Tomorrow morning I´ll begin my two week excursion to land of the free home of the brave - USA. I´ve been planning this trip for a while now and finally during last winter me and my friend Ken (who I met in Africa 2009) agreed to make it happen. So, tomorrow I´ll take off from Helsinki and will arrive to Phoenix (via London and Chicago) Wednesday evening local time.
Originally I had good flights Helsinki-Chicago-Phoenix but since American Airlines postponed the start of the Helsinki-Chicago route until June, I was rerouted to less convenient flights via London that make the journey about 8 hrs longer and elevate the risk of my bag not arriving to Phoenix at the same time since the transit time in Heathrow is 75 minutes.
Anyway, our plan in the US is to do some hiking including Sunset crater volcano, Zion NP and Grand canyon NP. Additionally I´m planning to check out Las Vegas and San Francisco before heading back to Phoenix for the last weekend before returning home.
More links on N-America page.
Shortly about the bureaucracy going to USA - Finnish citizens need so called ESTA (14 USD) permit to travel to USA under visa waiver program so no visa is needed for trips shorter than 90 days. If you want to be able to drive in the US, you also need either international driver´s license or so called USA-extension (14 EUR - rather expensive) from Autoliitto (Automobile and touring club of Finland).
Read more »
Originally I had good flights Helsinki-Chicago-Phoenix but since American Airlines postponed the start of the Helsinki-Chicago route until June, I was rerouted to less convenient flights via London that make the journey about 8 hrs longer and elevate the risk of my bag not arriving to Phoenix at the same time since the transit time in Heathrow is 75 minutes.
Anyway, our plan in the US is to do some hiking including Sunset crater volcano, Zion NP and Grand canyon NP. Additionally I´m planning to check out Las Vegas and San Francisco before heading back to Phoenix for the last weekend before returning home.
More links on N-America page.
Shortly about the bureaucracy going to USA - Finnish citizens need so called ESTA (14 USD) permit to travel to USA under visa waiver program so no visa is needed for trips shorter than 90 days. If you want to be able to drive in the US, you also need either international driver´s license or so called USA-extension (14 EUR - rather expensive) from Autoliitto (Automobile and touring club of Finland).
