As you may know, I love going to music festivals. To me, there are few things better than dancing to a great artist or band you love with your friends then being able to switch stages and do it all over again with a different artist.  The Life is Beautiful music festival is awesome since it takes place in the middle of downtown Las Vegas. You have to walk around buildings to get to the different stages. This was the third year in a row that I have attended this festival and I have been very lucky to get in for free or get extremely cheap tickets every year. In the past, I’ve seen The Killers, Imagine Dragons, Flume, and even have taken my mom to see Stevie Wonder. This year my fiance was stuck working a food booth at the festival so he got me in for free, along with my friends and his. While Rodrigo didn’t get to hang out with us much, the rest of us had an amazing time.

It was a three-day festival and while I could go on and on about it, I really want to make my blog posts interesting and informational, but not long and drawn out, so I will stick to what is important.

Drink plenty of water! While this year the weekend Life is Beautiful was held on was a bit more chilly than past years, Vegas is still really hot when the sun is out. Especially if you plan on drinking, you need to hydrate to dehydrate. This is an all ages festival so you will run into some young kids. Personally, I would opt for a babysitter, but nothing wrong with families wanting to rock out to some bands together.

Come hungry! Las Vegas has some amazing restaurants and there is a plethora that have booths at Life is Beautiful. While the food isn’t going to be super cheap, a lot of it is worth it. Amazing steakhouses to rolled ice cream vendors were dishing out food.

Stay together. Cell service is not the best downtown when there are tens of thousands of people roaming from stage to stage. Make sure you stick with your group or have clear meeting times and spots because it’s annoying having to waste time trying to meet back up with people.

Check out some new artists or bands! I have heard some of the best DJs in some of the tiny little mobile stages. Snails is a perfect example – I saw him perform his first ever set in America back at Hard Summer 2014. No idea who he was, we had just decided to check him out. There were maybe 30 people at his stage, but we loved him. Now I’ve seen him at tons of festivals and he’s playing huge shows now.

There are ways around paying to park. You can park in the neighborhoods to the South of the festival. If you get there in the early hours of the festival, it’s easy to get a spot close, but if you arrive later you may have to walk a little, which to me is definitely worth saving money, haha.

Most of those tips apply to every single music festival that’s out there, but a big tip for Life is Beautiful is check out the speakers and check out the art. They put Bill Nye (the science guy) up on a big stage this year because two years ago there wasn’t enough room for his audience in the lecture auditorium. I’ve heard financial gurus at Life is Beautiful and others who just have really inspiring stories to share. Most music festivals won’t have a room where you can get out of the heat and listen to someone who has some important information to share with you. The art at Life is Beautiful is dope. They take an abandoned motel and just completely fill it with bizarre and crazy art. Meow Wolf was in charge of the art motel this year, they did a fantastic job with it. They have had stuff from Banksy in the past. It is a festival that is definitely worth it to go early to make sure you check everything out.

Unfortunately this year I couldn’t arrive early so I didn’t have a lot of time to check out the guest speakers, but I made sure to check out the art motel and try some food. We saw some good sets like Chance the Rapper, Lorde, Tchami, Kaskade, Muse, Blink-182 (even though we had wished they had turned the volume up on them), Wiz Khalifa, and many others. We checked out the small stage cars and danced to London Bridge – he kills it. Most importantly we had a great time enjoying life. There could not be a more appropriate name for the festival – life really is beautiful 🙂 

I know Life is Beautiful happened almost a month ago now, but a lot has happened in between that for me. Of course, I had to work a lot to make up for the weekend I had off. The next weekend my friends from Chicago came to town to celebrate my birthday so a lot was going on, especially since the day before my birthday my other dog, Molly, died. That was really sad and it’s been extremely weird to be dogless. That’s never happened in my whole life. The day after my birthday was the horrible Las Vegas shooting, which I can’t put into words how devastating that was for the community. Thankfully nobody I knew personally was seriously injured or killed. My energy was a little off after that awful incident, but I am back now and want to continue doing what I love.