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Day Trip to Palm Springs

by Audrey
written by Audrey

One of the amazing things about living in California is all the different terrain. You can drive an hour in one direction and be at the beach, and drive an hour in another direction and be in the mountains snowboarding. Yes, we do have snow in California!

One of my favorite day trip or weekend trip destinations is Palm Springs. Since Coachella is coming up and I can’t go this year, it was a good excuse to visit Palm Springs one more time. As much as I love LA, I also enjoy getting out of the city. For interior design geeks like me, one of my favorite styles is the mix of mid-century modern and desert vibes. Palm Springs is a haven for this. I could just drive around there all day and look at all the houses and architecture. In fact, several years ago, I even paid to do a tour of Elvis Presley’s Honeymoon Hideaway. Full disclosure, I’m equally a fan of Elvis Presley as I am of the architecture of the house.

Desert X

Anyway, my most recent visit to Palm Springs was a last minute day trip with my bestie, Rachelle, her fiancé, Sean, and our dogs (Rambo & Denali) because we wanted to see this year’s Desert X art installations and because I wanted to spend some quality time with my bestie before I moved to Helsinki. If you’re not familiar with Desert X, it is basically art installations that are spread out throughout the Coachella Valley. It started in 2017, and is usually held between February to April. Do keep in mind that some of the installations are quite far from each other. We only got a chance to see three of them that were next to each other (Nancy Baker Cahill’s “Revolution”, Sterling Ruby’s “Specter”, and John Gerrard’s “Western Flag”). I’m not sure if it was because it was extra cold and windy that day and painful to be outside, but I was a bit underwhelmed by this year’s art. It could also be because last year’s Mirror House by Doug Aitken was so amazing and hard to top.

Exploring Palm Springs

Beyond the art, we just had so much fun with all the beautiful back drops. Shoutout to Sean for doing his Instagram hubby duties and making sure me and my bestie got some great photos together before I made my big move. After we checked out some of the Desert X art, we headed to downtown for brunch and mimosas at Cheeky’s. Another great thing about Palm Springs is that it’s super dog friendly. Not only did our dogs join us for brunch, but they strolled downtown with us while we window shopped for all the incredible furniture we couldn’t afford. There’s a reason why Palm Springs is a design haven, you’ll see it in the prices, even at the antique stores.

We started our day around 9:30am, got to Palm Springs before noon, and left around 5pm. We even stopped by one of our favorite restaurants, Yojie’s Shabu Shabu for dinner on the way home. It’s definitely a fun little day trip, but if you can stay through the weekend, I recommend staying at one of the boutique hotels or funky Airbnbs. When it’s warm enough, you’ll want to go hang out at a pool. The Ace Hotel and Saguaro are known for having pool parties, and the Omni & Hyatt have a lazy river. At night, I like to go bar hopping and karaoke. Palm Springs has a big retirement and LGBTQ community, so I always find such an interesting mix of people in one place. I’ll be back again, but for now enjoy these pics from our mini road trip.

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Audrey at rooftop
HelsinkiLifeLos Angeles

LA Moves to Helsinki

by Audrey
written by Audrey

Okay maybe not all of Los Angeles is moving to Helsinki, but at least this girl who was born in LA and lived there her entire life is, along with her pup, Rambo. My name is Audrey by the way. To my Americans reading this, without looking at a map, do you know where Finland is? Did you know that Finland is part of Europe? No? Well neither did I!

The land of Helsinki, Finland

Let me start by giving you some context into the size of Finland. Land wise, the country of Finland is 338,145 sq km which is about the size of California (403,882 sq km). California though, has a massive population of 39.5 million within that land. Finland’s entire population is 5.5 million, not much bigger than Los Angeles, which has about 4 million people. Helsinki, which is the capital and where I’m moving to, has about 600,000. Last year there were 250,000 people just at Coachella. So what I’m saying is, there’s tons of available land in Finland, come on over!

I’ve always dreamed of living in Europe, but this wasn’t exactly what I imagined. So, why would I move to a country I’ve barely heard of?

The story begins at Burning Man

Well back in 2016, I met a Finn at Burning Man. At first it started off as rendezvous in different countries. One great thing about cross-continental long distance relationships is that you get to have dates all around the world. Somewhere along the way though it became serious, so we both started looking for jobs in each other’s countries. During one of Kimmo’s visits to LA back in February 2019, I got a job offer from a tech company in Helsinki. The stars aligned for us that week and that’s why I’m packing up and heading to the North Pole… I mean Finland.

Introducing LAxHEL

This blog is going to be about my journey moving to Finland and the fascinating differences between living in LA and Helsinki. You’ll probably also occasionally hear from Kimmo, and my French Bulldog, Rambo, who is making the move with me. We hear a lot about what it’s like living in major cities like London, Paris, and Rome, but you rarely hear much about Helsinki… maybe except for the occasional article that Finland is the happiest country in the world and Trump saying they don’t have forest fires like California because they rake their leaves. Yup that’s our President, which also makes it a good time to leave the U.S.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to record my experiences and give the world a glimpse into Helsinki from an outsider perspective, as well as give Finns an insider look into LA. I’d also love for this blog to be interactive and collaborative. That means I’ll welcome any tips from Finns and for my LA people to keep me updated on all things Los Angeles. So let’s find out if Finland really is the happiest country in the world. I sure hope it is!

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