How I got to travel to the USA

Our lives often take unexpected turns and that is what happened to me about a year ago. On one calm evening, when I was wasting my time on the internet, I got an e-mail from the representative of the Slovenian embassy in Washington D.C. with an invitation to the open day of the embassy. The invitation was sent to me as an aspiring young entrepreneur, which could present Slovenia and its ideas to the public.

WOW! My first thought was: "Is this even real? The "from" address can be faked, this can't be true." However, after a little research, I found out that the event I was invited to indeed exists and is taking place in about two months from then.

I called my friend, co-founder of Itero watches (the reason we were invited) and told him about it. We were so excited that we immediately started looking at plane tickets for the USA.

We did not, however, want to waste the opportunity to see more than just D.C., so we, instead of flying there, booked tickets to Los Angeles. This happened at around 3 a.m., when we were really excited to have found a cheap combination and that we were actually going to America. It was quite a challenge to explain the "slight" detour to our parents, I must say. :)

So there we were, headed for LA and the west coast for 3 weeks and then flying over the country to give a presentation on the embassy. We had no plan for those 3 weeks whatsoever as we wanted to be spontaneous. It was my first time in the USA, so everything was sort of new and exciting.

Day 1

We started in Italy and took a direct flight to the JFK airport in New York.

We had a few hours before our flight to LA, so we decided to get a quick peek outside. Guess what greeted us: The yellow cabs!

We arrived in LA around midnight and took an uber to our Airbnb place, which we have reserved for a couple of days. I must say that it was quite tiring, 16 hours of travel in one day and 9 hours of time difference left their toll. But I was so excited to explore the country that all that didn't really matter.

Day 2

In the morning we set out to explore the downtown LA. As we were staying quite close to it, we decided to walk.

The first thing that I have noticed are the homeless. There were a lot of them - I quickly realised that this is quite different than in our country.

On the other hand, there are areas, which are totally different and very polished.

The Ritz Carlton hotel - the name I remember from Fitzgerald's "Diamond as big as the Ritz".

Downtown LA - some old architecture.

Then, we walked through the District market. There were not a lot of people, but I got the impression that it can be quite a nice place to buy stuff.

The famous yellow school bus.

What an amazing architecture!

The first sight of Hollywood!

And the sign... I thought it would be much bigger, to be honest. I was, nevertheless thrilled to be there.

I even spotted a pirate flag. Arrrrr!

I didn't really know that there were so many stars on the walk of fame. I could find literally every famous actor or performer there.

A glance towards the nicer part of the city.

No really, there are lots of stars!

I'm not really sure what this place was, but it sure looked.... interesting.

To end the day well, we decided to take a walk among the shops in the Grove.

This is where you get to feel the vibe of the city. The atmosphere was very relaxed and everybody seemed to be having fun.

Our day concluded with a fresh ice cream.

As it was getting dark, we got to our apartment and decided to go to directly to bed. Well, you have to understand that everything was happening with a 9 hour delay for our brain. :P

This concludes the first part of the journal - and we are only on the day 2! Stay tuned for the next part. :)

To be continued...

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