I'm so incredibly happy with where I am with life right now.

I am so happy to be my age. 

I am so happy to be born in this century. 

I am so happy with the friends that I have made and keep in touch with. 

I am so happy that I am able to look back at who I was before and say that I am an improved version of myself.

I can't believe I'm approaching my last year of uni and it saddens me to think that I may be leaving the UK and all my friends but at the same time, I am so excited to see where I end up.

I've had two inspiring conversations today that reminded me that I am not obliged to do anything that I don't want to do and this is my life and I've only got one shot at it so I better make it worthwhile and most importantly, spend time doing things that matter to me and make me happy! 

Lesson of the day: 

You're not an interesting person because you've done interesting things. What makes a person interesting is her/his mind. 

✧ La La Land ✧

Day 1 in LA 

Our greyhound bus was very much delayed and we arrived in LA at 3:30 in the morning. We then checked in to Little Tokyo hotel, which had such an authentic Japanese vibe with a really old man manning the reception and recording everyone's booking and receipts on paper. Booking this hotel was a last minute decision (we wanted to just rough it out) and I am so thankful that we did, just to be able to get a nice hot shower after hiking in Yosemite and to have a bed to sleep on despite only available to us for a couple of hours. 

We checked out at 11am and as we were walking to the street level from the hotel, we saw a long queue forming outside, found out that it was for a ramen place and decided to join the queue! I mean if there was a queue even before it was open, it had to be good! and it was :) 

After that delicious filling meal, we headed to our air bnb, popped out to Whole Foods where we spent hours trying to decide what to cook for dinner because the vegan options were endless there and then headed back for a chilled out rest of the day! 

We ended up cooking a jackfruit and vegetable stir-fry with teriyaki sauce, which was so yum and had salted caramel So Delicious ice cream after, which was even more yum! 

Day 2 in LA 

The next morning started with Engine-2's granola with fruit and almond milk for breakfast and a lovely but extremely hot and sweaty hike to the Hollywood Sign!

The views were amazing :') 

Ta-da!

We decided to hike up to the back of the sign and also to the front of the sign to get both views :)

After the hike, we headed to Smorgasburg sunday food market and had a Korean sushi burrito, a jackfruit plantain chip platter and I had matcha boba☺

We decided to walk to the Staples centre from the market and unfortunately walked on a 'not-so-nice' street lined with tents of homeless people that smelled like piss and encountered some weird people and even a pair shouting right in each other's faces. It was so shocking to me that with just one wrong turn, you could end up walking down the dodgy side of town. The contrast was so stark!

We ended up in Whole Foods again to stock up on more food and snacks and kombucha (we are obsessed!!) and then headed back home to have our jackfruit stir fry and this time with orange gardein chicken, which was so bomb!!

Day 3 in LA

Had the same granola breakfast before heading out to see the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which was really rather underwhelming. In my opinion, it is very much over hyped and even the area that it was in did not even have a fun or exciting atmosphere, it just seemed pretty dull. We got bored rather quickly and decided to head to by Chloe. for lunch 

The food here was phenomenal!!! 

Every bite was bursting with flavor and thinking about this place makes me want to go there now! and luckily for me they have one in London so I'll be sure to be heading there soon ☺

We then decided to get a bus to save money on an uber to get to Santa Monica Beach!

I loved the vibes here but unfortunately, I couldn't remember much of anything else because the day ended with me passing out on the streets and having to be carried into the uber by Topo and heading home :( 

Day 4 in LA

I felt much better after a good night's rest thankfully as we were going to Universal Studios!

I loved it! The vibes here were amazing and thousands of talented people have somehow managed to come together to create this fun atmosphere and world that is like no other. The attention to detail on the buildings, the streets, the costumes, the music was just brilliant. 

and the Harry Potter world was up and running as well!!

The Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride was my favourite ride here!! 

My favourite attraction was the Studio Tour! It was an hour tour around the sets where thousands of huge blockbuster movies and series have been shot. The set of The Good Place was up, which was so cool because Topo and I had watched it just a few months back :) The 3D 'rides' during the tour were amazing as well and the pics below show how could create a controlled flood that looked so incredibly real!! 

Flinstones car!!

They bought an airplane just to make this realistic massive scene of an air plane crash 

I was also first in line to take a pic with Po! hehe

We ended our trip with the Jurassic Park ride, which was so thrilling and also wet! At the last bit of the ride, they made it seem such that upon impact of a steep fall, we'd all get drenched from the pool of water that we'd encounter in front of us, but impressive engineers/physicists designed it such that that wasn't the case hahaha. We then got the train back to union station and took an uber home and made burgers for dinner! 

Day 5 in LA

Had a very chilled out day that started with heading to watch the 11:25am showing of Deadpool 2! Unfortunately, the movie was rather disappointing as we both felt they were trying too hard to be funny and there was not much character development present. We then headed to Sage Vegan bistro for lunch and had an amazing platter of hot wings and a chorizo pizza!  

After walking a short distance to Echo Park Lake, we decided that we had enough of LA and did all that we wanted to do/see and headed back to relax for the rest of the night 

Yosemite was a dream

So our trip to Yosemite started off on a crazy stressful note. 

We were meant to start our journey with a 6:50am bus ride on the 31st, however I (well I guess we? but since I was in charge of the booking, I should have checked) did not think of double checking how many nights we were meant to be staying in SF and was almost certain that we had one more night left. So in the day of the 31st, we were on our way to brunch when Topo mentioned that he got an email saying that our bus had already left and so I quickly checked our booking and realised that we had missed our bus :'((((( Thankfully, it was not pass our check out time at the hostel and so we had time to head back to grab our bags and think of a plan. 

always check people. always double check. 

A few tears, panicked moments, arguments and a train booking later, we found ourselves at the same cafe we had planned on going to brunch to called Vegan Picnic, which had phenomenal food!!!! We then caught the 2:30pm amtrak bus, followed by an amtrak train that had to stop halfway due to some malfunction = more stress because we were going to miss the last possible bus after to get to our accommodation, but thankfully followed by a bus that rescued all passengers on the silly delayed train to Yosemite Mountain Bug Resort! 

We had to lug our suitcases up a hill to get to our resort from the bus stop, which was hella tiring after having sat down for hours and when we finally arrived, I was just so so so glad that we had made it after all that afternoon's stress. Though I would have preferred not to have been so stressed out, it was a good learning experience to 

#1 always check your bookings especially on a multi-destination trip

#2 stay calm because things will eventually be ok 

I absolutely loved the tent that we stayed in! I have never stayed in an accommodation like this and would definitely do it again. We got a 15% discount off accommodation, food and spa (unfortunately we had arrived too late to enjoy it) because we arrived on public transport

I was so impressed by the restaurant at the resort because they had really good vegan options and even vegan desserts! There was a really lovely outdoor fireplace where 2 ladies were singing and playing the guitar whilst people ate smores round the fireplace :') 

The next morning, we had gotten up at 5:45am because we wanted to catch the earliest bus at 6:40am to get to the visitor centre. It was really chilly, much colder than I had expected, but we managed to get ready so quickly and grabbed our suitcases with us, even managed to grab lunch to go and ran all the way to the bus stop with our suitcases to then see the bus leave in front of our eyes. We were literally 30 seconds away from the bus stop  

took some pics whilst waiting for the next bus hehe

In the end, it all worked out perfectly well because when we arrived at the visitors centre at 8:55am on the next bus, we found out that it only opened at 9am. The reason that we wanted to go to the visitors centre was because the lady at the resort mentioned that we could store our suitcases there whilst we went hiking but to our disappointment (and anger), there was no storage spaces for visitors to leave their bags seeing that most people either arrived by car or were staying at lodges in Yosemite. Topo and I then walked around lugging our suitcases trying to find a sneaky hidden spot to store our bags. After 2 failed attempts because people had found us out and told us we couldn't do that, a lady mentioned that we could try to store our bags in one of the lodges despite not being guest. 

and Hallelujah! There was available storage space for us at the Yosemite Valley lodge and the kind staff let us store them there even though we weren't paying guests :) 

We then embarked on the Mist Trail, a signature Yosemite hike that takes you to both Vernal and Nevada falls. The hike wasn't easy,  it took us 4 hours for a round trip and we had to take breaks to catch our breaths and rest our legs but it was simply magical and breathtaking and just looking back at these photos makes me want to be there right now 

This was taken just from the bus stop outside the visitors centre so you can imagine that once you step foot into the Yosemite area, it's already beautiful all around you 

Topo and I actually joked when we just arrived at the visitors centre that the views here were already enough so we could now move on to our next destination hahaha

Hiking to Vernal falls was such a crazy experience! 

The strength of the waterfall was so powerful that you could feel the water on your face as far as 50m away 

this was the path to the falls where we had started getting wet

and we saw so many rainbows!!!! 

Rainbows make me so excited

We then stopped for lunch and had delicious sandwiches that we had bought earlier on from the resort. They had wrapped the veggies and the bread separately so that the bread wouldn't have gotten soggy by the time we ate them - how sweet and the veggies were so fresh and there was even avocados in there!! Our lunch pack even came with a little ziplock bag containing trail mix with m&ms' and cookies!! enough said. It was a great lunch

accidentally dropped food quickly became a snack for this cute squirrel

I hope it didn't mind the mustard

We then continued our journey to Nevada falls 

This journey was even tougher than before because it had gotten much steeper 

We then embarked on the Muir trail back to the trailhead :) 

That's Nevada falls in the background 

Our legs were pretty tired by the time we finished the mist trail but we decided to go on the mirror lake trail since we had limited time left to explore the park

The trail was much shorter, it was just a mile away and also relatively flat the entire way

Mirror lake was not as its name suggested as the lake was definitely not still enough for you to see a reflection of the rocks (according to our interpretation, this was how the lake got its name) But it was still pretty and we lay under a tree for a good 45 mins before heading back to the lodge to grab our suitcases

I want to come back to Yosemite in the future and this time to do a week of hiking so that I get to explore everything that this majestic place has to offer :')