Hello!
In Sweden it's cold and snowy. In LA it's warm and sunny!
I travel really light and only bring a few clothes but lots of colored stockings, socks and accessories hoping to find some new things to bring home as well.
This is seven days in a row, clothes wise.

Pale but happy. Black dress and blue tights. In Sweden I get noticed when I wear these blue stockings. In Hollywood: not so much.
This is taken on the Hollywood street where we've been staying.

One day we went to check out Venice beach. I dressed appropriately with lots of hippie vibes.
Venice beach turned out to be quite boring. Too much tourists and cheap souvenir crap. But a few streets up we found some nice places. I'll tell you all about that later.

David had a meeting one day and I wandered around Hollywood Boulevard and Sunset Avenue for a couple of hours. In a vintage shop I found these sunglasses. Needed a pair of sensible and useful sunglasses to wear when I don't want to wear my heart shaped ones.
This was definitely the perfect choice...

In a vintage shop on lovely Santa Monica Main Street I found these sunglasses. Look: sensible!
Right?

One evening walk around the neighbourhood in bright orange tights and my Sergeant Pepper-jacket.

Same black dress as earlier. Different coloured tights. And new shoes that matches my socks perfectly! Ain't that a lucky coincidence?!
This is on the porch to the house we've been renting. Sweet, isn't it?

And yesterday, on our way to the amazing fleamarket Melrose Trading Post. The dress is from the same vintage shop in Santa Monica as the sunglasses I told you about earlier.

Big post about LA is coming soon. Maybe tomorow. If we're lucky.

Until then: Tjingeling!

On sunday David and I drove forty minutes from San José and ended up in a little beach town called Capitola. We were going to meet up with Jillian, a friend of mine who I've met through Etsy. She lives close by and she had told us the day before that she knew a nice breakfast place we needed to visit.

This was the place. Zelda's!

I had coffee. Of sorts.
Also ate some lovely breakfast food but was way too hungry to have the time to photograph it.

The beach view through the window and through the big mirror covering one wall.

After we ate we went for a stroll down the beach.

Surfers were laying low in the glistening water. Not many waves to be seen.

Turned around and walked back towards the town.

I call this one "Little girl with blue bucket and seagull".

I really really REALLY want one of these colourful houses. Any one of them will do. But especially the aqua blue one. Or the peach colured. Or the bright yellow. Or any of them really.

Bay and bridge behind a bridge.
I told Jillian that we don't really have wooden bridges like this in Sweden but since we grow up with american movies we've seen lots of them on films. Kind of weird that we know so much about american culture without ever having experienced it first hand that when we're finally here it's like "Yeah, I know about that restaurant" and "Yes, I've seen this place before. On film."

So pretty! I could definitely see myself living here. Yep.

Cute house!
Another thing that's really different from Sweden is the size of the streets. Even in a small town like Capitola the streets are so much wider than they are in Sweden. To us it sort of looks like a miniature town with tiny toy houses along the large streets. Like the entire place is just a pretty movie set.
Americans should come and see the teeny tiny streets in some villages in Österlen, Skåne. Their big cars wouldn't even be able to squeeze in.

Like sand castles for humans!

We walked under the wooden bridge. Such a cool structure.

Isn't Blue Gum Avenue the best name for a street!?!

We found an antique shop!

It was a lovely shop with millions of things everywhere. The lady who owned the place talked non stop about old customers from all over the world, about the history of different items and the reasons people have for collecting things. She was really nice and she let me take photographs in there because I asked nicely before. Usually she doesn't allow it.

Then we had to walk back to the car and say goodbye to Jillian. It was a really great day and it's so sad that Capitola is such a long way from Sweden because I would have loved to have breakfast with Jillian at Zelda's every sunday.

On our last day at the backpacker place David and I went for an evening walk with our cameras. We had a plan to get some photos of us under the amazing mountains. A memory, sort of.

I set out to position the camera in a tree and find the perfect view for us to be captured in...

First attempt... not so good. Unless half a David was what we were going for, then it would have been perfect.

Now it's starting to look like something!

Just hanging, us and the mountains.

Lotta Heart David.

A kiss was appropriate.

Grab grab...

The sun was setting behind us.

Look at the sun setting in a little bowl on top of the mountain...

I collected some sun flares.

And we started to head back to our little house through the vegetation.

We were suddenly face to face with a white horse.
I think I gasped out loud here, the view was just perfect. I held my breath and took as many photos I could before the horse turned around and walked away. We followed.

And was greeted by a whole bunch of horses standing there in the gorgeous evening light.
What a perfect memory it turned out to be, this last little walk under the blue mountains.

On one of our first days in South Africa we went to Moholoholo Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre. It's a truly amazing place where injured, wild animals gets taken care of and let out in nature again if they are fit for it. Some of the animals won't ever make it in the wild again and they spend the rest of their lives at Moholoholo as ambassadors for their race. School children, tourists and other interested people get to learn all about how human beings have made animal life harder by putting up things like barb wire or sharp fences that the animals get stuck in.
We had a fantastic guide, Oscar, that showed us around, telling us every animals unique story. The eagle with only one wing, the baby rhino stuck in mud...
Oscar was such a great person with an amazing sense of humour making me laugh really hard for two hours! Here's some of the photos from our day there. Enjoy!

Say hello to Mr Pig.
This warthog is free to leave Moholoholo but he doesn't want to. They have left him further and further away but he always comes back again. So now he lives in the parking lot greeting all the people and getting some love in return.

The vultures where really cool! We got to walk into their cage and hang out with them for a while.

Oscar pointing.

The bride to be got to feed one of them.

And the brother of the bride as well.

Large wingspan...

We looked at the lions through the fence.
This male went to sit right next to us and purred loudly. I don't think I've ever heard such a great sound before. Calming, almost hypnotic, and really low pitch. It's hard to understand how a sound as beautiful as that can come from such a dangerous animal.

The leopard didn't purr but was beautiful to look at.

Here's the whole gang. The mountain view in the background following us wherever we went during this trip.

Eye contact with a hyena...

This is the baby rhino saved after several days stuck in the mud. Oscar told us that a tourist passing by saved the rhino from being eaten because human beings have a hard time realising that that's how nature works. Animals are eaten by other animals that need them to survive. That's nature. But because of our "bunny hugging human emotions" we can't take that. That tourist actually took the food from some other baby animal, but that's not a thought that crosses our mind in a situation like that. We just want to save the cute little animal. Interesting, isn't it.

It really is a cute animal though. I even got to pat him on his back!

This beautiful view captured me for a while. Until...

...the bride to be jumped into the picture!

Eye contact with a honey badger.

Oscar telling us all about the honey badgers.

This is a really ferocious animal. They are super clever and really mean just for fun. Still... kind of cute...

And just before the exit I found a flower that had me under it's spell for quite some time.

I really loved this whole experience. Exciting, meaningful and fun -all in one. If you ever happen to be close to Moholoholo, you should definately go visit!