On our last day we enjoyed a great continental breakfast at our hotel after which we spent an hour or two by the hotel’s pool and jacuzzi. We were the only ones there aside of a middle-aged couple and no wonder, it was a little chilly and windy even though the sun was shining. But the water in the pool was warm so it was great nonetheless!
In the early afternoon we walked around the Redondo Beach Pier which was a quiet and quaint place! We grabbed a random restaurant at the pier for some lunch before we headed back to the hotel to get our stuff and car.
We stopped by a mall for some last minute clothes shopping before we headed to the airport to give back our car and check-in for our flights. Luckily our planes left at pretty much the same time so we got to spend a lot of time together on the last day before we had to head to the International Terminal for our flight back to Finland and Christa had to go to another terminal for her flight back to Santa Cruz.
At this point I was happy to go home but also happy about our trip! I had a great time, experienced a lot of new things and saw some pretty awesome places. This was my third time in America, with two previous trips concentrating on Florida and New York, so being on the West Coast and the West was so different. Next time I want to go visit the Southern states or some places that are not the typical touristy places to visit!
I think before that, I will try to visit atleast London later this year but we’ll see 🙂
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!
Â
It was great to witness two very close friends finally tie the knot with other close friends! It was a very happy day.
 Â
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!
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!
 Â
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.
On Sunday we slept in since we came back to the hotel at about 5AM. At about noon we headed off to a nearby Factory Outlet, can’t remember which one it was. I was kind of bored since I’m not into brand stuff at all and that’s pretty much all there was :’D But I did buy a Michael Kors wallet that was on sale and literally screamed at me “I am just your style please buy me”.
We shopped until late in the afternoon and then went back to the hotel and got ready for our buffet dinner. The girls had researched all the famous buffets in Vegas and we chose to go to Bacchanal Buffet at Caesar’s Palace since it has been voted as the best one. Caesar’s Palace itself was absolutely beautiful! It was truly a pleasure to hang out at the pool area waiting for our table to be ready.
The buffet was pretty pricey at 55 dollars a head but the dish options were pretty much endless and all very high quality. I am very picky when it comes to food and a lot of the dishes they served didn’t really suit my taste or I didn’t even taste them but the girls loved everything. So I guess if you have regular eating habits this is a good place for pretty much everyone. Also the place had a lot of seafood and I don’t really eat seafood except salmon and prawns so my choices were a little more limited. The buffet was divided into different section and I got almost all of my food from the Chinese and Italian section but everything I ate from those was to die for! ;__; And the desserts, oh my, so much chocolate everywhere.
We stuffed our faces and then took our food babies out for a walk. The night air was nice and we we’re so full we decided to walk back to our hotel and just strolled around the strip, it was great! The Bellagio’s water fountain was pretty incredible to see, I could’ve spent hours just strolling around the strip, there was so much to see and the atmosphere is unlike anything else.
I really loved going to Vegas, I was hesitant about our plans at first but it turned out to be my favourite place out of all the places we went to! Would gladly go again.
The girls got up early in the morning for a run, while I, being the lazy ass that I am, stayed at the appartment and slept in. At noon we picked up some snacks from the nearby Walgreens and hopped in the car for our long awaited road trip to Vegas!
The whole drive took us about 4,5 hours with a half hour stop at a diner by the highway and the drive was very pleasant. I love to be in cars as a passenger and just drive around watching the surroundings. It gets really boring in Finland since I am so used to the sceneries next to the Finnish highways/main roads but of course the Nevada desert scenery is so much different! I didn’t get bored of the surroundings one bit during the whole drive and it was a quite a pleasant trip overall.
The diner we stopped at was such a quaint place which excellent customer service. I bet it’s been modified to suit tourists’ expectations of typical American diners but it was still a lovely place to have a pit stop and the ice cream and shake were great.
We arrived at our hotel late in the afternoon and it was huge. It’s not even one of the biggest hotels in Vegas, but it was big enough to impress me. And it had everything, from casinos to a dozen restaurants to its own theme park. Maybe the theme park was to blame for the amount of families with children that stayed at the same hotel, I would say most of the hotel guests were families and not couples or groups of friends. We didn’t expect it to be a party hotel, but I was still kinda susprised. Anyway, we had a quick rest before hitting some nearby shops for a little shopping. Then we started preparing for our night out! The view from our window would have been so great if it weren’t for the ugly construction of some hotel next to ours, but oh well. During night time we hardly saw it!
Our plan was to head off to Club XS at the Wynn/Encore hotel complex. My friend, who’s from LA suggested a few clubs to us, XS included, and Avicii was playing the night we wanted to go clubbing so XS was our first choice. The hotel was packed with people when we arrived and we had quite a difficult time finding the club, since on the official site it says that the club is part of Wynn but it was actually situated in Encore. So we had to back to Encore to get in.
The line to buy tickets wasn’t even that long, surprisingly enough! A guy approached us, can’t for the life of me remember his name anymore, and told us he wants to sell us his ticket since his wife felt ill and couldn’t come to the club. They’d just found out she was pregnant, what a bad timing for a clubbing weekend in Vegas but he seemed thrilled 😀 Anyway I offered to buy the ticket off him at a discount but I had to enter with him because the tickets were tied together so I got separated from the girls since the presale tickets had a separate entrance. We had an interesting talk with Mr. X while lining up to get inside the club, about sports, education, club policies and drinking habits! Once inside he was reluctant to leave me alone until I find the girls but I assured him I’d be able to find them. But boy was I wrong. After looking around the club’s pool area I realized I’d made a mistake. The club area was HUGE and at this stage, with the clock ticking close to midnight, it was pretty much full. My phone hardly had any service and it took me about half an hour with occassional panicking to find the girls who had entered the club at the complete other direction.
We partied near the DJ booth/stage pretty much the whole night and it was an awesome spot! We were right in the middle of all the action but we hardly got pushed or anything and this happened inside a lot because the club had thousands of people who all wanted to get to the inside area of the club rather than the pool areas. From the occassional drunk ass chicks to sleazy dudes we didn’t get bothered much and could concentrate on dancing and having fun. The only downside to being in the pit area of the inside of the club was having no access to the bar. So we opted out on drinks since we didn’t want to queue back inside but luckily some millionaire dude who had his entourage right next to Avicii’s stage just walked to us and handed my sister a biiiig bottle of champagne. Thanks mate! He also threw a big handful of 100 dollar bills into the audience, what a waste. Life just not fair is it? Anyway we had a great time and I could hardly walk while going back to the hotel, I was so tired. I highly recommend you visit XS if you visit Vegas! The place may not be suitable for you if you don’t like clubbing (duh though), spending atleast 50 bucks (the entrance was 35 and the drinks about 15) or honestly, if you feel awkward in a club full of attractive people who seem vain. :’D But for a true hip Vegas experience, I can’t imagine it can get better than this!
Here’s three small video clips from the night! Didn’t really spend that much time with my phone in my hand so it’s not much 😀
I am getting so excited about our trip to the U.S.! I’m really looking forward to spending time with my sister and one of my best friends and just experience all kinds of new places that I’ve always wanted to visit!
Our plan is to first stay in Los Angeles for three days and three nights in an appartment near Sunset Blvd and Hollywood Blvd.
Then we plan to drive to Las Vegas and stay there for two days and two nights in a huge hotel that has… wait for it… three casinos and an inside amusement park. Sweet!
Our trip will end with one day in Grand Canyon and one night in the National Park.
Then it’s quite a long drive back to Los Angeles where we will stay for one more night and one half day in Redondo Beach!
At this point everything looks very exciting *__* It’s great to have something like this to look forward to!
We were kind of worried when we got to Disneyland at 10:20AM (the park had opened at 10) and the lines were so long! I’ve been to DIsneyland Paris so many times in my life and I’ve never seen lines that long, not even during peak season. And the day we visited Tokyo DIsneyland was a regular cold Wednesday so I wonder what the lines are like in the summer, woah. Anyway we got in pretty quickly and immediately went to Tomorrowland to check out the Space Mountain and the renovated Star Tours.
Then onto Toontown where we only rode the children’s rollercoaster and then to Fantasyland to visit Peter Pan and Snow White. During the day parade we went on Big Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain (in which me and Juulia got drenched! wth I was completely sure we weren’t going to get wet but boy was I wrong 😀 And we were the only ones that got wet, so unfair!) and then Big Thunder Mountain again.
We ended our evening with a two rides on Pirates of the Caribbean, before running back to Tomorrowland to go on Monster’s Inc. and Space Mountain before the park closed at 7PM. We managed to ride Space Mountain twice before 7PM and we ended up shopping for half an hour on World Bazaar before catching the bus back to Shinjuku completely exhausted.
I was surprised lots of tricks I have learnt throughout the years visiting Disneyland Paris to work for Tokyo Disneyland as well but they did! Like what order to go through the park in, when to go to which rides, which fastpasses to get and when, when to go eat and when to avoid them and when to shop and when not to! The longest time we waited was like 40 minutes to Splash Mountain and I saw signs on the rides we had gone on saying you had to wait 1,5 hours at some points and usually we waited like 15-20 minutes on each. So the day turned out to be quite successful! The weather was pretty awful though, it was very cold, humid and windy so we were pretty much freezing throughout the day but luckily many of the attractions were inside rides so we could warm up from time to time.
I enjoyed the day a lot but I have to say most of the rides were a lot more boring than in Disneyland Paris or Disney World (not as thrilling and they were a little dated). E.g. Pirates of the Caribbean in Paris has better music, a more logical flow throughout the ride and it actually has a few slopes that make it exiting and not just a boat you sit in. Space Mountain is so thrilling in Paris and it is fun in Tokyo too but it is a lot more laid back and old fashioned. They changed Star Tours to be in 3D which honestly made me a little nauseous since it’s a simulator ride anyway and Big Thunder Mountain was almost as fun but the one in Paris goes faster and occassionally your heart jumps in your throat during the ride. But Splash Mountain was very fun so that was a big plus. And also the timing was kind of bad because they were renovating some rides like the Haunted Mansion and It’s a Small World that I wanted to see.
Overall, one more Disney Park added to my list, three more to go! (Although I still need to visit Disney Sea in Tokyo before my list is complete)
Here are a few pictures from our stay at the cat cafe.
The last two were my ultimate favourite ones! 😀
Ageha was okay, very interesting but smaller than I thought and the music was kinda bad actually. One DJ played awesome music for an hour but the others didn’t.. And it was so hot inside! Nonetheless, we had a fun time there and came home with the first train of the morning :’D
On Monday we met up with our friend and her husband and went to do some shopping and eat lunch in Shibuya. Later on we met up Kipsu’s new friend Tai and we went to izakaya together. He was a really fun guy and we spent 5 hours at the izakaya just talking and laughing! I tried chicken heart and ummm.. It was pretty disgusting xD
Yesterday I felt really sick so I stayed at home and slept and talked with Aleksi on Skype. I managed to visit Donki with the girls when they came back from exploring Skytree. But all in all it was good that I was able to relax and get better because I wouldn’t have been able to survive the whole day at Tokyo Disneyland today! I’ll write about Disneyland separately when I’ve returned to Finland because I want to add pictures I took on my phone!
We stopped by a mall for some last minute clothes shopping before we headed to the airport to give back our car and check-in for our flights. Luckily our planes left at pretty much the same time so we got to spend a lot of time together on the last day before we had to head to the International Terminal for our flight back to Finland and Christa had to go to another terminal for her flight back to Santa Cruz.
Before I change my mind. Or my mind changes me. 