Vegas Baby!

Vegas is a pretty stunning place.
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The start of our trip to Vegas started on a solemn note, we heard in the news in the morning, the great Steve Irwin was no more. I couldn't help feeling somewhat apprehensive at learning the exact nature of this death given the fact he has a penchant for leaping on crocs and wrestling them. I'd imagine his death was likely

to be a messy one. Fortunately the circumstances of his departure were somewhat less gruesome, he'd been stung by a Stingray in the heart while filming. RIP buddy.

Vegas old town. Those more observerant may recognise this as Balrogs stage background in Street Fighter II.
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Sadly, this is not where the sad news ends. I myself sufferred somewhat of a devastating loss while on the road. Hmm, where to start. Well I've been growing my hair for the last month or so and it's going through a bit of a transition period which is best left covered up. Now I don't normally wear hats as they just don't suit me so I don't think I've ever owned one. However, by fluke I'd stumbled across a hat that not only didn't make be look stupid, I actually liked. If you look back through the last months worth of pictures, you'll see we are pretty much inseperable. I love that hat.

It was only a matter of time.
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I imagine you've pretty much guessed what happened by now. I was posing for a picture in the back of the car while we sped along the freeway when I leaned my head a little to close to the open window. In a blink of an eye, it was whisked from my head, for a few moments I was in shock, I wasn't sure what had happened.

The deftness of the winds hat removal made me question whether I'd even been wearing it. A glance behind cemented the truth, I turned in time to see it crushed beneath the cruel wheels of following cars. I'm not sure I'll ever wear another hat again.

Literally seconds later, it was gone.
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Anyway, with heavy heart, I'll get onto the meat of Vegas. This was somewhere I'd been particularly looking forward to as there really isn't anywhere else like it. Every building is spectacular, there are reproductions of some of the worlds most iconic landmarks, The Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty, our own hotel was an homage

to the pyramids of egypt. The Luxor hotel is an enormous black pyrmaid home to over 4000 rooms, a huge casino, theatre, resturants and bars and weighing at just 30 metres short of the Great Pyramid of Giza! They probably cheated and used cranes to build it though. Vegas strip is an awe inspiring place to walk around. I know it has a reputation for being tacky, which it is in atmosphere, but visually it's stunning.

Luxor, that is a very bright light.
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Patrice, who managed to maintain her facade of hating casinos for all of 30 minutes, took to gambling like a duck to water. Luck of the Irish. I showed her how to play roulette and within minutes was surrounded by a pile of chips. If only she'd also mastered the art of knowing when to cash out.

We spent the first evening in a couple of different casinos and took a trip to the old town where the original casinos were established by gangstars and crimelords in the 30s. The majority of the evening was spent drinking an gambling, all the casino´s are cunningly designed so you can't find your way out, unless it's into another casino or someplace else they can fleece you for money. Patrice managed to get lucky in the craps table despite not really knowing the rules and being more than a little drunk. We staggered home at some time or other. Casinos don't have clocks and I don't have a watch. I expected we'd find the way back fairly easily, from the top of our hotel shines the brightest beam in the world (41.5 gigacandela) it can be seen from planes in LA over 440km away. Unfortunatley for us, they'd turned it off at about 3am. Thanks guys.

The next day we'd planned to stay somewhere cheaper but when checkout time arrived we were all still sleeping soundly. We'd managed to wrangle a pretty good rate for the 1st night and with some smooth negotiations by a hungover and still tucked in bed Patrice we got the 2nd night at the same rate. Nice work.

When we finally arose, we poured over a plethora of vouchers and leaflets to find one of Vega's legendary buffets on the cheap. The range of food was great and it just becomes frustrating you can't eat everything you've eyed up on the first circuit of the tables without making yourself immobile through overeating.

Determined to do something other than gamble for our entire time, we went to a comedy night after the feed to see some amusuing but fairly average comedians. Afterwards, we ended up, inevitably back at the tables. I'd been doing fairly well overall and was probably around $50 up by the end of the evening. Deciding I should make one large final bet, we headed to Caesar's Palace where I strolled over to a high stakes table play a single hand of blackjack for $100 bucks. I may not have won, but I did pick up some free mouthwash at the luxory toilets on my way out as petty recompense. It made me feel much better.

We'd taken it fairly easy on the drinking as the following morning we would be driving to the Grand Canyon and we had a long hike ahead of us. At least that's what we thought until we checked our schedule back at the room and realised we had an extra day! Rather than have our money slowly ebb away in Vegas for another day we decided we'd goto Zion National Park and break up the drive to the Canyon.

More Vegas pictures can be found here:

Vegas Pics