Vegas Baby!

There are not enough words to accurately describe Vegas to someone who has never visited. It is both exactly the same and nothing like how it appears on TV. Vegas is like a Disneyland for grown-ups with new places to explore opening up with every turn you take. The scale of the place is insane - just looking through a single casino can have you clocking up the recommended daily 10,000 steps.

Arriving in Vegas was a bit of an adventure in itself. After a fairly easy flight from New Zealand into LA, where we managed to negotiate all the security checks and maze of terminals that comprise LAX to find the correct gate, we discovered our flight had been delayed by an hour. (After further experiences flying with this airline we would later discover we were pretty lucky with a delay of only one hour by that time of day). Once the flight did eventually get underway we assumed we were on the home stretch, only to have this illusion almost completely shattered when upon our final approach the pilot had to pull up and circle again due to high winds. The second approach thankfully was successful.

One of the first lessons we learned upon arrival at our hotel/casino is that anyone offering help or advice is invariably looking for money in one form or another. The second lesson is that all hotels in Vegas are laid out so you come across the gaming floor before you reach any other place within them- the check in desk for example.

Unfortunately for Aaron and I lessons One and Two were learned the hard way and almost immediately upon arrival in Vegas. After having finally made it to our hotel and displaying all the classic signs of being rather green tourists (bags verging on the upper weight limits allowed by airlines, stunned possum expressions and no clue where the check in desk was located) a pushy sales team descended upon us under the guise of helping us get checked in. They also suggested seeing a show while we were in town and said they could organise free tickets. A 20 minute spiel and $40US later we found ourselves signed up for some time-share presentation that we were obliged to attend in order to get our $40 back as well as the promised show tickets, we were still not checked in to the hotel.

After the dramas of checking in (where the hotel had stuffed up our booking and booked the wrong dates) we realised the time difference was working in our favour and we were feeling wide awake enough to do some exploring of the Sin City nightlife. We started the night out by catching the free monorail to Mandalay Bay where we played the 1c pokies and got "free" drinks (cost $1US in tips each time, and because our tips were stingy we didn't get a lot of drinks our way). After giving up on the pokies where we had broken about even we started exploring our way back from Mandalay Bay via the Luxor. Fairly sober we came upon "Fat Tuesdays" a chain of Magarita bars found across Sin City where you can buy alcoholic slushies by the yard glass, which is exactly what we did. The thing that struck me most at this point was that we were able to take our giant drinks and wander freely around Vegas and the casinos while drinking them. By the time we finally made it back through to our hotel (Excalibur) we had almost finished the drinks and I had gone from almost sober to rather drunk.

Purchasing the drinks at Fat Tuesdays


Enjoying the drinks in the Luxor

The following morning we had to haul our sorry hungover selves out of bed in order to attend the "short timeshare presentation" which turned out to be 3 hours of a one-on-one hard sell of some awful new resort in the far South of Las Vegas Boulevard (a half hour drive from the Strip). Our sales person was genuinely surprised and upset when we declined the offer. However they did feed us and by the time the ordeal was over my hangover had started to subside. We used the rest of the afternoon to take advantage of the fine weather and to explore The Strip to the North. Lunch at the Diablo Cantina was great and we had a very helpful wait-person. The only waiter we had in our entire stay in the US who I did not begrudge leaving a tip for. Because of the scale of the casinos we only made it as far north as Caesar's Palace which was incredible, with at least 3 different casino areas and an indoor mall that was created to look like an outdoor plaza.
That night we went to see Chris Angel in his Cirque du Soleil supported show at the Luxor. The show was enjoyable but I was not convinced the payoff was worth it.

Outside our hotel

Character encountered along The Strip (outside M&Ms World)


Inside Caesar's Palace

The following morning we were able to squeeze in a ride on the New York New York roller coaster, which although pricey at $14US each was worth it. We got to sit right in the front seat which to me at that point a relative roller coaster virgin (only ever have ridden the Rainbows End roller coaster) was rather daunting. However, I loved every minute of it and spent the whole time giggling uncontrollably. The resulting photo (which at $20US we didn't buy) was somewhat similar of the photos to come in the following two days on rides at both Disneyland and Knotts Berry Farm.

So overall Vegas was fun, full-on, exhausting and overall had a pervasive feeling of suspended reality.

Outside New York New York after having just completed the roller coaster