Paid partnership: Finnair

Los Angeles is place that requires time to explore and see the many sides of the city. We did a very brief trip to cover few of the many things to do in the city and some weekend getaway destinations to consider for your visit. Now with the new direct route from Helsinki to LA with Finnair, you can easily create your own story.

Our story started with a few days of exploring LA’s some of the most famous “to see” locations for anyones LA trip. We kicked off the trip with a hike around Griffith Observatory, where we were able to witness a nice sunrise and see the Hollywood Sign. What a nice way to start the day! The morning continued on with a nice breakfast at Alcove Cafe & Bakery, which I think we all can highly recommend for your visit! As a coffee addict I picked up a coffee to go from a nearby coffee shop called Maru Coffee, which I also highly recommend. The day went on with some other sightseeing and shopping and a helicopter flight over LA for the sunset! What a way to start the trip!

The next day we started with some fun activities in Venice Beach as the Yes Girls wanted to do some rollerskating at the board walk. I chose to be the camera guy and have a little laugh from a distance as I could tell it wasn’t so easy. I know the girls are good on ice skates… but these were very different! Definitely worth the try! From the Venice Beach we made our way to Abbott Kinney for a dinner. There’s a restaurant called Gjelina, which blew our minds. Super nice venue and their pizza was even better! For the sunset we ended up in the Santa Monica Board Walk. Very nice as most of the crowd has left the area. Such a nice place to enjoy the sunset! You can even catch a roller coaster ride there if your day has not been exciting enough!

1000 miles in 3 days.

Our idea was to head to Big Sur straight from LA, but surprisingly for Southern California the weather for the first evening looked bad on the coast. We had some plans earlier to visit Joshua on the trip, but ended up changing those plans to Big Sur. Now with the bad weather we decided to squeeze in the Joshua Tree and Big Sur. Both places I would highly recommend for a weekend getaway, but definitely not our way of combining both in 3 days.

We made our way to Yucca Valley for the night, which is close to Joshua Tree National Park. As the first light hit the area we made sure we were up to see the beautiful sunrise and standing Joshua Trees. What a beautiful sight and I definitely want to come back and make a Joshua Tree trip on it’s own!

After the sunrise we started our long drive towards the Pacific Coast Highway. As many of the most beautiful sights are in a fairly short stretch in Big Sur, we decided to head all the way to Monterey for the night. We wanted to have a full day in Big Sur the next day. The drive was an experience on it’s own and it was an amazing adventure for sure!

We had put down a list of spots we wanted to stop, but as usual you end up stopping once in a while as the drive is amazing and there are nice viewpoints along the drive almost every mile where it’s easy to stop. Here’s a little list for the spots I recommend stopping by in Big Sur.