Vegas, Baby, Vegas

We hopped an early flight on Friday morning to head West. We got to Vegas at about 8 a.m. their time, rented a car and headed out to explore.

First we tried to visit UNLV’s campus to get a t-shirt for me. It was a failure. We found the campus, but parking was unclear as was the actual building that housed the actual bookstore. We wandered around lost for a bit and then declared it a loss and moved on.

We knew that Vegas was home to many Tropical Smoothie Cafes so we pulled up directions to a location on the way to Lake Mead. Or so we thought. Sometimes Google maps likes to play dirty little tricks on you and send you to a location inside of a location. We ended up at a Tropical Smoothie Cafe inside the Green Valley Ranch hotel. Thanks, Google. It was a pretty awesome hotel, though. The size of these casinos never ceases to amaze me. There just does not seem to be enough money to support such lavish locations all over the city. Anyway, once we finished our smoothies and wraps (fantastic, as always) we headed out to Lake Mead. Or so we thought. The interstate system around Las Vegas is pretty confusing and we ended up getting lost. Again.

At this point I was ready to just give up and curl up in a ball. Jackson doesn’t give up. Ever. (Which really annoys me most of the time on occasion.) We kept going to get to our hike. Finally, we got to Lake Mead and it was right at 6,000 degrees fahrenheit. It may have been warmer than that, but I just cannot say right now. The place was deserted. The lake is very low right now due to the drought so not many boats were out. Sad. As you see in the photo below, things were very dry all around. We found a hike online that we wanted to try. We took our rented Toyota Corolla on a road marked “4x4 only” because we're kind of dumb. Thankfully it rose up to the challenge and didn't leave us stranded in the desert. We only saw one other set of hikers out that day. Most people must be sane or something. I kept talking about how I didn't see myself dying alone in the desert so we cut our time out there short. I was perhaps a wee bit dramatic when each time a helicopter flew overhead I waved my arms frantically and yelled out pleas for help. The jury is still out on that one.

This is supposed to be a river

This was the road we followed to our hike

Again with the missing river

Jackson ready for a hike

The scenery all around was magnificent, though. I love how diverse this country is. I sometimes think I've seen it all since I've been to all 50 states, but that is simply not true. There are so many new parts to be discovered. We intended to return the rental car when we were finished exploring outside of the city, but our hotel had free parking so we opted to keep it for the full 24 hours we paid $5.51 for (thank you, J.P. Morgan, for renting Jackson everyday each month- those reward points are clutch!). We even discovered what we were doing that kept getting us lost: we were in the wrong positions. Jackson had been driving and I was navigating. That just does not work. We switched it up at Lake Mead and the journey back to the Las Vegas strip was flawless. 

The view from our room

Let’s chat for a moment about the traffic in Las Vegas. WHOA! It is intense. No one likes to let you change lanes peacefully. I had to reach back and remember how to be a Boston driver. It came back quickly and we got to our hotel without too many honks or fingers being thrown up my way. My Dad and Diana had a certificate for two free nights at Harrah’s that they gave us so we happily stayed there. FREE is our favorite price! We got all checked in and then headed down to the pool to soak in some rays. The hotel had two pools. One was typical and one was only 10 inches deep with lounge chairs IN it. AMAZING IDEA, HARRAH’S! It was so nice to be able to layout and not just melt. Remember how it was 6,000 degrees in the desert? Yeah, it was at least 5,000 on the Strip.

Our pool

There was some amazing people watching at the pool. People consume a lot of alcohol in Las Vegas. Too much. Far too much. One woman who appeared to be about 65 was flailing around in a provocative manner that was not provocative at all. It was just sad and desperate. We made a video of it, but the video just is not blog material. It is too racy. There were also drunk college kids and wedding parties galore. We enjoyed our lemonades and water watching these wild ones get rowdy. That’s more fun to me. :)

We finally left the pool and met Dad and Diana for dinner. They took a later flight because they’re staying longer than we were. We hopped over to the Rio casino for their superb buffet. (Vegas is known for its buffets and Rio’s has got to be one of the best.) The food was excellent and Jackson ate crab legs as if we were on a boat in Alaska. I mean he ate so many that I thought he might turn into a crab. I stuck to the shrimp. I may have had quite of a few of those myself, but crab legs leave more evidence behind.

After dinner we went to the casino’s 50th floor lounge to take in sweeping views of the Strip. Rio is off the Strip making it a really awesome place for such a lounge. I loved it up there. I love views of cities with mountains in the background. I love mountains period. We’d never been to downtown “old” Vegas so we hopped in the car and headed that way. The lights there down were like nothing we’d ever seen before, Times Square and all. There was a psychedelic light show going on just as we arrived so that was fun. We also saw the world’s largest golden nugget. The people watching in old Vegas has got to be some of the best on the planet. How people act in public always blows my mind. We finally started to run out of steam (we’d been up since 4:30 a.m. EST and it was now 11:30 p.m. EST) so we headed back to our hotels. Driving down Las Vegas Boulevard on a Friday night is an adventure, friends. We made it, though! Hooray! We fell asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillows at a wild 9:30 p.m. Vegas time. PARTY ANIMALS here! ;)

I loved the view

Still loved it.

Again.

The mountains...LOVE!

Panoramic shot

Sunset

Jackson taking it all in

Dad doesn't like having his picture taken so he would not smile.

That said, we were up at 5:30 the next morning because we were still on Eastern time. That’s fine. It is sometimes fun to explore without the masses of people everywhere. We hopped over to the airport to return our rental car (bless Las Vegas for having its airport like 2 miles from where all the action is) and caught a cab back to the beginning of the Strip to start our morning walk. We began at Mandalay Bay which was gorgeous. They have a shark exhibit that we walked all the way back to (for real, friends, this was the biggest building ever) only to find that it was not open yet. Hello, Vegas, some of us are on Eastern time! I was bummed. We left there and went next door to explore the Luxor (the pyramid). Talk about a cool place. I’d never seen anything like that. It was not especially fancy, but the fact that it was a pyramid was just plain neat. The next stop was New York, New York which is a favorite of ours because we love the City and they've done such a good job recreating it here. We had breakfast there and had some of the best service we’d had in years. Amazing. I also tried Tabasco on my eggs because I’d heard that was a good way to spice them up. Spice is right. Holy cow. I downed my whole Arnold Palmer and glass of water after that taste test. I guess that just isn't for me!

Mandalay Bay

Luxor

NY, NY

We walked through the new City Center area which is just gorgeous. The upscale shopping in Vegas has to be hard to beat. We just kept wondering who could afford to shop in all of these stores. Not us, that is for sure! We stopped in to explore the Mirage before making it back to our own hotel. All of that exploring topped over 6 miles!! We took a well deserved break at the pool for a few hours before heading back out the explore some more and get a little lunch. We ended up dining at a place called “Lobster, ME” at the Venetian. I had the best lobster mac-n-cheese ever there. It was just so good. Jackson had a pretty awesome lobster roll, too! From there we kept going and toured the Wynn and Encore properties. They were both just over-the-top and too fancy for us to feel super comfortable in them. On our way back to our hotel we were walking in a construction area with scaffolding when a man came running at us with a shopping bag. It seemed odd to me that he’d be running through such a bustling area but I moved aside and let him pass. Not 5 seconds later a server came running after him screaming for him to stop. He was running because he’d stolen some diners’ shopping bags from their table. That dedicated server went after him, but he was too fast for her and disappeared. We were bummed that we couldn’t help out, but we just didn’t know the situation when he was passing us by. It was a good reminder to never be too trusting with your things! I hope the people gave their server a good tip for her efforts. 

We spent a bit more time at the pool before getting cleaned up to meet Dad and Diana for dinner again. This time we went the the buffet at Paris. It was not quite as good as Rio’s, but the macaroons were pretty amazing. I’d never had a macaroon before and I really enjoyed them! We finished up dinner and headed out to the casino at Bally’s for a little gaming.

I’d read that sitting close to the door increased your odds of winning. That was not true for me. I blew through my allotted $20 pretty quickly on assorted slot machines. Dad gave me another $20 that I turned into $8. At that point we took a break and went up to see Dad and Diana’s room at Bally’s. It was a super nice suite with awesome Strip views. We hoped this little timeout would turn my luck around. Alas, it did not. I was able to lose Dad’s $8 and then another $20 for Diana. Sorry guys! We said good night to them and headed across the street to a new casino called The Cromwell to play nickel slots. That’s more my price range. I’d been playing 25 cent machines at Bally’s which is a little steep. You guys, I won! I gave myself another $20 to play with and I turned that into $38! I was only down $2 (of my own money) for the night. A waitress brought me a free bottle of water during my win so I am calling it even. Water is expensive in the desert! Jackson pouted about having not gambled yet so he put $20 in a machine and lost it entirely in fairly short order. I tried to tell him to stop while we were basically even. Siiigh. ;) Somehow it got to be after 11 when we were walking home. I had no idea. The casinos do not have windows and the lights are so bright along the Strip that I just didn’t notice it was so late. It is amazing all the mind games these casinos play on you. Supposedly they even pump oxygen into the playing areas so that gamers tire less quickly. I don’t know, but they’ve got it all figured out. We saw quite a few characters out and about that time of night. Again with the people watching being awesome in Vegas.

Jackson had chicken fried bacon biscuits and gravy
I had Guy's big bite burrito

We didn’t wake up as early on Sunday morning since we’d stayed out later, but we were still up at 6:45 Vegas time. We spent the morning exploring the new Linq and Quad developments and seeing what new additions had gone in at Caesar’s. The little cities built in the casinos are so cool. The Venetian and Caesar’s are my favorites I think. We had breakfast at Guy Fieri's (Food Network guy) restaurant. Our meal was pretty excellent, but the service was horrid. Get on that, Guy! 

We decided to take a little nap before going to the pool because Jackson was still bright red from yesterday. We had this conversation at least 5,789 times: 

Me: “Babe, do you have on sunscreen?” 

Jackson: *fingers crossed behind his back* “Yes, I do.” 

Miraculously enough I was not burnt at all and he was a lobster. A lot of good crossing those fingers does, Mr. Petefish.

Dad and Diana graciously gave us their pool pass so that we could check out of our room and hang at their place until it was time to get to the airport. Their pool was much bigger, less crowded and had a pretty awesome D.J., but no chairs IN the pool. We got so spoiled. The folks next to us on the plane thank them for their hospitality in letting us shower and clean up in their room between being at the pool and getting to the airport. I accidentally had us at the airport much earlier than we needed to be because I’d heard horror stories of the security lines on Sundays. We had ample time to grab a late lunch before catching our flight. Our plane was supposed to have WiFi each way and both times it was broken so that should explain why this is the longest blog post ever. When one doesn’t have any more magazines to read because she read them all poolside and cannot read articles online or check her email and Facebook, blog entires done in Pages on her new MacBook Air get a little wordy. I apologize about that. Please join me in writing to Southwest to request that they repair the plane’s WiFi for future customers. Ha!

We made it home and were showered, unpacked with laundry started and in bed within 45 minutes. It was a new record time for us and I was elated. I made double the amount of coffee for this Monday morning and we're back at it! We had an awesome, quick trip out to Vegas. It was a welcome break from the real world. Thank you for hosting us, Dad and Diana!