba
  • Reykjavik, Iceland
  • Bangkok, Thailand
  • Amsterdam, Netherlands

I’m more than happy to hear about your bucketlists and places must to visit! Did I forget some important destinations from my list?

Starting from today my bucketlist is accessible on the upper menu. I will try to remember update it and cross the things I have accomplished.

With love and big age crisis,

Viivi Severina