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My Personal Top Five Reasons To Love California

There are lots of reasons why I keep coming back to California. Since my first trip to San Francisco in the early 90s with my parents, I have traveled to California nine times – once with my parents, once with friends, and seven times with my other half. As we are currently planning our next trip there, I thought it was time for my five top reasons why I love California.


Number 5

The weather.

Coming from someone born and bred in northern Germany, this doesn’t really need further explaining. For those unaware of the German term “Aprilwetter” (April weather), this might be confusing, but where we live, we basically have two weeks of summer, two weeks of winter and eleven months of Aprilwetter, which means the weather changes every couple of days, hours, or even minutes. Cold wind, rain, sunshine, summer temperatures, hail, snow, fog, storm – everything goes.* One day boots and puffy jacket, the next day shorts and flip flops.

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November (!) 2002 in San Diego

I’m a shorts and flip flops girl. I don’t like snow.

Of course California weather isn’t all summer and sunshine, but as long as the warmest layer I need is a hoodie (and maybe, just maybe a windbreaker), everything’s peachy. Even “May Gray” and “June Gloom”. Might need to stick to Southern California, though. As I said, I don’t like snow.

 

*I might have exaggerated a little...


Number 4

Iconic places.

In California there is a spectacular concentration of iconic places. Places you know from movies and TV, places you have read about in countless books, you have heard about in songs. Sometimes it feels weird to see these places close up and personal, sometimes it’s unreal, sometimes it’s underwhelming. And sometimes it’s just like in the movies.

My photography skills need improving, so some of the most famous places we have been are missing below, such as San Francisco’s Lombard Street, Monterey’s Cannery Row, and the Hollywood sign. Oh well, I’m sure there will be a post or three about our next trip to California in summer…


Number 3

The variety of landscapes.

California is about the same size as Germany, and still the climate ranges from subtropical to alpine. If you want to, you can have your morning coffee with your feet in the ocean, have lunch in the mountains before you drive through the desert, and be back at the beach after dinner.


Number 2

The food. 

Many people in Germany seem to assume that you have to live on a strict diet of McDonald’s and BurgerKing when you travel to the US. The most obvious reason certainly is a combination of never having been there themselves and the basic knowledge that all major fast food chains are American. Put that together with some cultural stereotypes and a good dose of TV-induced half-knowledge, and you have a total dietary nightmare.

I like food, and I have always liked eating out. I enjoy trying food I have never had before – as long as it looks good and smells appetizing, I’ll probably eat it. In California, there is  such a huge variety of different cuisines, it literally is not possible to get bored by food.

My personal favorites include Mexican food in general, all things BBQ (including Mongolian BBQ), seafood, steak and good burgers. From hole-in-the-wall places and fast food joints to upscale restaurants, in my experience you can find something for every taste and every budget. We prefer the more easy-going places without dress code, though…


Number 1

The memories we keep on creating there.

Traveling creates memories. Traveling with your significant other is no exception, and sometimes the memories you create together are of the once-in-a-lifetime kind, like getting married on the beach in one of your all-time favorite vacation spots…

We often make lists of things we would like to see and do on vacation, and end up doing almost none of them because we stumble unto other exciting events by pure chance. Some of the most interesting ones in California so far were the Summer X-Games, the US Open of Surfing, an off-road motorcycle race in and around Lake Elsinore, another off-road race a couple of years later at the Lake Elsinore race track, and surfing lessons at Bolsa Chica State Beach.

And then there are the things that just happen around you, beautiful things you see on the side of the road and fun spur-of-the-moment ideas (no, getting married on the beach was not one of those…)

As this post has turned out to be quite the photo story anyway, here we go again:

Discoveries & Reviews: Perfect Travel Nail Polish

Just to get this out of the way first: I am not affiliated with Barry M., I don’t get any compensation for this review, it’s all my very own opinion, my own photos, and I even paid for the little bottle of fun with my very own hard-earned money.


So, let’s jump right into my very first nail polish review!

As everybody who knows me is more than aware of, I am seriously addicted to nail polish. My toe nails haven’t been unpainted for the past 20-odd years, and as I have enough polish to paint my nails every day of the year and not use the same color twice, I usually sport painted finger nails as well.

Nail polish is basically a combination of the only make-up I use and the only accessory I wear, and as the tiny bottles don’t need much space, nail polish is also one of the best souvenirs ever. I have nail polish from most of the countries I’ve ever traveled to, and nowadays I never come back from a trip without at least one new bottle.


 

IMG_8183When we ended up stranded at Heathrow Airport in November, I needed some cheering up, so I decided to check out all the nail polish available in Terminal 3. Which was a lot. I ended up buying this cheap little bottle of Barry M. Nail Paint at Boots:

Retail therapy wasn’t going to cut it, so I dug out a nail polish remover wipe from my toiletry kit (I never travel without a couple of wipes, way more convenient than regular polish remover!) and made a beeline for the ladies’ room.


 

Of course I didn’t have any base or top coat handy but as I desperately needed new color on my paws, I decided to risk it – I mean, what could possibly go wrong? Worst case scenario would have been lack of shine, longer drying time, less resistance to my usual nail abuse, and – due to lack of base coat – ending up with smurfy stains on my nails. So what?

To make a long story short, none of this happened. The polish went on smoothly, and the three coats I used ended up dry to the touch in ten minutes flat. Unbelievable.

After our Heathrow Odyssey, my nails stayed nicely polished for almost a week (with only slight tip-wear and no chips whatsoever after five days or so), and when I finally removed the color, it all came off without the slightest trace of a stain. Lovely.

For the sake of this review and because I wanted to make sure I could recreate this nail polish success, I used it again without base and top coats:

Please excuse my dry, raggedy cuticles – winter is taking its toll and my hands are in desperate need of a good cuticle oil and some TLC. Oh well, maybe later, when I don’t end up oiling my keyboard ?


 

What makes this nail polish a perfect travel nail polish?

First, it works nicely on its own, without any base or top coat. Saves space and weight in the toiletry kit, which is always a good thing.

Second, it dries super fast. No kidding. Three coats are dry to the touch in ten minutes, and completely dried through in half an hour. Might not sound amazingly fast, but if you have ever woken up in the morning to sheet marks on your nails after painting them the afternoon before, you know that 30 min. to “undentable” is lightning fast.

Third, it’s a lovely color, bluish-purple with pink shimmer. It’s a color I love on fingers and toes, and all year round (but then again, I don’t do “seasonal colors” and I am partial to blue nail polish).

Fourth, it doesn’t stain your nails and can easily be removed with any remover wipe. When on vacation, I definitely don’t want to wrestle glitter off my nails, and sticking to creme polish all the time can become a tiny bit boring…

Fifth, the bottle is perfectly packable, small, no weird curves and shapes, and the flat, wide brush is easy to work with.

IMG_8185

Color #514 Supersonic

All in all, for a trip without nail polish shopping opportunities and longer than a week, I’d almost certainly take this one with me.


 

As an added bonus, this nail polish made me realize that you can have a lot of fun painting your nails in an airport bathroom – definitely a conversation starter!

I ended up discussing nail polish quality with a cleaning lady and received several compliments on my color choice by random strangers.

Looking Back: Traveling 2015

Wherever you look these days social-media-wise, you just can’t avoid those ubiquitous “Looking back on 2015” posts, so I thought it’s time for one of my own.

I proudly present:

Looking back on 2015: Travel Edition

2015 was a pretty good year for this traveler – two major trips with the other half, two short city trips and only one annoying incident.

All in all, we had a lot of fun, re-visited a lot of places we love, explored places we’d never been before, and took a gazillion of photos. Which is actually why this post consists mainly of pictures, sprinkled with tiny bits of text here and there.

We started with two and a half weeks in Southern California in spring.

As we hadn’t been to Cali since 2009, we decided to spend the majority of our spring vacation time in one of our favorite cities, San Diego.

Instead of our usual road trip planning, we booked a couple cute apartments on AirBnB, one in Mission Beach for ten days, another in Normal Heights for three days, and for the last two days, we left San Diego and moved over to Venice Beach.

During summer, the other half had to work, so I settled on short city trips, originally planned solo, but ended up sharing the experience with the parents.

First stop: Berlin, Germany

Two days beautiful summer weather, good food, too many people and a lot of fun in our capital city. Quite nice for a quick two-day getaway.

Next stop: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Last stop: Day Trip to Hamburg, Germany
Fall vacation in the UK – London with the in-laws and Scotland Road Trip for two

Our second “big trip” 2015 started with a week in England, showing the in-laws around and checking out what changed in London during the past 15 years or so since our last visit.

After helping the in-laws boarding their flight back home, we hopped over to Scotland for a nice little road trip. Starting from Glasgow, we first went to Islay for a couple of days, then drove straight through the highlands to Dufftown, self-proclaimed Whisky Capital of the World.

And then, at the end of our fall vacation, travel disaster struck and we were left stranded at Heathrow Airport for two days. Oh well, looking back, it was quite an adventure…

So that was my very own “Looking back on 2015” post, let’s wait and see what 2016 will bring – Happy New Year ?

 

I did it – I wrote my very first guest post!

IMG_8118One of my very favorite travel websites, Her Packing List, offers opportunities for readers to write guest post, for example gear reviews or packing lists.

As I have a serious obsession with luggage, I didn’t have to think twice about the topic I wanted to start with – and yes, I already have ideas for more guest posts…
Soooo, um, yup, I reviewed my Osprey Ozone 36 –  ☞ CLICK and read what I have to say about this little gem!

 

Why Heathrow Made Me Vow To Travel Carry-On Only

On our most recent trip, we got stranded at Heathrow Airport. For two days.


It all started with a delay in Glasgow, on our way home from a two-week vacation in England and Scotland. We had a pretty tight schedule, flying back home to Germany on Sunday, ETA back home around 10 p.m., and starting our work week Monday morning. That’s teacher’s travel life,  you need to make every day of fall vacation count…

Usually, I make sure to have all my travel essentials in my carry-on on the way out, and use our checked luggage on the way back to ship home souvenirs and general overflow that accumulated during our trip. My husband doesn’t share my carry-on obsession, he usually checks his main bag and carries a smallish daypack with just some tech and maybe another warm layer for those moments airplane AC turns arctic.

So, as per usual, on our last day in Scotland, I stuffed all my dirty laundry and some heavier items I was sure I could live without for the next twelve hours that it would take us to get home in our checked bags. At Glasgow Airport, we happily checked our bags, went through the security check and settled in for the hour or so until our flight to London Heathrow was scheduled to leave.

Well, to cut a long story short, our flight ended up being delayed by five hours, which of course caused us to miss our connecting flight from Heathrow to Hannover, Germany, and because our checked luggage stayed somewhere in the deep bowels of Heathrow Airport, waiting to be loaded onto whichever flight we might finally take home, we were left with just our carry-on bags.

12:43 a.m., on our way to the hotel...

12:43 a.m., on our way to the hotel…

One carry-on bag with some toiletries (including our Sonicare, yay!), all our chargers, and some more fragile souvenirs, and one carry-on bag with the rest of our combined tech. No clean change of clothes, not even PJs.

As it was the middle of the night anyway, our main concern was to find a hotel, get a few hours sleep, and get back to the airport at the break of dawn in order to catch the first available flight home.

Little did we know…

When we arrived at the terminal bleary-eyed and under-caffeinated at 6 a.m. Monday morning, we managed to grab hold of airline customer service, who seemed to be completely overwhelmed by the mass of passengers in need of transportation and succeeded in sending us to the wrong check-in lines. And thus caused us to miss another flight. Great.

Desperately needed coffee on our first morning stranded at Terminal 3

Desperately needed coffee on our first morning stranded at Terminal 3

The next flight, the one they promised us we – and even our checked luggage – would be on, was scheduled to leave in the afternoon, so we used the next couple of hours to inform our respective places of work about our delay, grabbed some breakfast and settled in at Terminal 3. Lovely place if you like airport shopping.

When our afternoon flight was canceled two hours before its scheduled departure, we suppressed a short screaming fit, and hurried over to our new friends at yet another customer service point. There we were informed that they would re-book us on the early-morning flight on Tuesday, provide us with yet another hotel for the night, and some vouchers for dinner, breakfast and snacks. Hurray.

After checking in at said hotel, we shortly pondered the options – another night and day in the already twice worn clothes on our backs, or an emergency shopping trip. Needless to say, the shopping trip won.

Westfield Shopping Center

Westfield Shopping Center

The rest of our second unplanned day in London ended with a bus & Tube trip to a giant Westfield mall, where we at least were able to buy some fresh undies, socks, and t-shirts. Clothes that we actually liked and would wear again, not some overpriced and horrible hotel souvenir t-shirts and drugstore undies.

Can’t beat the feeling of clean underwear!

 

Finally, on Tuesday morning, we actually got on our flight, made it back home to Hannover, and even were re-united with our checked luggage.

Finally, on our flight home!

Finally, on our flight home!

Things I was tremendously happy to have in our carry-ons:

  • all our electronics
  • chargers for all our electronics
  • our Sonicare
  • our most important toiletries

 

Things I missed in our carry-ons:

  • PJs
  • clean (or at least semi-clean) t-shirts
  • clean undies & socks (or at least another quick-dry pair each that would be fine after a sink-wash)

 

Thanks to this unplanned adventure, I am absolutely determined to change my way of packing. From now on, I will definitely make sure to pack carry-on only.

I’m pretty sure we won’t change our habit to check a bag on the way home, though, but from now on, this bag will only contain our vacation shopping and any extras we might bring on our trips, like maybe wetsuits or running shoes, and not whatever else we think we won’t need on our flight home (like PJs and spare underwear).

Top 5 Reasons To Love Islay

As you can probably guess from the title, I fell hard for a small Scottish island. Very hard, actually.

 

Islay - Bruichladdich

Islay – Bruichladdich, October 24, 2015

We first traveled to Islay in August 2014, one station on a two-week road trip through Scotland.

We spent just two nights there, which meant we only had one full day to tour the island, and that one day turned out to be pretty wet. Like pouring buckets wet. We didn’t mind too much, booked a rather spontaneous whisky tasting at Laphroaig distillery, and enjoyed ourselves.

In October 2015 we spent three nights on Islay, again as part of a road trip, and this time around, the weather gods seemed to love us – beautiful, almost summery days, and some of the loveliest rainbows we have ever seen (yes, we had some rain, and no, we didn’t mind, we live in northern Germany, you see…).

 

Rainbow Laphroaig

 

So, without further ado, here are my
Top 5 Reasons To Love Islay:

 

 

On the ferry from Kennacraig to Port Askaig

On the ferry from Kennacraig to Port Askaig

Number 5:

It’s a perfect destination for shorter trips, like a long holiday weekend, from our home base in Germany – just a short flight and a couple hours by car and ferry. Take the first flight to Edinburgh or Glasgow, make the early afternoon ferry, and enjoy tea time at a lovely Bed & Breakfast on Islay.

 

 

 

Full Scottish Breakfast minus black pudding, with a little dram on the side

Full Scottish Breakfast minus black pudding, with a little dram on the side

Number 4:

Complimentary whisky at your Bed & Breakfast – maybe not at each and every Bed & Breakfast, but definitely at The Bowmore House, which is not only located in walking distance of Bowmore distillery but also licensed to supply whisky to their guest.

Which they happily do, even in form of a breakfast dram, if you are inclined to be adventurous (and don’t need to drive).

And no, I did not start every day like that. Nor should you.

 

 

 

On tiny roads like this you appreciate friendly drivers

On tiny roads like this you appreciate friendly drivers

Number 3:

Drivers wave and greet wherever you go. When you first leave the ferry, it takes a moment to get used to everybody and his dog waving at you, but you soon appreciate the friendly gesture (just like the Jeep wave or the biker wave) and wave back automatically.

Feels weird when you leave the ferry in Tarbert and immediately start missing the Islay wave.

Most of the roads on Islay are single track, and you need to use passing places, so it can be quite distracting to watch for the next passing place, stay on the right, err, correct (left!) side of the road, and return the wave. Thank goodness I did not have to drive but could enjoy the scenery!

Trust me, the small white blobs really ARE sheep!

Trust me, the small white blobs really are sheep!

Number 2:

Sheep! Sheep are absolutely everywhere, even all over Islay Airport. Which might or might not be due to the fact that the runway is basically in the middle of pasture land.

Especially in combination with green meadows and blue sky, sheep are PRETTY!

 

 

Whisky Tasting in Bruichladdich Warehouse

Whisky Tasting in Bruichladdich Warehouse

Number 1:

Whisky! Definitely not on top of a teetotaler’s list, but the sheer amount of distilleries on Islay make this little island extra special. On our two trips to Islay so far, we have toured Laphroaig, Caol Ila, and my personal favorite Bruichladdich, and we have at least visited the shops (sometimes including a little tasting) of Bunnahabhain, Ardbeg, Lagavulin, Bowmore and Kilchoman.

Islay whisky would definitely deserve its very own post, but alas, I have absolutely no knack whatsoever for describing taste. For me, it’s basically a scale between “yum” and “yuck”, so absolutely no use to actually review any kind of food or drink…

 

There are of course any number of other reasons to love Islay, like its landscape, the ocean, the history of the place, the climate, the food – all things that I thoroughly enjoyed both times we have been there so far, but then this post would have swollen to something like the “Top 37 Reasons To Love Islay”, which, if you ask me, would have been overkill. Doesn’t mean there won’t be another post or three about Islay 😉

Double Rainbows & Feeling Anti-Social About Social Media

Double rainbow in Dufftown, Scotland

Blue sky and double rainbows – perfect antidote to website-induced screaming fits…

My original plan was to have Jetpack publish each and every post I write here to my brand-new Facebook page and my equally brand-new Twitter. Well, turns out Jetpack has different plans.

I definitely am no techie, my usual approach to any old tech-trouble is googling whatever seems to be wrong, hoping I find enlightening articles and forum discussions, and speed-reading the gazillion hits my dear friend Google digs up.

After spending the better part of two afternoons wrestling the different connections to Twitter and Facebook, I have decided to give it some time. Apparently, this particular connectivity problem tends to pop up out of thin air just as quickly as it vanishes again. Let’s hope it works that way for me, too.

Until the happy day Jetpack decides to cooperate, I’ll just share manually…

 

 

 

It’s alive!

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Sunrise in Scotland – perfect picture for a rising blog… Seriously, I’m just testing blog layouts and needed a picture 😉

My brand-new blog is born, and even though it is still a tiny little thing, I am quite confident it will do its older sibling, mostly German willruth.rocks, proud by being its English-speaking sidekick.

While willruth.rocks is the reincarnation of our very first blog, willruth.net, which we started back in 2007 to keep our family back home up to date, Travel. Blog Repeat. will be my very own outlet for ramblings about my favorite topics. In English, because I don’t have to keep the German-speaking family satisfied, and happily hopping back and forth between my diverse interests and hobbies. But don’t worry, traveling will play a major role!

Stay tuned for more content here, pop over to willruth.rocks
if you like, and please be patient with my present lack of commitment to a WordPress-theme…