I was dreaming of visiting USA…forever. California in particular. I will not exaggerate when saying that a great part of the places I would like to visit on my bucket list is situated in the USA. For someone who basically grew up watching American movies, it was more like coming back to a familiar place rather than stepping my foot for the first time on a completely different continent. I remember starting creating my road trip playlist months before the trip, reading with enthusiasm the travel guide and making plans where and when to go. Twenty days is a long time, but not that long when there is so much to see!. And I wanted to see everything, from San Diego, Sequoia and redwood forests, coast, national parks. In the end, we had to choose, coast or parks. Coast won.
One thought that immediately passes through your mind is that America in reality just as is movies. Especially LA and surrounding areas since most of the movies are filmed there. Do you remember a kiosk with a huge donut on a roof from Iron Man 2?. Where beaten up Tony Stark was sitting and eating donuts?. Well, it’s just outside LA airport and it’s called Randy’s Donuts. Of Starfleet Headquarters from new Star Trek movies?. It’s Getty Center. We went from luxurious Malibu and Santa Barbara mansions to typical colonial houses of Cambria and Victorian houses of Alamo Square in San Francisco. The American way of living and concept of space is so fundamentally different from Europe, but I didn’t mind anything for a second. I knew that I am going to love everything, but what I didn’t know is that I will find my home. There, on Ventura Pier and white beaches of 17 Mile Drive in Carmel-by-the Sea. On California 1 highway and sand dunes around San Francisco.
Travel through California is like travel through colours, blue like the Pacific ocean and always the clear sky, orange like Golden Gate Bridge and incredible sunsets saw from hills surrounding Los Angeles and Sunset Boulevard, dark grey as the rocks of Monterey Bay and green as cypress trees. And then once you leave the city, huge, open spaces without objects disturbing the horizon, beaches without any kind of constructions on them. Having in mind all the time we were there, I made a surprisingly low quantity of images. I was busy to enjoy every second and not feel pressure to take photos. Images that we bring back from travel should be a diary of the sensations and emotions and, that clearly transmits a story of the place and people we encountered, rather than a random collection of everything we saw, ate and drunk.
Recommended music for this blog post: Red Hot Chilli Peppers – Californication
For Spotify users: https://open.spotify.com/album/2Y9IRtehByVkegoD7TcLfi?si=zXMU2dnsTki4VbcwRw3UVQ
