Today we would ride the last part of our roundtrip which ends in Los Angeles, better to say Buena park where our hotel for the last 9 nights is located. But first we need to get there. So we rushed out of ed since we needed to leave the hotel before 10 o’clock and as soon as we were in the bathroom we were both surprised by the number of ants in the sink. Since that was not the only problem we encountered during this stay (cockroach, most of the pools closed, 20 minutes till we had warm water) I wanted to file a complaint.

So I did and we got back the parking fee ($30). The room price was already low with $90 instead of the regular $299 so nothing to get back there. But it wasn’t too bad in the end the room was nice we just had bad luck with the closed pools and the ants in the room.

So time to leave and the first stop on the road were the Dessert Hills Premium outlets because I ran out of clean shirts again… We shopped at 7 for all Mankind and at Tommy Hilfiger and left the outlets with saving way more than $200. It’s always nice to make money while shopping, 😉

Still an hour to drive till our hotel and we already saw the increase in traffic. By the time we arrived in the Los Angeles area there were more vehicles on every single lane of the 7 lanes wide roads as we had seen on the whole highway since we left San Francisco. So I needed to pay more attention while driving again.

We arrived at the hotel at 2 o’clock but we needed to wait till 3 o’clock till our room was ready. Because we had so much patience and we had the gold status we got 4 free drinks (cocktails, beer) and 2 instead of one bottle of water for the room.

So at 15:00 we were in our room which is in the building a bit away from the highway and which is freshly refurbished. The room looks over the pool area and has a king bed. This is one of the better hotels during the trip, I would first want to sleep one night but I would say the only hotel which was better/nicer would have been The Venetian but that was also more as 2 times as expensive.

So what to do this afternoon and evening? It’s to short for a visit to the Disney Parks but we could already check-out Downtown Disney and get something to eat. We did some shopping again but now at the World of Disney store. For dinner we went to Naples an Italian restaurant where we d one pizza together (5 slices for me, 3 for Danielle).

Afterwards we went back to the hotel to dive into the hot tub where we spoke with 2 Germans, 3 Americans and 6 Dutch. And at about 22:30 we went back to our room to make a plan for the rest of the vacation because there are so many things we want to do here.

This morning we had a relaxed start we woke up a bit later again and only needed to shower, get dressed and get some breakfast. The breakfast was a short stop at the Starbucks across the street from our hotel.

And than it was time for the long drive through the desert to end up in Rancho Mirage near Palm Springs. After 4,5 hours we should arrive at the Westin Mission Hills Resort & Villas hotel where we stay tonight. After about an hour driving we saw a sign of Dunkin’ Donuts along the road so we exited to get the first Dunkin’ Donuts of this vacation.

A bit later we saw a sign that we were not allowed to stop for the next couple miles because inmates where at work and that could cause a dangerous situation for us if one or more of the inmates would try to escape. The inmates were cleaning the road which I think is a good idea to make sure there is no dirt along those nice interstates through the desert.

The road was really boring so it was not easy staying alert with the low speeds on the interstates compared to the German Autobahn. But then something happened… I broke a front tooth. That is already scary if you are at home but if you’re in another country in the middle of the desert this is really scary. If the country is not even in Europe this makes it even scarier. So that was our relaxing ride it for today.

We still needed to drive about 150 Miles towards the hotel. Danielle took over the steering wheel as soon as there was a safe place to stop.  So sitting on the passenger seat I was able to check our insurance policies. After making phone calls to all 4 travel insurances we have (3 included with our credit cards and the 4th with our health insurance) the best thing to do is find a dentist and get the tooth an emergency fix and go back to my own dentist in Germany as soon as we are back in Germany. We should pay the dentist bill in advance and reimburse the cost when we are back in Germany.

After we had figure out what we needed to do we still had about 1,5 hours off driving to do. Since I’m a bit afraid off dentists I was not enjoying the ride at all. And on top of that we were told by the insurance people that the costs of a dental-treatment in the USA could end up having a bill with a 4-digit number in USD which made us even more afraid.

As soon as we were in the hotel we checked in the hotel we went to the concierge to ask were a good general dentist was located. They came up with the same as the one Siri (iPhone assistant) had suggested as being the best and not far from our location. So the decision was made we went to the Rancho Mirage Dental Group.

At the reception I showed them the problem and explained that I wanted a basic treatment. The best way to start was with a basic consult to check-out what was wrong, I think it was obvious the tooth was broken but they only wanted to repair if they did the exam. But we were lucky because they had an offer for new patient with a Patient Exam and single X-Ray for only $59 if you checked in with Yelp. Which is really cheap since according to the offer the normal price would be $290.

Before the exam was started I needed to fill out a couple forms to give them the allowance to touch me, to work on my teeth, to make an x-ray, to give me anesthesia, etc. After filling out the forms setting about 7 signatures we were finally waiting for the doctor.

During the wait Danielle found out that if we would check-in on FourSquare we would get a special at this dentist with an additional reduction on the final treatment. So I showed it to the front desk and we got this additional reduction on the treatment. Nut we still didn’t knew what it would cost and we were still nervous.

The doctor came to bring us for a health test and the x-ray. And there was the bis surprise the x-ray showed that the tooth was broken. So now they could start calculating the total cost. The bill would end up at $379. And yes that is a lot of money but not as much as the estimates from the insurance company. So one of the stress-factors was gone.

Then there was a local anesthesia, I hate needles in my mouth but they did it without giving me the choice and after waiting about 15 minutes the dentist started repairing my teeth and in about 10 minutes I looked as handsome as before.

All stress was gone all I needed to do was pay the bill and thank the staff and the doctor to take me as a patient at the end of the day. It might look like it took for ever at the dentist but all of the above happened in less than two hours.

So after having my tooth repaired we went back to the hotel and check-out the room. The room is really nice, it’s called a villa and has multiple rooms. After bringing a part of our luggage to the room we went out for dinner.

We checked TomTom and found a Kobe Japanese Steakhouse near the hotel. We bought thought it was part of the same group of the Kobe chain in Florida were we went a couple of times for sushi so we decided to go there. But we were wrong it was a Japanese show-cooking restaurant. It ended up being not expensive at all and we ate both a 4-course menu for $35 and it was delicious.

After finishing the dessert we went back to the hotel to check-out the swimming pools because it still 32°C outside, in the afternoon it was 45°C which was way to hot for to be outside. That was a bit disappointing, all the hot-tubs were closed, the slides were closed and the closest pool to our room is being refurbished. So after swimming a short while we went back for our room.