Not Another LA Blonde

Tag: Travel

  • Wedding Wednesday – My Bachelorette Party

    Wedding Wednesday – My Bachelorette Party

    I know that I’ve been married for 7 months now and that my bachelorette party was 8 months ago, but I want to finish filling you in on all things wedding related and everything that went into planning for the big day.

    So to re-start this series, let’s begin with my BACHELORETTE PARTY!!

    Please excuse the blurry Insta pic!

    I feel like I just have to begin with a little background story…there were supposed to be 10 of us, but about a week before, two of my bridesmaids dropped out. We had booked 3 rooms, but since there were only 8 of us now, I decided to cancel one room as it didn’t really make sense financially.

    Before I get too far into this story, I just want to make sure y’all know that I’m not in any way putting down any of my bridal party and I’m sure that every bride goes through some sort of drama of their own. While I had a good time on my bachelorette party, I could have had a better time and things could have worked out a lot differently.

    So we get there Friday morning and of course we can’t check-in because it’s like 8am and early check-in starts at 10am. My MOH had everything planned to the absolute T and was having a hard time with the “plan” being thrown off. That kick started the negative attitude of the weekend and it carried on throughout the next two days.

    Needless to say, it all ended up in a disaster of girls getting mad at each other and the rest of the weekend not quite going as planned. No one could communicate like adults and I couldn’t understand why it was all happening and girls couldn’t just enjoy MY weekend. I still managed to have a great time thanks to my new cousins and bff, but my MOH and I ended the weekend in a huge fight that had to be resolved before the wedding.

    MAY 11-13, 2018: Las Vegas, NV

    STAY

    COSMOPOLITAN HOTEL – I’ve actually never stayed here before, but the hotel was soo nice. I normally stay at the MGM (which is also nice), so this was a nice little change. My bff works for Marriott, so she was able to get us an employee discount on the rooms!

    EAT

    EGGSLUT – Located in the Cosmopolitan. This was our first stop Friday morning for breakfast. I got the slut (cage-free coddled egg on top of house-made potato puree, cooked in a glass jar topped with gray salt and chives, served with slices of baguette. Let me tell you, this was DELICIOUS!!

    SECRET PIZZA – ok, so there is a hidden secret place in the Cosmopolitan. I honestly can’t tell you exactly where it is except that you have to go down a hallway to get there. It is pretty much open all day/night. They close at 4-5am and open again at 11am.

    TACO BELL CANTINA – We hit the TBell Cantina after the club on Friday night (I guess you could say Saturday morning). There was a little bit of a wait, but it was so worth it, it hit the spot after drinking all night. By the time we got here, there were only 6 of us, so we ordered our food and got it to go and ended up eating on the floor of the conference room level of the hotel. Definitely a must hit spot in Vegas!

    SCARPETTA – This is where we ate Saturday night after the pool party. I’m going to be honest and say that it was totally not worth it. The portions were small and it just wasn’t a very enjoyable experience. Although, in all fairness, it could have just been because the weekend was so bizarre and by this point everything was super awkward between everyone.

    Clubs

    TAO NIGHTCLUB – So being a group of all girls, we knew it wouldn’t be hard to get into a club. Robert’s cousin was able to get us all in to Tao. We still had to pay, but we got to sit at a table and had drink wristbands. We got to stay at the table as long as the club didn’t sell it (since we technically didn’t pay for table service). Our table was located right next to the dance floor which was great! We even ended up dancing on the platforms before deciding to call it a night around 2am.

    TAO BEACH – Saturday during the day, we went to a pool party, this particular one is one of the best in Vegas. We used the same promoter with the same rules to get into the pool party. We only had to move couches once, but then luckily we stayed in the same place the rest of the afternoon. It was so much fun (although I don’t think my whole bridal party had fun as a couple of them left pretty early).

    My super cute one-piece suit

    All in all, it wasn’t a totally terrible weekend. I mean it definitely could have been WAY better, and I would love to go back and change it if I could, but what’s done is done and unfortunately I’ll never get that experience back again. I have good and bad memories from my bachelorette weekend.

  • London Travel Itinerary

    London Travel Itinerary

    OMG, I can’t believe it either….it’s been a year since I was in London and I’m only just now writing up our itinerary and sharing everything we did! In all honesty, I had every intention of writing this a year ago and then wedding planning came at me hard #weddingproblems As the year progressed, I kept thinking about this post and the trip just kept getting farther away. So now here we are 1 year later and I think it’s very fitting to write about my trip now.

    Let me start out with…we were there for Robert’s work. He had to attend a conference and I tagged along. We extended our stay and took a few days to go to Paris after Robert was done for the week (different post for a different day). The best part about going to London at this time of year is that it is decorated for Christmas already and it isn’t peak tourist season so it’s significantly less crowded! Also, brace yourself, this is a long post!

    DAY 1:

    HOTEL: We stayed at the H10 Waterloo Hotel. It was a super cute hotel; the rooms were a tad small, but the hotel had a rooftop bar and GREAT VIEWS! 

    Here is a little peak of what our room in London looked like!

    EAT: Since we landed at such an awkward time (about 1pm), we only ate one meal the first day. We went to Wagamama, which is apparently a chain restaurant. The food was pretty good, I’d never had ramen before.

    London Eye
    There are little markets set up everywhere! This one was up for Christmas and had delicious hot toddy’s!

    LONDON EYE: Before dinner, we went and got ticket for the London Eye. As a group, we choose to do the Champagne Experience (the price was only a little bit more than a regular ticket. This was so much fun and would probably be even better during the day! I would put this as a MUST DO!!

    DAY 2:

    BREAKFAST: Our hotel package included breakfast for everyday we stayed. Since Robert had to be in a conference for the first few days, I made friends with one of the wives (Nicole) who had also tagged along on the trip. We had breakfast together and then I tagged along with her for a couple of days. The breakfast selection at the hotel was large and had everything you could think of!

    COVENT GARDEN: After breakfast we walked to Covent Garden. It’s like this super cute outdoor mall/open air market type of place. There are tons of high end brands (i.e. Gucci, Burberry, Louis Vuitton) as well as some London staple shops. I got this really cool thing from a street vendor; it was a my last name spelled with old stamps. Everything here was so beautiful and decorated for Christmas! The whole Covent Garden experience is really cool and is great for just walking around and window shopping! There are also plenty of places to eat in the area.

    I can’t remember the name of this shop, but it was SO cool inside!

    LIBERTY: Nicole really wanted to find this place called Liberty. Once we were done with Covent Garden, we went in search of Liberty, we got lost a few times, but stumbled upon a bunch of cool alleys (all the alleys are decorated for Christmas. We actually accidentally stumbled into Liberty without knowing! Liberty is like a higher end department store with 5 levels, they also have an area designated for fabrics and such that are specifically Liberty. 

    One of the alleys we walked through on our way to Liberty

    LUNCH: Knowing that the men would be in their conference meetings until late, we went and got a  late lunch at The Wolseley. The Wolseley is a well known cafe/restaurant in London. We had the chicken soup with dumplings and then shared a desert. I would recommend making a reservation and going for tea here. I wish that Robert and I had done a high tea one of the days we were in London.

    ROOFTOP BAR: Before dinner we all went up to the rooftop bar for some pre-dinner drinks. Because of where the hotel is located, the views are amazing here! 

    Rooftop Bar views! 

    DINNER: We had dinner as a group with Robert’s company at La Barca (Italian restaurant). The food here was good and we all left pretty full! It was also within walking distance of our hotel which is a huge plus!

    DAY 3:

    BREAKFAST: We had breakfast at the hotel again and then set out for the day. Then we went shopping on Upper Street (Camden Passage). There are a lot of little back alley’s with shops everywhere! There are tons of cute places to get tea or coffee or just look around.

    LA FAROLA: We stopped in at this little cafe for a mid afternoon coffee. The decor inside was very quaint and it was perfect for a quick bite to eat (we didn’t get any food, but they had a light food menu).

    The inside of La Farola on Upper Street

    SIGHTSEEING: While we sipped on some coffee, Nicole and I searched for something else to do for the rest of the day. We decided to go find the famous Graffiti Tunnel. It is a little hard to find, but once we found it, we were really glad we did! It is called the Leake Street Graffiti Tunnel (here’s an article about the tunnel). I would highly recommend going during the day, as I’m not 100% sure how safe it is at night.

    DINNER: We met up with the guys for dinner later and went to Roka (it’s a sushi restaurant). I wasn’t sure how I would feel about sushi in London (I’m super picky when it comes to seafood and sushi), but it was suprisingly very delicious and if you sit at the bar, you can see them making everything right in front of you!

    DRINKS: After dinner, we walked down the street and got drinks at The Charlotte Street Hotel. The hotel is beautiful, I don’t know about the rooms, but the bar is amazing as is the lobby!


    DAY 4-5: We went to Paris. I will post about this at a later date, so stay tuned!

    DAY 6:

    We woke up in Paris and got ready to head back to London. Knowing we only had one more full day in London, we took the earliest train back. Once we arrived in London, we checked into our new hotel, Hilton London Tower Bridge which was on the other side of London. They allowed us to check in early and were very pleasant to work with. 

    SIGHTSEEING: We did a TON of walking around. Our hotel was right near the water, so we walked along and found the London Bridge. While there, we decided to do the tour which was so cool because you get to walk across the bridge and there is a portion that is glass to look down below.

    Here we are standing on the glass on the bridge

    After completing the tour, we decided to walk around a bit more and walked past the Tower of London, but did not go in or take the tour. We thought that we would be able to walk to Buckingham Palace from there, but it started raining on us and was A LOT farther than we anticipated (we took a cab the rest of the way there).

    Buckingham Palace
    The walls protecting the Palace

    BUCKINGHAM PALACE: Ok, the palace is awesome from the outside, we stood and watched the guards for a while and then decided to walk towards Big Ben (unfortunately it was under construction, so we didn’t get a great picture) but it was right before the sun set for the day so the pictures we did get were AMAZING! and we even got a peek at Westminster Abbey.

    Westminster Abbey

    DINNER: For dinner, we met up with one of Robert’s coworkers and her boyfriend that were still in London for the conference. We went to The Anchor which was walking distance from our hotel. I got the fish and chips which were pretty good. It definitely had a pub feel to it and people were there to have a good time!

    DAY 7:

    We packed up our belongings and got a few souvenirs to bring back home and headed to the airport for our long flight home.

    All in all, London was an AMAZING experience and somewhere I would highly recommend going. Robert and I know for sure that we will be back in the future. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask!

    XOXO

  • Goodbye 2017…

    Goodbye 2017…

    Happy New Year’s Eve y’all! Can you believe that 2018 is only a few hours away! At the end of every year I feel like each of us takes a moment to sit and reflect on the highs and lows of the past year. So as I sit here (not getting ready to leave, aka late as always) and reflect on my past year, I can’t help but think about how there were so many good things to look back on from this past year, but there are so many things to look forward to for 2018.

    Let’s recap 2017:

    2017 was a BIG planning year for Rob and I. We booked and planned most of our wedding and surprisingly didn’t get into any big arguments about details or anything! Rob got a huge promotion at work which is a great thing for the two of us! AND I also got a little more comfortable with blogging and posting on social media more. I learned how important it is to be engaging with my readers and look forward to learning a lot more this next year.

    JANUARY:

    I kicked off the new year with a trip to New York with one of my bffs. I absolutely love visiting New York and you can read all about this trip here.

    img_4730-2

    FEBRUARY:

    We picked out and reserved our wedding venue!

    We also celebrated Valentine’s Day at Skyspace in LA.

    MARCH:

    We kicked the month off by celebrating Rob’s 27th birthday

    And took our engagement photos!

    APRIL:

    This month always signifies the start of BASEBALL season, so we went to OPENING DAY for the Angels!

    We ended the month with our annual trip to STAGECOACH! This year

    JUNE:

    I bought myself a “happy one year until the wedding” gift and got a new car. I paid for it entirely on my own with just a little bit of negotiating help from Rob.

    JULY:

    I found my dream wedding dress! i can’t wait to show y’all what it looks like after the big day, but if you’re really curious, you can read all about my experience here.

    I also celebrated my 25th birthday in Palm Springs!

    AUGUST:

    We kicked off the wedding festivities with an Engagement Party!

    SEPTEMBER:

    We had our official food tasting at our wedding venue (I promise to post about this in the new year!).

    NOVEMBER:

    With Rob’s promotion at work, came a business trip to LONDON

    and then we took a little detour to PARIS before coming home (I will def be posting about these two amazing trips within the first week of the new year).

    So as you can see from above, 2017 was quite the year for us. There were so many good things to happen, I would say, I don’t know how 2018 can top it, but I have a good idea of how it will be the best year yet!

    To start, 2018 will be a year of big change! I’m hoping to grow my blogging business and become more successful with it. I’m looking to rebrand a little bit and makes a few changes while still keeping true to who I am.

    Another big thing will be finding a place for us to live. Since housing in Los Angeles is pretty pricey right now, we’ll be looking at places that we can rent and bring our little pup with us. I can’t wait to find that new home for us and start decorating and putting our own style into it. We’ll be starting from complete scratch, so it’s going to be an expensive start for us, but so worth it in the end.

    And the final thing that is most important to me is my wedding in June! I will finally be marrying the man of my dreams and I can not wait to become a wife to this amazing man.

    I can already see that 2018 will truly be my year to shine and I can’t wait to grow and share it all with y’all! Thank you for your continued support of me and this crazy life I live!

    XOXO