Happy one year and 1 500 readers for my blog! This is kind of crazy but I have never been able to keep up any blog for more than year so I am quite proud of myself (even if we have had some problems with this one too…)
To celebrate this day I have finally done that long waited Facebook page. I would be forever thankful if you went and followed me there. I promise not to spam anyone’s Facebook walls but you will get to know about my newest post, hear some extra stories and of course see travel photos that don’t fit here in my blog.
But now we can return to today’s real subject… Keeping your eyes open for the extraordinary. You seem to love my Travel Rantsand to tell the truth I love writing these the most. My writing style has always been a little bit random and in travel rants I can just write whatever is in my mind without thinking about it. So, what would be better way to spend my blogs one year birthday than ranting about travelling?
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Keep your eyes open
If I had to present today’s post in one sentence I would do it by telling you one of my favorite travel quotes.
“Traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.” – G.K. Chesterton
Going to new place and not opening your eyes is the worst thing you can do if you ask my opinion. If you don’t see adventures behind every corner or changes in every conversation you have with the locals, your eyes are still closed. It may sound corny but I believe there is magic in the small streets of cities and thousands of untold stories behind all the people you will meet.
Keeping your eyes opens means seeing the change and taking it even if the odds aren’t on your favor. It means seeing the places tourists wouldn’t notice. That cute small coffee behind your hotel, those plainly normal areas of the city or free museums you can only find by coincidence. You shouldn’t be scared to go in places seeming closed or ‘too complicated’ for foreigner.
Always listen locals whatever you are being touristy or adventuring around the destination. They know things you can’t find from the pages of guide book or from google’s endless search results. And it is not only the destinations they can share with you but also stories that will make your trip even more special. Usually locals will find you and you just have to keep your ears, eyes and mind open for them.
One of the best guided tours I got in Kyoto was from the person standing next to me in fully packed normal bus. There is kind people around the world so sooner or later you will meet someone who teaches you what it means to see the destination from the local point of view. And in the end that is the meaning behind keeping you eyes open, seeing the world in different ways you never before even knew existed. Seeing the small things that will make huge difference in your holiday if you just dare to grab them.
So what are the hidden things you have found/seen while traveling? Like always all comments are welcome! With love,
This Wanderlust Wednesday, I wanted to try something new. So here is post I wrote yesterday (totally not during my political economy class…).
Many people are wondering how to book the flight tickets like traveler. In fact some of my most popular posts that get new comments often are about travelling cheap and adventuring like traveler not tourist. Whatever that “like traveler” means here is my 5 levels of booking tickets. This works for me but please don’t take anything seriously and maybe listen someone more experienced than me. I hope you will enjoy!
5. The art of decising your destination
Deciding where you want to go seems like good way of starting trip planning and flight booking. This is a lie! Be adventurous and leave deciding for those who just want safe boring holiday. Throw dart to world map and go where it points. Or look the flight deals and take cheap one. Where ever you there is amazing adventures coming to your way.
There is as many secret tricks as there is people. Some say that best time to book your flight tickets is three months before your trip. Others swear for the only buy your tickets on Tuesday rule. I have never really thought these. Usually I am too late for that three months mark and who has time to wait for Tuesday when wanderlust is taking over your life!
So is there any tricks I have learned? Making my travel route complicated. Did you know that cheapest round trip flight tickets from Finland to France cost 120€ while from Stockholm to France it costs only 35€ (and it takes 30€ from Finland to Stockholm and back). So you see why I love this ‘trick’? Other one I have learned is collecting airline points.
3. Panic, be unproductive and plan like a pro
The most important part of any travel planning is the panicking stage. Walk circles in your home and think all the negative things this trip may cause. Never forget considering airplanes falling or your luggage disappearing. After panicking enough it’s time to stare guide books without doing any real planning. This may take hours, days, weeks or even months. In hopeless cases even years.
After getting over your insecurities it’s time to start the real planning. What time do you want to travel, how to get to airport and from airport to the city?
2. Time to buy the tickets
It’s finally time to buy the tickets! Go on the right web site (I prefer to buy straight from the airline websites.It’s usually cheaper.), select your flights and use your beloved money to buy the tickets. That’s it really. The most important (only important) part of buying your tickets part. Don’t consider or get scared, just buy.
1. Share the good news with world (after panicking some more)
Again time to panic! You have flight tickets so it is real now: you are going to travel somewhere. If you are like me you probably forgot the plan properly ahead part and are now in totally phase of panicking. Don’t worry it will pass quickly.
After panicking it is time to take the next step (also known as the “make all your social media friends jealous”). Yep, it’s time to tell everyone that you are going. I recommend leaving that make everyone jealous part out of this step but I know how it feels to be excited about your new flight tickets. So smile for the camera and put nice photo to Facebook telling everyone the cool destination you will soon head to.
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I hope you liked my not so helpful tips that will probably make your flight tickets booking experience horrible. For me this works but I am that person who has to fail to win.
Do you have any bad flight ticket booking tips? Or maybe good ones that would be helpful for everyone? Like always feel free to comment whatever you have in mind?
So did you like this kind of ‘not so official’ travel post? I hope you are all having an amazing day! With love,
By all means I am not professional traveler. My solo trip to Japan for three months was one big catastrophe, last year my holiday to France was far from smooth and let’s not even talk about the times I have been travelling my home country Finland. Too many embarrassing memories there.
Making plans and following them isn’t my strength. At Tokyo I forgot to visit some of the must see places (when I say must see places I mean the most popular attractions). My two days in Paris went by sleeping in the hotel and not doing anything. Usually the new streets and sights may steal my attention and make me forgot all the cool places I came to visit at the first place.
In the other hand I act like tourist. Taking pictures of any silly new thing, going to familiar McDonalds and singing up for too expensive tourist tours. Sometimes I decide not to go for some cool place because it’s too expensive and I rather buy more food or souvenirs.
Socializing, partying or getting friends has never been easy for me. In the end I always say something wrong or make the person lose interest. I get scared shitless if someone starts conversation without warning. My fear of human contact gets so bad that I can’t even ask help from locals while traveling.
When I told my family and friends for the first time that I would leave and travel alone they laughed at me. No one believed that me, shy awkward girl, would really make my words true. They didn’t believe until I packed my backs and left. And even after that everyone seemed to think I wouldn’t survive.
I have this unexpectedly way of finding trouble anywhere I go. At Japan I accidentally went to closed amusement park and got in trouble with police (fortunately they were totally cool). While using train in France I booked trip that had under 5 minutes changing time and almost missed my second train. Those two are just examples of many others.
So like you can see I am far from professional adventurer. For everyone’s sake I probably shouldn’t travel at all. Then how did I end up having this feeling inside of me? Why does my soul want to leave every time I come back home? There is wide world outside and I just don’t seem to have the self-control to stay in one place for too long.
I may not be born traveler but that is never been the point for me. Some may say I do everything wrongly and this way I will never experience all my bucket list items. But I visit foreigner countries to learn, to get in trouble and feel like living. Inside of me lives lost soul and it encourages me to leave. For me this is the only right way there is. For me this is the life style making me happy.
So for all of you who travel “the wrong way” let’s just continue our own way of travelling and prove everyone else wrong!
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So I didn’t have post for today because I decided to do last minute trip to travel writing lecture on Friday and didn’t have time to write. But here is older post I must have written last summer! I don’t know why I never published it… Maybe because it is kind of embarrassing?
Hello there and welcome back to read about my London adventure! If you haven’t read the first part you can find it from here: Travel Diary: LondonAlso if you are wondering where the day 3 disappeared it will have its own post later on.
Why? Because otherwise this post would have been too long and I really want to dedicate whole post for Harry Potter studio tour and Madame Tussauds museum. But now let’s continue the story! (And btw thank to my sister who took that crazy bird photo… She is fearless!)
Day 4: Natural History and Shopping
I recommend living in hotels with breakfast because finding something to eat sound easier than it is in reality. Once again buying breakfast was causing us unbelievably huge problems. You would think it’s easy to find breakfast cafe from London but that’s total fantasy. We walked the whole few kilometers to the Natural History Museum without finding any cafe for us to eat.
No breakfast here…
First we went through the security check where they didn’t check us properly like too often in these situations. Apparently Finns or our lost selves don’t seem dangerous enough to need proper security checks. After that we continued our mission to find breakfast and managed to find the most unhealthy but tasty looking chocolate cake I have ever seen. Of course we bought pieces of it for us to have as breakfast.
I have few words about the free Natural History museum. Dinosaurs, mind games and huge whale. Yep, that sums up our morning. Besides us there was a lot of school classes. When we left the museum we even accidentally walked in one of the school groups and got some wondering looks from the teacher.
After surviving out of the museum (we didn’t go to every exhibition because it would have taken the whole day!) it was time to go shopping. We went to a few shops but in the end did most of our shopping in the Primark. Don’t judge me, I’m student and live on my own so shop full of cheap clothes is like a heaven.
I bought two more pairs of the jeans I had bought the last time. Even if those jeans made me looks like a smurf after I took them off. That feature is still part of them. I don’t know if I should be worried of them leaving ugly blue color to my skin? Well, at least the jeans only cost like 7€.
But yeah that was our fourth day. The evening went planning our last day, buying some bubble tea and starting the impossible packing. I had totally forgotten how much I loved bubble tea. I even bought matcha one because it’s one of the foods I can’t get from Finland and I think I can’t live without!
Day 5: Hard Rock Cafe and Touristy Things
We didn’t have a lot of plans for our fifth day but ended up doing a lot. Our first stop was breakfast at Hard Rock Cafe. We had been arguing (well not arguing but just being indecisive together) should we use the metro or walk through Hyde Park. We ended up doing the last one and it was good decision!
Thanks for my sister who took this photo. I would have never been brave enough to be so close to the birds! And I should be the animal carer of this family…
We saw more birds on our way and even crazier tourists trying to hug and befriend the birds. (You shouldn’t do this. Bad for the animals and unhealthy for you..)
When we finally found the Hard Rock Cafe it was closer us than we had tought. The staffs were kind and place amazing so definitely recommend for everyone to go when in London! It was meant to be our breakfast but we both ordered cauliflower burger. It was vegetarian dish where the hamburger steak was replaced by cauliflower. I would eat all my burgers like that if it was possible.
At this point it didn’t even matter that our breakfast was so fulfilling because we had eaten odd breakfasts everyday. Bento box, Fish & Chips and chocolate cake to name some of our crazy breakfast choices. But hey, we were on vacation so no reason to eat reasonably.
After the fulfilling meal we continued towards Buckingham palace and the royal shop we had promised to visit for our mom. Luck was on our side because once again the walk was shorter than we had expected. And on when we arrived to the palaces gates there was someone (probably important person) exiting the palace in horse carriage. So cool!
After the palace gates experience and realizing there was nothing to buy in the royal shop (just normal more expensive souvenirs) we decided to continue our walk. Next destination Big Ben! I know we already went there once but my sister had forgotten her polaroid camera so we had to return to take photo for her.
Once again good decision because this time we decided to be more touristy than on the first time and lined to take photos of us with Big Ben and red phone booth. It was so funny how people would pose with the booth and even more people line up to wait for their turn to take the photo. No way for anyone to really use those phones to call. Tourist takeover!
Surprisingly even after taking some photos and buying souvenirs from stall next to the Big Ben we had almost half of the day left. It was time to head to get some culture experiences and what would be better place for that than Tate Modern museum?
The museum was huge. I mean I had known there was many floors and exhibitions but it was bigger than I would have never imagined. In my opinion too much art to see in one day. I have always loved museum and modern art and this museum immediately rose to one of my favorite museum. And one important point to mention is that the museum was free to attend.
We even found one exhibition from Finnish artist. We were wondering out loud why would there be Finn’s works in this popular museum when behind us woman said in Finnish “Why not?” and disappeared as quickly as she had appeared. I never get used to other Finns leaving our beloved home country and making contact on odd places.
After the museum visit it was time to return back to our hotel. We packed our too full suitcases and tried to sleep early because the next morning it was time to leave.
Day 6: Time To Go Home
We woke up too early to make it to our plane. First we had to take metro to the train station and then find the right train. I thought we would have more problems but fortunately the trains station has prepared for tourist and there is huge signs to find the right track.
We arrived early to the airport but then suddenly we almost had to run to make it to our flight. The airport really is huge. And the plains to Finland leave from the farthes corner possible. No, I’m not even kidding. We had to walk trough the whole airport to get to our gate.
This time I sat next to my sister but it was causing some problems. We wanted to see the same movie so if one of us was ahead the other one got spoilers before hand. Can someone make the plane TV’s sync and show the movies at the same time? Let’s just go back to the time where everyone had to watch Brain Games from the shared tiny TV.
So there was my London travel diary. I hope you enjoyed my long boring commentary. Have you ever been to London? And maybe done some of the things we did?
I will write again next Friday with the story and review from Harry Potter tour and Madame Tussauds. Have an amazing weekend!
5 days in London is far from enough. This city is full of places to see and things to experience. However 5 days is just enough to fall in love again with the lively city. London, I will return one day and hopefully that day will be sooner than later!
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:
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.
Visit the food/tea/sweets floor. So beautiful!
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.
All those people lining up to take photo with fake platform 9 3/4.
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 andadditional 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:
Endless Path Ventures