Surprise wedding

A couple of weeks ago two of my best friends got married. The occassion was kept a secret from most of those belonging to our circle of friends and the party was disguised as a birthday party. The birthday party invitations told everyone to dress in fancy clothes and most dressed up in formal attire without knowing it would come in useful in the end! I was invited to visit Sonisphere Festival so I rushed over there in the morning and watched the first three bands and then rushed back to Tampere just in time for the wedding. I didn’t have any time or chance to dress up though, so I just attended in normal clothes.

The wedding ceremony was held at a special Wedding night event held in Tampere, which acts as a chance for couples who want a quiet ceremony to get married in a small church in a quick ceremony. Two couples are married at the same time and the ceremony takes about 15minutes. Honestly I prefered this a lot more than traditional Finnish weddings, the church and the ceremony is usually really tedious and boring for most people involved!

 

It was great to witness two very close friends finally tie the knot with other close friends! It was a very happy day.

   

The next day we all went to a local dance studio for cheer the newlyweds as they competed in a dancing competition! They came in fourth place, which they were kind of disappointed about but I thought they were incredible. I envied all the dancers, I’m sure it would take me three decades to be able to dance like that!

MARCH U.S. TRIP – DAY 6&7 – GRAND CANYON AND BACK TO L.A.

We started the day with our hotel checkout and some last minute Las Vegas shopping. We left Vegas a little after noon and it took us about 5 hours to get to the Grand Canyon National Park if I recall correctly. We stopped on the way for a short pitstop in a little town but other than that we just drove straight on so we could be at our destination at a reasonable hour.

We decided we want to see the Canyon during both daytime and when the sun sets so as we arrived at the Park we just rushed off to the nearest view point. The Grand Canyon is unbelievable, it stretches so far and it’s absolutely huge. But honestly, when you stand on the edge and view it, you don’t really realize you’re there. It feels like you are looking at a huge picture or a canvas is in front of you and not the real thing. It’s just so big and hard to comprehend. I could say it looks like a 2D scenery instead of a 3D scenery?? That’s how I would explain it! But it does look incredible in any case!

There were a lot of other people pretty much everywhere, so to those looking for a quiet picnic while viewing the canyon, it’s best to choose a more quieter viewing point and maybe not pick the first one you see. But for us it didn’t matter and we still managed to find a great quiet spot to watch the sun set.

We found a perfect spot right at the edge of the cliff where we had a picnic and had a nice time talking to a French-Canadian couple that were next to us. When the sun started to set it got really cold, I think the temperature dropped about 15 degrees celcius and I was freezing by the time it got dark!

   

After the sun set we drove back to the hotel, or more like a cottage sort of accommodation, and took our stuff to our room. The room was convenient and quaint. We then drove to another resort’s building to grab a late night dinner before heading to bed. Oh and I remember going outside for one last cigarette and just looking at the sky totally perplexed. Honestly I have never seen so many starts IN MY WHOLE LIFE. It was beautiful!

We all slept really badly because the air conditioning (which we used for heating because the room was COLD) was really really noisy 😦 In the morning the girls went on a hike down the twisty paths of the canyon but I stayed in sleeping some more and watching tv. The girls told me the view from the paths had been incredible and you could really experience how big the whole canyon was so in the end I was really disappointed that I didn’t go!

Again at about noon we checked out and started driving back to Los Angeles. I took over for half the trip because the drive was really long (about 8 hours of driving with 2 stops totaling to about 9 hours). Everything went pretty well, except for a few slow vehicles driving on the wrong side and a little accident when I accidentally pressed the break pedal when my instinct told me to push the clutch. Seriously automatic gears are easy to get used to and make driving very easy but having driven a manual geared car for years can cause some difficulty. You can’t just let go of your instict to push the clutch so I had to drive with my left foot jammed up almost under me for the whole trip so I wouldn’t accidentally push the break and potentially cause an accident!

We arrived at the hotel at about 10 p.m. and after checking in, crashed in our king size bed! It was a pity that our last full day got spent in the car but it couldn’t really be helped! And the drive was a fun experience yet again except for the last two hours when we approached L.A. and it was pitch black and cars everywhere. Ugh.