Hej!
We've finally moved out of the hotel! YAY!
I celebrated by exploring our new neighbourhood by foot with the camera around my neck. I thought you might want to have a look.
But first, here's a photo of David just before we left the hotel room yesterday:

One thing I'm incredibly drawn to is this kind of street with large trees on each side, meeting in the middle.
This was the first one I saw on my walk. But not the best. I'll show you the best soon...

It was a very sunny day today but not too warm. I stopped to take some photos of flowery trees.

And alleyways with electric wires crossing the sky.

And then...

Aaaaaaah! So beautiful!
I hunched down in the middle of the street, when no cars were around, to get all the green loveliness into the picture.

More alleyways. Apparently I'm rather fond of them too.
I also very much like the mountains surrounding on all sides here. It makes me so amazed that this view is everyday for people who live here. How they don't just stop and stare, amazed towards the mountains, at least twenty times a day boggles my mind.

More trees. More mountains.
Those trees, guys! Such fluffy green goodness! I have many photos of fluffy green trees in my camera today.

Some trees get a little fence around them.

The streets in this country are so wide. I think it looks weird, like a movie set. And it kind of makes the streets feel less alive. There's too much space between shops and houses; everything is so spread out that it gets a little cold and impersonal. People here drive wherever they go so the town isn't made for walking around leisurely. I think that's kinda sad.

And then, suddenly, there's a very cute corner!

America. Guns Direct. Ugh.
I hate guns more than anything in the world.

Then there were only auto repair shops left of the street, so I crossed the road and walked back in the other direction instead.

Have a look down a Southern California flowerbed.

And here's a weird looking flower thingy.

Some spooky roots!

And a very American looking doughnut shop. I took this photo to show David, the donut freak, that we have this place in our neighbourhood. One of the first things he said to me this afternoon was "Is there a donut shop?!?" -Yes, David. See, I took a photo for you, hahah!

Another kind of tree lined street that caught my eye.

And then. Oh, then. I found this place! Bearded Lady Vintage and Oddities. Such a fun and cool shop! I peeked around in there for quite a while because there were just so many interesting things to look at!
The owners directed me towards a couple of other nice shops on the same street, and I realised I have arrived in vintage store mecca. There were vintage shops everywhere! With amazing clothes and things. I could happily spend all the money in the world on this street, I think.

After an hour or so the sun was taking its toll on me and I needed froyo! Felt like such a fool when I couldn't work out how the machines were working and had to ask for help. I just "Erhm, I'm new to this country, HELP?"
Regular, water melon and raspberry froyo. Yummy!

After energy in the form of froyo and free wifi I walked back home again. Through this beautiful parkway.

Even the shadows are different here. Plants that make feather shaped shadows.

STOP! I'm almost home now.

(Look at the flailing human being to the left. Haha, I can't stop laughing, he just looks so silly!)

Walking past the cutest house I've seen all day.

And the mountains again in this photo that I think looks exactly like I imagined American suburbia would look. Including basket ball hoop.

When David was free for the day we went to a laundromat for the first time ever! I had planned to take fun photos but I got a migraine (from too much sunshine, I think) and the photos didn't turn out good at all.
I had to go home and just lie and breathe for a couple of hours before I could think again.
And now I'm back and sitting here blogging! Yay!

Hope you liked following along when I explored our new neighbourhood. I think I already have started to get a hang on the photography issues I mentioned in my last post. And that feels so great, you won't believe!

Anyways.
Talk to you soon, OK?


/Lotta

Hej!
So I'm finally feeling like blogging again after we arrived here in LA last week. We are still living in a hotel, but hopefully that will change some time next week.
Anyway, yesterday I brought my camera with me all day long because we had fun things planned!
Wanna tag along? OK!

First we went to the Aeirloom Bakery that has turned into an absolute favourite this past week. Wonderful, organic food, cozy atmosphere and really friendly staff.

We both ordered the English Salmon. We've had it a couple of times this week, it's so tasty!!!

The wifi on our hotel room is beyond crappy. It only works if you're sitting on the toilet or leaning against the bathroom door. So when there is free wifi on the café that makes us love it even more! Here's David checking up on his social media.

Heeeej!

After a nice breakfast we were ready for our next stop for the day: LA Zoo! It's super close to where we stay so we were there quite early, before the crowd.

Flamingos!

Cute Koala!

Fancy Zebra!

Extremely cool mountain goats!

The cutest giraffe ever had a long stick to chew on

Happy elefant in the waterfall!

It was very green and beautiful.

I'm having such problems adjusting to the light in LA when I'm taking pictures. It's so difficult because there's so much bright sunshine that creates a lot of shadow so it's impossible to get good photos!
I hope I learn over time because it makes me so sad and frustrated to not be able to take good pictures.

When we had seen all the animals we were in great need of ice cream!

So we drove to a place that looked a little bit like a dentist's office when you looked through the window, but sold really delicious ice cream!

Found a bench across the street. Not very cute surroundings though...

I picked the flavors Peach yoghurt and Horchata coffee. So tasty!

After a few hours of rest in the hotel room we went to a mexican place and bought burritos to go. I had the brilliant idea to drive up Mulholland drive and eat our dinner infront of the view. So that's what we did.

So beautiful!

Our hotel is the white box to the right with red letters on top.

A rapper dude was filming his music video up there. He stood by the edge, raising his arms in a pose to tell everybody he owned the land and everything else below. Such a clichéd theme. I'm on top of the world! I own this city!

This photos is super blurry, I know, but you can see the rapper and photographer in the background.

When it was starting to get dark, and quite cold, we went back to the car to drive down the long and winding road.
And that was our saturday.
I hope to get back more to blogging soon, when we have a more permanent place to stay.
I can't wait!

Until next time:

Heeej!
David and I went to our getaway house for a few days and the day before yesterday I took photos of our entire day. It was such a great day!

Slept in, like most days here. Breakfast was two avocado toasts with lime, salt and pepper, and a couple of cups of coffee with milk.

Then I found myself in a glass vase.

After that we went to the beach. I spent many many summer days when I was a kid at this exact beach. We used to rent a house in the fishing village Vik, that this beach is part of, for two weeks every summer.
Vik holds a special place in my heart.

It was the most wonderful day! The sun was shining brightly and felt warm on our cheeks, the sea was calm unlike most winter days we've been here before, and I was so very, very happy to be there.

Such a happy gal!
By the way, I think I look very much like my mother in this photo. There is a photo from a couple of years before I was born when my parents were dating. It's the end of the 70s I think, they certainly are dressed like it anyway, and they are on a picnic together, just the two of them. In the photo my mother is smiling brightly and lovingly with a boiled egg in her hand, and this reminds me of that. I think it's partly because my hair in this photo looks like her shorter hairdo did back then.

If you walk by the sea here you'll cross everything from beaches with stones all over, huge cliffs, large rocks like this and then you reach the sandy beach. That's one of the awesome things with Vik. The nature changes for every step you take and it's breathtakingly beautiful every bit of the way.

It's important to make time to step from stone to stone a little when you're here.

I was matching the surroundings perfectly that day in my grandmother's old suede coat, a thrifted velvet skirt and a circle scarf bought at an outdoors market in Amsterdam a few years ago.

Footsteps in the sand. Both human and dog feet.

Found a perfectly situated bench. Felt like I sat in a painting.

Hej!

And hi to David who was photobombing in an very cute way.

We strolled up from the beach to the footpath because our walk wasn't finished yet.
And this, by the way, is a recurring thing when David and I are out walking: I stop to take pictures of something interesting I see along the path and when I look up David is far ahead. Oh, that looks kinda nice; let's take a photo of him walking. Oh! Now he's even farther away! David! Wait for me!
Repeat over and over again.

Our next stop on our walk was this old bunker.

Inside it looks tidier than you would imagine. The door David is going through leads to a pitch dark circular room. You can see more of that room (and me with demon eyes) here.

Ah, daylight!

We were on our way to a really cool abandoned house. Not this one though. This is a fishing shed.
But the house we wanted to see turned out to be gone. So gone that you couldn't even see a trace of where it used to stand.
We went into it in 2009 and took some photos and it was so amazing! A newspaper from the same year we were born (1981), cups from the 70's left to dry on the kitchen counter and old containers for products that have changed designs many, many times since.
So dissapointing that it's not there anymore. We had plans for that house!

The large tree is an alm tree. Almost every alm in this part of Sweden is dead like this one. They all caught a disease many years ago and the ones that are still standing look like this. Beautiful and somewhat scary tree skeletons.

When we walked back to the car we could feel a change in the wind. It got quiet. And a bit darker. Like rain was on its way.
And the ocean looked bluer than ever.
When we drove by from afar we could see rain pouring down on the sea where we just were. And the roads were wet like it had just rained where we were driving. I love that we missed it by minutes just by walking in the right places when the rain was elsewhere in the area around us.

When we got back to the house we were tired from all the sun and air. I even got some new freckles!
We ate some fish stew left over from the day before, and then I had coffee and instagrammed some photos from the beach.

Then we squeezed together in the sofa and slept like this for an hour.

In the evening we lit the fireplace and a bunch of candles and cozied up under blankets in the livingroom.
I ate knäckebröd with mackerel in tomato sauce. The most Swedish thing to eat ever, I would say. So tasty. But apparently it's an aquired taste because people outside of Sweden seem to think it's disgusting. Well, they're wrong. It's amazing.

Then we played Backgammon. Lots of Backgammon.
David is thinking very hard in this picture.

And this is me in strategy planning mode.

And that was tuesday. A great tuesday.

Hope you liked to tag along.

Until next time:

Tjingeling!
/Lotta

Hallå!

Time for a Two Two Two again (with the now traditional bonus Two's for extra fun).

Two from an evening walk when everything seemed spooky:
One that looks like a poster for an awesome animated movie, and one that looks like a poster for a horror movie set in the medieval times.

Two baked goods that I ate:
One Semla at a café, and a plate of cardemom buns that I made for David's birthday back in january.

Two photos of me in my new feminist tshirts:
One standing in the Lights Out Hallway with a tshirt that says "Feminist", and one sitting strangely on a kitchen chair with a tshirt that says "Smash the patriarchy".

Two evening walks:
One from the cemetery close to where we live when it was all snowy and cold, and one from Rörum, yesterday, when we went to say hello to the tree where we got married (in 2013).

Two from Palmhuset (The Palm-tree House) in Gothenburg when I was there with my dad a couple of weeks ago:
One of my dad and all the camelias, and one of me in the tropical room.

Two self portraits at that great spot by the window:
One in colour with me standing on tiptoes to get my tights into the photo, and one in black and white with me looking pensive.

Two amazing soups that I've made lately:
One fish stew (recipe in swedish here ), and one Creamy Spiced Cauliflower soup (recipe in english here ).

Two self portraits wearing the same clothes (that happen to be my favourite outfit at the moment). Brown sweater from H&M at least five years ago, velvet skirt from BlackMilk, olive green tights and rust orange thigh high socks scrunched down to just above the knee from Sockdreams and boots from G Star Raw:
One depicting the emotions of being sick in what appears to have been the flu or an especially evil cold for two weeks, and one of me yesterday when I got high on sunshine and vitamine D and could feel the health coming back to me.

And that was all for this time.

Hope you're having a nice weekend, dear friends and readers.

Tjingeling!
/Lotta