a weekend off with the BFF

Last weekend was awesome! After working for 2 busy months, I was desperately in need of some time off. So, I booked a room from a hotel I've always wanted to stay in, and invited my best friend Silje to join me for a real Girls' Spa Weekend ❤ Actually, we had quite a lot to celebrate:

• my Anti-Graduation party
• Silje's recent engagement, and most of all
• our friendship!

 You might wonder what I mean by anti-graduation. Well, simply this: I've been studying in university for 5 years, and next fall I'm going to resign, because I just... hate all of it (I'm not going to repeat all I've written about the subject earlier, no worries). So, I'm quitting, but not graduating. BUT in my opinion, after surviving 5 years in university, I deserved a party, whether I graduated or not -- Losers need parties too! So yeah, I wanted to give myself a closure to this whole university thing, and what would have been a better way than celebrating my decision with my best friend - she's the one with whom I started my academic studies in the first place, back in A.D. 2006.

Our hotel was the castle hotel Grand Hôtel Cascade (in Finnish: Valtionhotelli) in Imatra. I've been kind of obsessed about the place for ages, and this was the very first time I actually stayed there for a night. It was brilliant! The hotel was built in 1903, and its history is more than just a little interesting -- including everything from tragic suicides to Russian aristocrates, and from miserable artists to forbidden love. It even served as a military hospital during the first World War. Well, yes, I do find all the unpleasant deaths interesting. With all the amazing ghost stories I've heard ever since I was a kid, of course we had our own little ghost hunt, but sadly (or maybe "luckily"!) we didn't encounter anything supernatural, not even the famous Grey Lady (although we're pretty sure she tried to call our hotel room in the morning - our hotel room phone kept on ringing and when I answered, someone just said "heeellooo" on the other end and nothing more... hmph).

Anyway, even without ghosts, our weekend was a success - enjoying the spa, having a few drinks in the garden, and most of all - just enjoying each others company, gossiping and making new plans. Once again, I was reminded why Silje truly is my best friend - it's just so easy, nice, funny, and relaxing to hang out with her <3  lovely, lovely, lovely. Here's some photos...

artsy photo of our hotel

you can see our balcony - it's on the 2nd floor, right next to the tower!

Vuoksi Rapid; right next to our hotel (a popular suicide place in early 1900s..)

enjoying the evening by the rapid

good times... good times.

"who you gonna call..." GHOSTBUSTERS! :DD (in the middle of our hunt)

...it was pretty creepy

seriously - I had to try and sit in every cool chair in the hotel! xD

Ghostbusters, part II

And in the end... you know how people have their own photos framed in the livingroom or something, like "this was taken when I graduated from there-and-there..."? Well, I got this brilliant idea to make my anti-graduation celebrations perfect, and asked Silje to take my anti-graduation photos. Next I'm seriously going to get one of these photos framed, and then I'm going to tell everyone "This was taken when I did NOT graduate from university!" Maybe it's just my weird sense of humour, but it sounds AWESOME to me! ;-)

Yeah, my short vacation in Imatra was great, and hanging out with Silje was so nice<3 Hopefully we'll meet soon again (ohh, maybe another spa weekend during the winter or something?)

Take care & enjoy the summer,
yours truly-

ps. so, from now on the university is officially a CLOSED CASE! Yippee!!