Tomorrow I’ll travel to Stockholm with my family. Aapo has been talking about going into a ship (that has Moomins), and Sanna has been interested in visiting Stockholm. Thus a ferry cruise to Stockholm was a no-brainer.

The ferry trip takes one day and two nights. Sanna has reserved us a bit bigger cabin with queen size bed, and extra beds / cribs for the boys. This was my only condition for the trip…

One day in Stockholm, about eight hours, is spent (hopefully) in shops. The Swedish crown is quite low compared to Euro, thus the pricing should be good.

We’ve arrived yesterday to Polvijärvi to celebrate midsummer within Kalliola extended family — including my parents, our family and my sister’s family. Total ten people.

Currently, the weather is not favouring us. It has been raining since last night and there is no sight of change in the near future. Thus, I and Sanna have been working while children are playing with their grandmom.

I do hope that raining would cease soonish, so we could go to the cottage, have a sauna and go to dip in the lake. The water temperature of North Carelian lakes are above the average currently, so dipping might not be that icy cold — only about 15-17C…

It seems that my posting frequency has been steadily dropping. Apologies for this, running a company and having a family seems to run me out of steam…

Anyhow, this weekend has had an extremely good weather. It has been almost 30C during the daytime, and it is still quite warm at 22.00 (it seems that I can write to this blog only when the rest of the family are already sleeping).

The weekend was spent mostly outdoors. I’ve been dreaming on barbecuing some baby back ribs for some months now — I had so good ribs on our five year anniversary trip on Turks & Caicos Islands last summer and again in San Diego this spring. I finally found ribs on the local grocery store — they seem to be sold out almost everywhere nowadays — and today put them on the grill.

After spending two hours in the grill, they were just excellent. I made also some good corncobs. The secret for the success were a couple of good BBQ sauces found in the same grocery store, and instructions found from a food blog written by a couple in Oulu, Finland (of all the places!).

Boys liked them, too. The meat was so cheap (€3.99 / kg) that we decided to continue cooking them during the summer. Hopefully the weather would be in our favour, and the summer would be way better than last year.

Independent book stores are far and between in the USA, as Borders and Barnes & Noble have almost saturated the market. Sometimes I happen to find such a store, and it has to be checked out, as usually they stock a bit different set of books than the chain stores.

Browser Books is a compact bookstore on Fillmore Street, next to cafés and other nice shops. The single room is filled with books from floor to ceiling — in other words, the selection is huge for such small looking storefront. Most of the books are literature, but there are other genres available, too. Some children toys can be found, but other than that the store focuses on books.

There is no café inside, but plenty on the street near the shop. You just have to buy your copies before browsing them. I found a couple of harder to find novels and one children book for our one year old.

Browser Books, 2225 Fillmore Street, San Francisco, CA, USA, +1 415 567 8027

We got a dirt cheap room from The Donatello, and thus we were fearing for the worst. Fortunately, the hotel exceeded our expectations in all fronts. The rooms were big and airy; our family of four fit in nicely, the sofa doubled as an extra bed and there were plenty of room for the crib, too. The room was equipped with wet bar, microwave oven and empty fridge — all excellent items for people travelling with smaller children.

The service was really friendly and courteous. There was a free, albeit small, breakfast buffet on the club floor at the top of the building. Coffee, orange juice, and muffins kicked the day off fine. An additional pleasant surprise for us Finns for a proper Finnish sauna — made in the US by a company established by a Finn.

The location is also very good, a block from Union Square, a lot of cafés, restaurants and small convenience stores around. All major car rental companies in a walking distance.

All this was $160 per nigh + tax. Your mileage with the price may vary.

The Donatello, 501 Post Street, San Francisco, CA, USA, +1 415 441 7100

I’ve returned from a long and exhaustive trip to California. For the first time ever, I didn’t have time and energy to keep you updated during the trip. It seems that travelling with two toddlers takes its toll.

Anyhow, we left Helsinki on April 28th very early. The KLM flight to Amsterdam was at 6.45 (way too early flight was compensated nicely with extremely low prices), and the next flight to San Francisco around noon. We were at SFO around 13.00 local time, and then found our way to the hotel (The Donatello, recommendable) with BART.

The rest of the day was spent avoiding sleeping, and making general arrangements. I woke up at four, and spent some time with emails while everyone else was sleeping — this is my favourite time in the US, early mornings in dimly lit hotel rooms. The hotel had complementary breakfast that was not too bad, and after it I went to a breakfast meeting while Sanna and the boys visited a couple playgrounds in the neighbourhood.

San Francisco time was mostly used with short meetings and getting over the worst jet lag.

I rented a car on Thursday 30th, and then drove to Palo Alto for three nights with the Engeström family. They have a fabulous home in a peaceful neighbourhood, and two kids — we felt really like being at home. Aapo and Niilo enjoyed playing with Eliel while adults discussed various topics.

The charm of Palo Alto is in interesting mix of sleepy looking small town with underlying high tech expertise. I could live there.

After spending three nights in Silicon Valley, we drove to Los Angeles. Surprisingly easy drive despite the length. The boys slept almost half of the journey and a portable DVD player does wonders when sitting in the car gets too dull. We visited a bunch of outlet shops in Gilroy while on the road.

The hotel in Los Angeles — The London West Hollywood — was a fabulous experience. The service, the room, and the pool were all top notch. I’ve never experienced such nice service from the bell staff in the US — you usually find this level of service (and amount of staff) only in five star hotels in Asia.

The room was huge, and all amenities were pitch perfect. The pool was really nice and heated. The only thing that I missed was sauna. San Francisco hotel had one that I and Aapo tested with excellent results.

I purchased a mother’s day present to Sanna from Rodeo Drive; a Hermès scarf to her growing collection. Aapo was sleeping in the stroller and I carried Niilo, who didn’t want to stay in my lap — and not even in the store. I caught him at least half a dozen times from the door. Fortunately, I could make up my mind with regards to the scarf pretty quickly.

After Los Angeles we drove to San Diego for visits to Legoland and Seaworld. Boys loves the places. It is easy to understand why San Diego has been chosen as most kid friendly destination in the US: really nice walking area in the downtown, a lot of good restaurants, and several theme parks in couple dozen miles from the city.

After spending a few days, we drove back to Los Angeles to embark flight to Amsterdam and finally back to Finland. After 24 hours of travelling, we were at our home, exhausted but happy to be home.

I’ve spent last few days arranging various bits and pieces together for our trip to California. Mostly browsing Google Maps around the hotels and other points of interest.

It is baffling how much information is available on the Internet. All places that I’ve gathered to my maps have photos and reviews. I’ve got feeling that I’ve already been there — this is probably just an illusion that will be shattered when actually being there.

The only problem with the online services is that they are not that easily accessible on the field. I’ve paid special attention to select hotels with free WLAN access — I’m such a cheapskate that I cannot justify myself paying extra $10 per day for WLAN, but I happily pay it when it is baked into the room price.

Thus, the weekend will be spent with printer. Hopefully printing in Google Maps has been improved from the last time.

We’ve been gearing up our actions for getting everything ready for the trip to California in couple of weeks.

As we are a family of engineers (not the boys, at least not yet), we have written all the details down into checklists. There are checklists for purchasing needed stuff, handling miscellaneous items at home, and packing — for each of us separately and one common list. That makes seven lists that we will meticulously go through soon.

This might sound a bit extreme, but I tend to sleep better when I know that things are under control. Items for the last two or three trips have been put together so hastily that I’ve got a nagging feeling of forgetting something for the first days. We’ve become seasoned, as nothing has been left behind…

Anyhow, I now need to go to print out some ticketing and reservation mails, so I can check one box off.