Vegas, Baby, Vegas!

Never fly US Airways if you can at all avoid it.  They sucked.  First of all when we got to the airport, some guy by the line asked us where we were going.  Vegas we said, so he said, “Oh, you need to go down to the other check-in”.  Which we did, dragging very heavy bags the entire way.  Once we got there and had waited in the queue, the guy looked at our tickets and said, “Oh, you’re going to Vegas via Philadelphia, you have to go back to the other check-in”.  Grr.  And this is why you should always leave plenty of time before your plane leaves.

So we get back there, explain to the moron about going through Philly, and finally get checked in.  We hop on the plane, which is filled with all the stereotypical Americans we hadn’t seen up till then.  Loud, old, stupid, did I mention loud?  It was matching tracksuit day, and we weren’t invited.  Thank god.

It was matching tracksuit day, and we weren’t invited. Thank god.

Anyway, the first leg of the flight is fairly short, then we wait an hour in Philly, then get back on the same plane.  I think I used the time wisely by writing up a To-Do list.  Top of which was: Become rich and buy my own plane.  The second flight was where it got most annoying.  We’d already twigged onto the “these cheap bastards don’t feed you, so bring your own food” trick, so were well covered there, but on all the other flights they at least gave you a drink.  Well, they do that on US Airways, but only after they spend an hour or so faffing round advertising their frequent flyers programme and handing out sign up forms.

The coup-de-grace was when they announced they’d be showing The Lake House as the in-flight movie.  Then, to add insult to injury, if you wanted headsets, YOU HAD TO BUY THEM FOR $5 A POP.  WTF???  So.  Lame.  Luckily I had my own pair (noise cancelling for his comfort), and wasn’t interested in The Lakehouse (Keanu and Sandra were good in Speed granted, but the Lakehouse never blew up from what I saw of it) so I gave my headphones to Eleanor, before she got into a fist fight with the attendant and got us kicked off.  We could have ended up in Idaho (No, you da ho!).

Anyway, we landed finally, and departed vowing never to fly them again if at all possible.

Then our Limo driver met us at the baggage claim and took us out to the stretch limo I had arranged.  He cracked open a bottle of champagne (but forgot the roses for Mum and Elle – don’t bother with Presidential Limos, wouldn’t recommend them).  Despite having paid for an hour of his time, and having read that other limo drivers take most people for a cruise up and down the strip and stop at the famous Vegas sign, ours went straight to the hotel.

Which was The Mirage.  At first I was a bit dubious about The Mirage.  I wanted to stay at the Bellagio, as I am a big fat snob, and had managed to get our first night there at a cheap rate.  After the first night though things got expensive fast, and we had a trip booked the next morning so it would have been a pain to check out again, so I cancelled the Bellagio, and booked all three nights at the Mirage, for a pretty cheap rate.  Just through their website as well, no special trickery needed.

Anyway, it actually seemed pretty nice when we checked in, nice atrium with a waterfall and lots of foliage.  Turns out (after being through the foyer of almost all the other hotels on the strip) that it’s one of, if not the nicest ones there.  Seems it’s recently been renovated.

We got a room with a Volcano view (which means a strip view), on a nice high floor, so we had great views.  Only slight downside was being down the end of a corridor, which are really, REALLY long.  But that was about the only downside really.  The room wasn’t super luxurious, but it was nice and comfortable and spacious, and we were in Vegas.  Awesome.

We explored the hotel for a bit, then went out to see the Strip.  Not as crazy as I was expecting really.  Vegas is turning into a family holiday destination, so looks like it’s cleaning up it’s act a bit, which is a bit of a shame.  There were lots of annoying touts standing round trying to hand out cards for callgirls.  They had all seemed to have mastered this weird flick thing they did with the cards to make a sound and draw your attention to them.  Which grew old fast.  Like after the second one.

Still, was cool seeing everything lit up.  We ended up having Chinese at a nice restaurant at the hotel, and then having an early night.  In Vegas.  I’m so ashamed!  Oh no wait, I think Elle and I did go out wandering the Strip for a while.  That’s right, we saw the Bellagio fountain start up and got all excited, and then Celine Bloody Dion came on over the speakers and ruined it.  Gak.  We made our way through a lot of the different casinos, and got a little lost inside Paris Paris, ending up coming out of the back of Ballys one block away from the strip.

We prowled along looking for potential marriage candidates, but no one really took either of our eyes, so we had a drink back at the Mirage.  Oh, Elle did some gambling.  She went all out on a 5c poker machine, and was up a whole dollar at one stage, before blowing it all.  High stakes, us!

Next morning we got up early, and grabbed a quick breakfast, then went over to T.I. (Treasure Island) to wait for our bus to pick us up.  We were headed to the Grand Canyon!  We started out by flying out there, which was cool, got to see the Hoover Dam from the air.  Pretty cool way to see the changing landscape.  Then we landed at a little airport right on the rim of the canyon, and got taken down in a helicopter.  Then we went for a boat trip on the river, then back up in a helicopter.  Was awesome seeing the Grand Canyon from a variety of different vantage points.  It was very awe inspiring, and makes you feel quite small…

Then we bussed over to an Native American village to get lunch, and sit and admire the scenery.  Amazing views, and you could go right up to the edge of the rim (although I stayed well back, as I’m a little phobic about heights).  There’s no barriers or anything, and you could quite easily fall right off.  And it’s 4000 feet high, so doubt you’d survive.

The Native Americans of the area are building this amazing project there called the SkyBridge.  When it’s complete you’ll be able to walk out over the edge of the canyon and stand there suspended.  Looks pretty freaky, but am sure it’ll be safe.  Apparently it can take the weight of five 767’s or some such odd statistic.  Good to see that they’re making an effort to develop themselves via tourism anyway.

After flying back, we decided to hit the pool for a while as it was still quite sunny.  I didn’t end up swimming as I was engrossed in a book, but figured I’d come out the next day in the morning while it was hotter.  Was still fun ordering drinks and charging them to the room though.

Then we went back to the room and got ready for dinner.  Elle had decided she wanted to try the buffet at Paris Paris.  There was a bit of a queue when we got there, but it went really quickly, and we were soon confronted with an obscene amount of food.  Normally I don’t really like buffets (having had too much of them when I worked at the hotel), but this was actually pretty damn good.  They’d broken the serving stations up into the different regions of France, with each serving their specialities.  Mmm, lots of interesting flavours, and I was quite full by the end of the second plate…  But I’d still left room for dessert!  Not as much room as I might have liked, but enough to make my way through most of a freshly made blueberry crepe.  Yummm, it was divine!

After dinner we wandered the strip for a bit.  We were at the Bellagio again at the right time for the fountains, this time to the MUCH better song of Singing in the Rain.  Just perfect this time, and it was really magical.  Definitely my favourite part of Vegas.

Oh yes, outside Paris Paris were some dancing girls, doing a little performance to promote the casino, and Elle forced me to get my photo taken with them.  The things I do…  In all the excitement I forgot to ask them if they wanted to get married.  Damn.

Anyway, we ended up at New York New York, and figured a nice gentle roller coaster would be a good way to round out the night and see some of the lights.  I can’t remember who it was that told me the New York New York roller coaster was ‘gentle’, but when I remember I’ll be having words.  Probably not the smartest thing to be doing after stuffing yourself at a buffet.

Elle was a bit apprehensive, and asked the guy “It doesn’t go upside down does it?”.  To which he replies “Oh yes, it’s got a loop and a corkscrew.  Scared?”  Of course we thought he was kidding, and by this time we were strapped in and there was nothing we could do about it anyway.  I guess I should have wondered why a ‘gentle’ rollercoaster would need big shoulder braces as well as the leg/knee braces.  I was pondering this as we chugged out of the station, and around the corner.  And it started to dawn on me as we were suddenly titled back at what seemed to be a 90 degree angle for the first climb.  I hurriedly took my glasses off, and clutched them tightly, just in time as we went over the first drop.  Which left my stomach somewhere well behind me.  But that was just the beginning, next was an ever bigger drop which seemed pretty much vertical to me.

By this time Elle had started screaming at the top of her lungs, “Argh, argh, argh, argh, argh”.  I was more dignified, and merely swore, constantly and repetitively “Oh sh*t, oh fu*k, oh sh*t, oh fu*k”.  The moments of abject terror were interspersed with nervous hilarity at Elle’s reaction, so I was laughing, then swearing, then laughing again.

The guy wasn’t lying, there was a loop, and a corkscrew, and it was anything but gentle.  But it was great fun (although I wasn’t in a huge hurry to jump straight back on).  We all got off with shaky legs, and wandered over to see the automated photo that gets taken after the corkscrew.  The one of Elle and Mum is absolutely priceless, and I had to buy it.  Elle is full on screaming her lungs out, while Mum has her head bent over looking like she’s passed out or had a heart attack.  Of course she reckons it was because she was bent over laughing at Elle, but we’ll never know.

We walked off the shakes by heading up to the Luxor, and had a drink to commemorate Dad.  It’s the sort of hotel he would have enjoyed, all very Egyptian style.

The next day was our last full day in Vegas, and the last full day of the trip.  And it was raining!  What were the chances?  It’s meant to be in the middle of a desert for f’s sake.  So much for my swim plans.  So we went down to the big mall over the road from Treasure Island instead.  They had a discount ticket outlet there and we were hoping to get tickets to a good show for cheap.  I decided that I wanted an authentic Vegas experience, so got the just the tickets I wanted, but more about that later.

I shopped for a bit, then went back to the hotel for a nap.  By the time I woke up it was time to get ready to go out.  Elle had booked us in to the revolving restaurant at the top of the Stratosphere.  Which turned out to be the perfect choice.  We got there just before dusk, so had a magnificent desert sunset on our way round, then got back to the strip when it was dark and everything had lit up.  Fantastic views, and pretty good food, I’d recommend it.

After the rollercoaster experience the night before we decided to skip the ‘fun’ activities on top of the Stratosphere (like spinning round in mid-air over the edge of the tower…)

And we had a show to catch.  A tribute show!  To The RAT PACK!

That’s right we were off to see people pretending to be Frank, Deano, Sammy, and some other guy I’d never heard of.  While standing in the line, we went past three (3!) separate wedding chapels.  Anyway, we got great seats in a booth at the back of the room, and settled in to watch the show.  Which was fantastic.  We were far enough back that the people actually looked like who they were meant to.  They’d obviously worked on getting the mannerisms and voices down pat.

It was in the style of one of those Celebrity Roasts just like in those DVD’s Time is always trying to sell on TV.  So there was lots of laughs and some great songs.  I had a great time, and it was a great end to the trip.

After the show we went downtown to check out Fremont St, which has a big laser light show.  There was even more neon and lights here than on the strip, and I saw the part where they filmed the Evermore ‘Running’ video, so that was sweet.  Downtown is still a bit seedier, so saw a few interesting sights.  Frozen drinks can do strange things to people…

We went back to the hotel and had one last drink, then mosey’d on up to bed.  The American Trip was almost at an end.

We had a bit of time the next morning before our flight, so did a bit of shopping (I bought a book on Texas Hold’em.  Watch out Vegas next time!)  We had a nice pizza and salad for lunch (the servings in Vegas are pretty huge), and then went to wait for our limo back to the airport.  Which was about 25 mins late, but we still got there with enough time.

After the check-in person astutely picked up the fact that my luggage shouldn’t be heading to Auckland (thankfully) we were all set to get to San Fran.  Pretty uneventful flight, and an emotional landing as the impending departure loomed before us.

And soon we were there.  Mum and Elle needed to go to the International Terminal, and I needed to go collect my luggage.

So, after big hugs, and a few tears, we said our goodbyes and I was off on my own.