Viva Las Vegas!
Hey!
Without further ado, a bit of a review of my trip to Vegas:
Sunday:
Flew into Vegas about 6:30 local time, and the sun was already down. It sets quite a bit earlier there than it does here, but that was cool because it looks way better at night. From the plane the strip looks like a miniature toy town, only when you actually get there on foot do you realize how huge everything actually is. Anyway Mark and I checked into our hotel (the Aladdin) then waited for awhile while my mom and dad got setup with their rental car. When we were all set to go we cruised around our hotel for a bit, then grabbed a bite to eat at a rather mediocre mexican restaraunt. We then briefly checked out a few of the shops in our complex, then Mark and I went off on our own. The strip is really something else.. it's hard to describe if you haven't seen it yourself. For maybe 20 blocks there are these incredibly massive hotels lining each side of the 8-lane road, and a huge number of people walking down the sidewalks. There are also all sorts of people handing out advertisements for strippers and escort services, but that's another story. So Mark and I went through a number of hotels, finally stopping at the Bellagio (the one where the movie Ocean's Eleven was filmed) to hit up some slot machines. We each started with $5, and *somehow* managed to fill up our communal bucket with quarters. We figured we had something like $200 american in there.. but being that it was our first time gambling we had no idea how rare it was to do something like that. So yeah, we spent nearly all of it, without winning any more. Oops. After that fun was over we resumed our tour of the various hotels and eventually ended up back at ours.
Monday:
Ummmm hrmm, what did we do monday.. monday.. monday.. Oh yeah. Breakfast at a place in our hotel, then the four of us went down to Mandalay Bay and the Luxor (crazy hotel, btw) to pick up our tickets for the shows we were going to see that night. We did a bit of shopping around there, then went over to New York-New York, where Mark and I went on the big roller coaster around the hotel. That was a pretty cool experience, especially as we managed to get the front two seats. Good times. Then it was off to "Fashion Show Mall" to do a bit of poking around. The stores in Vegas are so crazy.. all sorts of high fashion names. Ie, Prada, Gucci, Armani, Boss, Versace, Victoria's Secret, and a bunch of other names I'm only familiar with because of the Fashion TV channel. We then went for an early light dinner at a really nice restaraunt, probably the best place we went. This is when I took a brief break from my drinking abstinance. Sorry! I was pretty tired of having to avoid all alcohol, and wanted to enjoy my time in Vegas.. so yeah, I drank. My bad. :( Anyway, we had a couple bottles of this extremely tasty red wine (Sterling Merlot, if you were interested) and appetizers. After that was finished we split up, Mark and I going to see the Blue Man show and my parents off to see Mama Mia. The Blue Man show was good, but we both agreed that it (surprisingly) wasn't as good as the one we saw in Edmonton. There wasn't really a consistant theme to this one, and the audience didn't get as involved. Also I felt like the music wasn't as good. Still it was a fun experience, and I'm glad we went. If you haven't noticed by now, a lot of stuff goes on in one day in Vegas. It's kinda nuts. After the shows we met up with our parents again, this time to have a real dinner at an Italian place in NY-NY. More wine was downed, and much good conversation was had. By the time we finished it was getting to be pretty late, so my parents headed back to our hotel. This is when the real drinking began. Mark and I went to Coyote Ugly (still in NY-NY), where we simply got ripped. In addition to all the wine we'd had early, we each probably had 5 or 6 beers as well as a couple jaegermeisters (and not the shots either, they were way bigger than that. Took a few solid gulps to fire those down). We met all sorts of people.. a bunch of friends from LA, a couple from Vancouver, and group of people from Chicago.. if only I could remember what we talked about, eh? We left that place around 3:00 and went over to Mandalay Bay, *I think*. Anyway we went into the club Studio 54. However, it was completely closed. Somehow the front door was unlocked, so Mark and I just walked in and went exploring. That was so cool. We went behind the stage, up onto the catwalks, into the dressing room, everywhere. Man, so much fun. Eventually Mark dragged me outta there and we went home. I only learned this later, but it turns out that we took a cab home, and I even sat in the front seat. How about that! Got back to our hotel, gambled for a bit until they brought us free beer, then went up to the room where.. uh yeah, I puked. Oops. I'm such a dumbass.
Tuesday:
Holy Hangover, batman. I felt like crap nearly all day tuesday, probably until dinner anyway. After slowly getting out of bed and pulling a bit of a "fear and loathing in las vegas" (ie what the hell happened last night??) I had a small breakfast then we all drove to an outlet mall about half an hour our of Vegas, right on the California border. This place was awesome. All sorts of big name stores, with super cheap prices. My favorite was the Banana Republic one, I got this nice button up shirt for $40 american, and my mom said she'd seen it here for $110. Not half bad. We all got a few things there, had lunch, then headed over to another outlet mall closer to Vegas. That one was good too, but I didn't find anything for myself. Everyone else got some stuff though. After this big shopping excursion we headed back to our hotel where we got tickets for a small variety show, then went and had a light dinner before it started. The show was pretty funny.. fairly small (maybe 150 people in the theatre) but it was enteraining. Lets see.. there were a couple Russian strong men who did this bizarre balancing act, a few dudes doing tap dancing, the (apparently) best juggler in the world, some kid who bent himself through a toilet seat cover, and a bunch of other ones. All in all a fun show, while also being very weird. After this we were all pretty tired so we headed back to our respective hotel rooms. Mark and I ordered the slowest room service of all time and watched Terminator 2 before calling it a night.
Wednesday:
Got up nice and early (6:00 am), had breakfast, then headed off to the airport. Awww yeah, helicopter time! The four of us went on a helicopter tour of Vegas and the surrounding area, such as the Hoover dam and the Grand Canyon. So cool. I've never been in a chopper before, so that experience was really neat. Slightly different than in computer games, oddly enough :) Anyway we flew around for about two and a half hours, taking in all the sights of the desert. In the middle of that we landed in the Grand Canyon to have some champange and take pictures, which was very impressive. It's hard to describe the scale of the Grand Canyon, it's just so huge. On the way home we checked out some bizarre rock formations (such as extremely red rocks sticking out of the otherwise uniform desert floor) and flew over the strip. It was raining by this point so none of those pictures turned out, but it was an all around very cool experience. After that whole experience we were dropped off back at our hotel, but we didn't do much for the rest of the afternoon. We were all very tired, so Mark and I just hung out in our room and went for lunch. I then slept for a couple hours before dinner. Woo, siesta fiesta. Then it was time to get all dressed up and go out for dinner, to yet another nice italian restaraunt. After this meal we headed back over to the Bellagio for the Cirque de Soleil show, "O". I think about 5 times during the performance I head myself muttering "woah" under my breath. It was simply a fantastic performance.. everything was so well coordinated, the set was very impressive.. etc. However it's very hard to describe.. sort of a gymnastic / synchronized swimming / diving / comedy show. I had no idea what the plot (if any) was, but it didn't really matter, it was lots of fun to watch.
Thursday:
Hey, congrats if you've made it this far! Nothing all that exciting happened thursday, so I'll just say that it was basically filled up with packing, organizing our departure, lots of waiting around, and a fair amount of shopping thrown in. We went over to the Venetian hotel (very cool) and found a Banana Republic (heh) where I found a bunch of cool stuff, ended up getting a button up shirt and a wool sweater. Good stuff. Then it was a good bye to our parents (they're staying in utah golfing until sunday) and home time for Mark and I.
Well I gotta run off to class, but I'll try to update later with some pictures (didn't take enough, but there should be a few good ones) and some commentary, as opposed to this straight 'here's what I did' write up. And as they say repeatedly on the Las Vegas rap radio station, Word.
Without further ado, a bit of a review of my trip to Vegas:
Sunday:
Flew into Vegas about 6:30 local time, and the sun was already down. It sets quite a bit earlier there than it does here, but that was cool because it looks way better at night. From the plane the strip looks like a miniature toy town, only when you actually get there on foot do you realize how huge everything actually is. Anyway Mark and I checked into our hotel (the Aladdin) then waited for awhile while my mom and dad got setup with their rental car. When we were all set to go we cruised around our hotel for a bit, then grabbed a bite to eat at a rather mediocre mexican restaraunt. We then briefly checked out a few of the shops in our complex, then Mark and I went off on our own. The strip is really something else.. it's hard to describe if you haven't seen it yourself. For maybe 20 blocks there are these incredibly massive hotels lining each side of the 8-lane road, and a huge number of people walking down the sidewalks. There are also all sorts of people handing out advertisements for strippers and escort services, but that's another story. So Mark and I went through a number of hotels, finally stopping at the Bellagio (the one where the movie Ocean's Eleven was filmed) to hit up some slot machines. We each started with $5, and *somehow* managed to fill up our communal bucket with quarters. We figured we had something like $200 american in there.. but being that it was our first time gambling we had no idea how rare it was to do something like that. So yeah, we spent nearly all of it, without winning any more. Oops. After that fun was over we resumed our tour of the various hotels and eventually ended up back at ours.
Monday:
Ummmm hrmm, what did we do monday.. monday.. monday.. Oh yeah. Breakfast at a place in our hotel, then the four of us went down to Mandalay Bay and the Luxor (crazy hotel, btw) to pick up our tickets for the shows we were going to see that night. We did a bit of shopping around there, then went over to New York-New York, where Mark and I went on the big roller coaster around the hotel. That was a pretty cool experience, especially as we managed to get the front two seats. Good times. Then it was off to "Fashion Show Mall" to do a bit of poking around. The stores in Vegas are so crazy.. all sorts of high fashion names. Ie, Prada, Gucci, Armani, Boss, Versace, Victoria's Secret, and a bunch of other names I'm only familiar with because of the Fashion TV channel. We then went for an early light dinner at a really nice restaraunt, probably the best place we went. This is when I took a brief break from my drinking abstinance. Sorry! I was pretty tired of having to avoid all alcohol, and wanted to enjoy my time in Vegas.. so yeah, I drank. My bad. :( Anyway, we had a couple bottles of this extremely tasty red wine (Sterling Merlot, if you were interested) and appetizers. After that was finished we split up, Mark and I going to see the Blue Man show and my parents off to see Mama Mia. The Blue Man show was good, but we both agreed that it (surprisingly) wasn't as good as the one we saw in Edmonton. There wasn't really a consistant theme to this one, and the audience didn't get as involved. Also I felt like the music wasn't as good. Still it was a fun experience, and I'm glad we went. If you haven't noticed by now, a lot of stuff goes on in one day in Vegas. It's kinda nuts. After the shows we met up with our parents again, this time to have a real dinner at an Italian place in NY-NY. More wine was downed, and much good conversation was had. By the time we finished it was getting to be pretty late, so my parents headed back to our hotel. This is when the real drinking began. Mark and I went to Coyote Ugly (still in NY-NY), where we simply got ripped. In addition to all the wine we'd had early, we each probably had 5 or 6 beers as well as a couple jaegermeisters (and not the shots either, they were way bigger than that. Took a few solid gulps to fire those down). We met all sorts of people.. a bunch of friends from LA, a couple from Vancouver, and group of people from Chicago.. if only I could remember what we talked about, eh? We left that place around 3:00 and went over to Mandalay Bay, *I think*. Anyway we went into the club Studio 54. However, it was completely closed. Somehow the front door was unlocked, so Mark and I just walked in and went exploring. That was so cool. We went behind the stage, up onto the catwalks, into the dressing room, everywhere. Man, so much fun. Eventually Mark dragged me outta there and we went home. I only learned this later, but it turns out that we took a cab home, and I even sat in the front seat. How about that! Got back to our hotel, gambled for a bit until they brought us free beer, then went up to the room where.. uh yeah, I puked. Oops. I'm such a dumbass.
Tuesday:
Holy Hangover, batman. I felt like crap nearly all day tuesday, probably until dinner anyway. After slowly getting out of bed and pulling a bit of a "fear and loathing in las vegas" (ie what the hell happened last night??) I had a small breakfast then we all drove to an outlet mall about half an hour our of Vegas, right on the California border. This place was awesome. All sorts of big name stores, with super cheap prices. My favorite was the Banana Republic one, I got this nice button up shirt for $40 american, and my mom said she'd seen it here for $110. Not half bad. We all got a few things there, had lunch, then headed over to another outlet mall closer to Vegas. That one was good too, but I didn't find anything for myself. Everyone else got some stuff though. After this big shopping excursion we headed back to our hotel where we got tickets for a small variety show, then went and had a light dinner before it started. The show was pretty funny.. fairly small (maybe 150 people in the theatre) but it was enteraining. Lets see.. there were a couple Russian strong men who did this bizarre balancing act, a few dudes doing tap dancing, the (apparently) best juggler in the world, some kid who bent himself through a toilet seat cover, and a bunch of other ones. All in all a fun show, while also being very weird. After this we were all pretty tired so we headed back to our respective hotel rooms. Mark and I ordered the slowest room service of all time and watched Terminator 2 before calling it a night.
Wednesday:
Got up nice and early (6:00 am), had breakfast, then headed off to the airport. Awww yeah, helicopter time! The four of us went on a helicopter tour of Vegas and the surrounding area, such as the Hoover dam and the Grand Canyon. So cool. I've never been in a chopper before, so that experience was really neat. Slightly different than in computer games, oddly enough :) Anyway we flew around for about two and a half hours, taking in all the sights of the desert. In the middle of that we landed in the Grand Canyon to have some champange and take pictures, which was very impressive. It's hard to describe the scale of the Grand Canyon, it's just so huge. On the way home we checked out some bizarre rock formations (such as extremely red rocks sticking out of the otherwise uniform desert floor) and flew over the strip. It was raining by this point so none of those pictures turned out, but it was an all around very cool experience. After that whole experience we were dropped off back at our hotel, but we didn't do much for the rest of the afternoon. We were all very tired, so Mark and I just hung out in our room and went for lunch. I then slept for a couple hours before dinner. Woo, siesta fiesta. Then it was time to get all dressed up and go out for dinner, to yet another nice italian restaraunt. After this meal we headed back over to the Bellagio for the Cirque de Soleil show, "O". I think about 5 times during the performance I head myself muttering "woah" under my breath. It was simply a fantastic performance.. everything was so well coordinated, the set was very impressive.. etc. However it's very hard to describe.. sort of a gymnastic / synchronized swimming / diving / comedy show. I had no idea what the plot (if any) was, but it didn't really matter, it was lots of fun to watch.
Thursday:
Hey, congrats if you've made it this far! Nothing all that exciting happened thursday, so I'll just say that it was basically filled up with packing, organizing our departure, lots of waiting around, and a fair amount of shopping thrown in. We went over to the Venetian hotel (very cool) and found a Banana Republic (heh) where I found a bunch of cool stuff, ended up getting a button up shirt and a wool sweater. Good stuff. Then it was a good bye to our parents (they're staying in utah golfing until sunday) and home time for Mark and I.
Well I gotta run off to class, but I'll try to update later with some pictures (didn't take enough, but there should be a few good ones) and some commentary, as opposed to this straight 'here's what I did' write up. And as they say repeatedly on the Las Vegas rap radio station, Word.