Coachella: Bandz a Make Her Dance - The Experience

Coachella - Weekend 2 - April 19th to April 21st
(in Indio, CA)

Such an amazing weekend of food, sun, and of course, the music. It was my first time attending a music festival so I did some research on what to bring, etc but it was definitely beyond what I was expecting. I wish I had done this in my younger years but $400+ is a lot to spend when you're a starving student. We did a lot of people watching and just immersing ourselves in the music. There were so many songs that I fell in love with and I wished I had listened to them before the festival. I guess I know for next year to try to listen to the artists right after the lineup goes up. Like I seriously fell in love with the entire Tegan and Sara Heartthrob CD. And I randomly listened to the Wild Belle album, Isles and fell in love too! (you can listen to the entire album free here!) It was a great experience, definitely something on my bucket list and hopefully, if I'm lucky enough, we'll get to go again next year :D.

--

The Expenses:
-Tickets - $698 ($349/person)
-Shuttle (Light Blue Line) - $160 ($80/person)
-Hotel (Marriott Shadow Ridge - The Villages) - $880 ($269/night)

This is definitely what they mean when they say "resort living". The view of the golf course is from our balcony. You can see the mountains in the background. I wish we had more time to enjoy the resort though. We got a chance to see most of the pools and they have this children's main pool that has little water gun shooters and everything! They even have BBQ pits if you want to do that.

I would highly recommend this place. Before your trip they send you an email asking for your preferences (i.e. close to the pool, higher/lower floor) and they really did their best to accommodate. They even did a semi-early check-in for us since check-in wasn't until 3pm. We got to check-in around 12p or so (although they weren't able to grant a late check-out). Our room included a sofa bed too so if you wanted to share with more people, you definitely could. There was a small fridge, a toaster, and even silverware! The fridge on the max setting gets pretty cold, to the point where even our unopened drinks turned into slushies and all the ice in our ice bucket was frozen together. The beds were surprisingly comfortable (but then again we were probably super tired so we probably could've slept well on rocks lol). Because the resort is so big, they have shuttles that take you to and from your room to the lobby and those come every 30 minutes (or you can call the front desk and they have someone come get you).

Overall, we had a really good experience at this place. Oh! And the people that work there are super nice too so it makes the stay even better :). The girl checking us in was actually going to Coachella too so it was cool haha. The last time we were in Palm Desert, we stayed at the JW Marriott and *sigh* as nice as that place is (which isn't even really that nice but maybe it was because it was under construction), their service wasn't that great and we didn't pay much more. We bid on Priceline for the room and ended up paying $126 per night. We ended up trying to pull the $20 upgrade trick and got the same room we probably would've gotten if we hadn't so all in all it wasn't worth it.
--

The Weather:
The weather in the desert is pretty hot during the day and definitely gets cold at night. It's around 85-95 degrees during the day and about 60 degrees at night. That might not be cold to some people but for someone that lives in SD/LA it's weather that warrants a jacket. I brought a pair of tights for nighttime but didn't end up wearing them. I just brought a sweater and a jacket each night and had it tied around my bag for the day. I also used it as a blanket to sit on lol so it served two purposes.
--

The Music:

Here's a list of who we saw during the 3 days:

Friday

(completely missed The Neighbourhood :( cause it took so long to check in at the gates)

Stars

Metric

Passion Pit

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Band of Horses

Jurassic 5

Tegan and Sara

Saturday

(completely missed 2 Chainz 'cause I wanted a nap after brunch lol)

Violent Femmes

Major Lazer 

Julio Bashmore

The Postal Service

Two Door Cinema Club (super hard decision to skip the xx but we saw them before at a more intimate setting)

Phoenix (super O_O at the crowd surfing lol)

Sunday

Jessie Ware (omg we were so close!!)

The Lumineers

James Blake

La Roux

Vampire Weekend

Wu-Tang Clan

Red Hot Chili Peppers

Disclosure (with special appearance from Jessie Ware)

--

The Food:
I totally did not expect the food to be actually good! On Friday, we stopped at McDonald's for a small snack before we headed out so we were pretty hungry after we reached the venue. Being the total newbies that we were we headed to this big Food & Drink sign we saw. We ended up getting a burger and pasta for me, of course, and we also met this cool couple. The random-est thing is that the girl was from Antioch where my friend's husband's from so it was just crazy to meet someone from the same place. Anyways, I digress. For dinner, we got pizza from Italia Pizzeria (cost $7). Their spicy pizza was soooooooooo good! (or it could have been 'cause we were starving lol). The pizza we had pretty early and I was already getting hungry right before Jurassic 5 was coming on so we went and got some Teriyaki Beef Bowl with half rice and chow mein. It was alright. The meat had good flavor but the rice and chow mein were definitely a notch before Panda.

On Saturday we had brunch at IHOP and then I had a nice, juicy watermelon at the festival (cost $5).

It totally reminded me of summer at my house when my mom would cut up watermelon for me and I'd eat it outside. In the afternoon we had BaoHaus since my friend who went to Coachella the first weekend had it 3 times lol. We had the Coffin Bao Fried Chicken and the Birdhaus Bao. I thought they were pretty tasty but definitely expensive. I think the Coffin was $12 and Birdhaus was $6 (might have been switched around?).

On Sunday we headed to IHOP again since we couldn't decide on anywhere else to go and it was close. Once we got to the festival we made a stop at the Fruttare hut and got 2 free ice creams each :). Gotta love the free stuff haha. While we were eating, we got to doodle on their chalk board.

Then we had a lemonade which had this huge sign like the actual Lemonade place in LA so I wanted to try it out. We got the large Strawberry Lemonade which was really good and refreshing (cost approx. $11 O_O I know... lol). We also tried this Brazilian BBQ place that had this slaw combo thing that was pretty good too.

The Kogi truck was actually there from 4-11pm in the Heineken Beer Garden #1 so we got that for dinner on the last night. No pictures 'cause I was stuffing my face while we watched Wu-Tang.
--



Tips:

-Give yourself about 1.5 to 2 hrs before your favorite act starts if you're going to take one of the shuttles. For the first day, they were super anal at the Coachella check-in so I would definitely give yourself extra time. For us, we stayed at the Marriott Shadow Ridge and it's 30 minutes away from Coachella. The buses come every 30 minutes so if you miss one, you might have to wait awhile (and even though 30 minutes is not that long, keep in mind you have to still wait in another line to check in at Coachella and there are multiple points where they check your bags, etc and depending on how much crap the person in front of the line is carrying, it could take anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes per line and there was 2 lines for shuttle goers).

-I would steer clear of black. Since black was a super big color this Spring, I opted for an all black outfit on the last day and man, such high maintenance! Every time I sat down it was grass central. I might as well have just worn an outfit made of dried grass 'cause that's what it looked like every time I sat down! It also felt WAY hotter (also 'cause it was hotter that last day anyways) wearing black.

-Don't wear open toed shoes. We are talking about the desert and a ton of sand. You will get sweaty and the sand with stick to your feet. If you want to be comfy, and not feeling icky all day, I would wear ankle boots. I wore these imitation Toms I got from Ross or Marshall's and they were literally covered in dirt and from the opening of my shoe to my ankle, it was all dirt as well. You wouldn't even imagine the amount of dirt that gets kicked up while everyone is dragging their feet from one line to another.

-Bring a hanky. While walking into the venue we noticed people with bandannas over their faces and it really didn't seem that windy or sandy so it was kind of interesting. Then by the end of the first day, I noticed that my nose was seriously killing me. It was so dry and I had all this congestion. All that stuff that you might not be able to see with your naked eye but you're breathing it in. The 2nd day I brought my tights with me incase it got cold at night and instead I just used it was a face mask and what a world of difference! My nose felt so much better. No more feeling like I was going to have a bloody nose any second.

-For a more relaxing time, I would definitely plan to stay Thursday thru Tuesday morning instead of leaving right on Monday or getting there right on Friday. I would've really loved to enjoy the resort more. There's also the outlets to enjoy for those who haven't gone completely broke just by going to the festival! lol :p

-Get a mister!!! Oh my goodness it was such a life saver! So we actually got a mini mister from the San Diego Safari Park because I knew the mister would come in handy but we lost it after the first day. Luckily they had a large one at CVS! (it's that blue thing attached to my bag in the watermelon picture). It's such a life saver in the heat! It cools you down immediately so I would definitely recommend that.

(I feel like I have more tips but can't really think of them at the moment so I'll add them in when they pop into my head)
--

The Pictures:

--

Seriously this post took forever! 2 cups of coffee and a bazillion pictures cropped later, it's finally done! I can't imagine how long it would take to do a blog and edit videos! I've been trying to edit my Coachella footage but I just wanted to get this post out since I know some of you were asking how it went! Hope you guys enjoyed this post! Shits hit the fan at work so once I put out those fires, I should be back to blogging regularly. Haven't had anything really interesting happen lately anyways since we've really been trying to save money. Until the next time lovers!


P.S. I apologize in advance for any grammatical errors. I know there are spots where "there" and "their" aren't used correctly lol. It annoys me but I hate proofreading so sue me!