Because there is so much to cover, I decided to split this into several posts. This is the first.
[singlepic id=368 w=320 h=240 float=center]Well folks, we did it. We finally had the chance to take a few days and go off and do our own vacation without having to worry about the kids. Not that having the kids here is a bad thing, but parents do deserve to have their own time with just each other and this was exactly that. We left them in good hands and went on our way. Here’s the story of our journey there and back, and what we did while we were there.
This trip started on Monday, October 12th, 2009. We got up nice and early and headed off to Halifax to catch a flight. I chose to fly us out of Halifax instead of Moncton because I knew we could connect through Chicago there, and it would get us into Vegas a little earlier than if we had flown out of Moncton. Tamara’s friend Tammy was nice enough to drive us to Halifax and take our car back to drop off at Tamara’s mom’s.
The flight out of Halifax was pretty simple. We landed in Chicago no problem and spent about 3 hours there. We ate, used the lounge, vegged, and even snagged a geocache in the middle of the airport before heading to our gate. We left Chicago on time and landed in Vegas around 7:30 Pacific time, which is 4 hours behind Moncton. We asked around and found a shuttle that would take us to the hotel and so we waited.
We got on the shuttle and Tamara struck up a conversation with the shuttle driver. This conversation would in fact set the tone for the entire trip. About halfway to our hotel we learned that our shuttle driver was in fact from Moncton, NB. He even showed us phone numbers he had on his cell of people he called back home on a regular basis. Of all people we would meet on our way to the hotel, we met a guy from Moncton. What are the odds of that?
[singlepic id=377 w=320 h=240 float=left]We arrived at our hotel, The Bellagio, where we were very impressed by the building. This is the famous Vegas hotel that has the fountain show in the man-made lake in front of the hotel. I had booked us a suite for 3 nights. Upon checking in, we learned that in order to get to the guest elevators, and thusly our room, you have to walk through the casino. This was rather funny at the beginning but would become a pain in the ass later. We then took the elevator to the 32nd floor (which was card key activated and it took several tries to get it right) and made our way to the room.
The room itself was VERY nice. Although it did not overlook the lake (which I called the front desk about and they told me it would be an additional $450USD per night if any were actually available which they were not) we did have a very nice view of the city. The suite had 3 bathrooms. One small bathroom when you enter the room, one for him which had a marble covered shower, and one for her which was a spa/hot tub style jacuzzi bath. There was a “living room” and a bedroom. Both the living area and the bedroom had flat screen LCD TV’s as did both the his and her bathrooms. First time I ever stayed in a hotel with TV’s in the bathrooms. We unpacked a little, rested up, then decided to hit the hotel floor to see what we could find.
[singlepic id=346 w=320 h=240 float=right]We wandered around and looked at a few shops. Tamara noticed a very nice pair of boots in one of the boutiques that only cost $800. We then proceeded to the conservatory which is basically a seasonal garden with flowers and cool other “plant” type stuff. We took a pile of pictures and enjoyed the gardens but we knew we would return as getting pictures in the evening was a little harder. We knew daytime pictures would probably come out better. When that was all done, we were pretty tired so we hit the sack and got up the following morning.
[singlepic id=330 w=320 h=240 float=left]We knew that we wanted to explore “the strip” which is basically Las Vegas Blvd where all the big hotels and casinos are. If you don’t know much about Vegas the only thing you really need to know is that most of what you want to see is within a 5K stretch of a single road within the city. Yes, there are other parts to Vegas but the biggest stuff is on the strip.
Since I was still on my geocache a day trek, I knew that I would have to hit up a few while in town. There were two literally in front of our hotel so it seemed logical to start there. So we went outside and took a look at the exterior of our hotel during the daytime. Very nice. Big lake and a lot of people just standing around looking. There’s music playing pretty much everywhere out of any hotel and ours was no different. We wandered over to Plant Hollywood where we got hit up by some guy who said he’d give us free tickets to a show if we sat through 1.5hr “demo” of their new hotel. With a limited amount of time, we bailed on that and soon found out that there’s a LOT of people trying to get you to do something similar.
We basically worked our way from there down the strip from hotel to hotel. We went into the Paris hotel which is basically a recreation of the Eiffel tower with a casino at the base. Some pretty neat stuff in there. We then wandered over to Bally’s casino which I believe was right there as well. We didn’t have much interest in the casino and would not have gone in had it not been for my friend Alex. Alex, if you are reading this, it’s a good thing we didn’t win 🙂 Let me explain.
Alex moved to Fredericton a few months ago (btw, did you move back or are you still there?) and had a yard sale to get rid of a bunch of stuff. Me and Tamara went to the sale and Alex gave me a bucket of geocaching “swag” that I could give away in my caches. Inside the swag was a $5 Bally’s casino chip. Tamara had joked repeatedly (even before she knew I had booked this trip) that she was going to bet that at the Bally’s casino in Vegas and win big. Well, we took the chip into the casino and the cashier verified that it was a valid $5 chip we could play. We took it to a Blackjack table and played our $25 or so and used that chip in our bet. The dealer had never seen it before and even the pit boss came over to verify it was real. We played our hands, and lost. So Alex, no worries. Had we won the jackpot or something silly like that, we might have had to pay you a dollar or two as a thank you 🙂
[singlepic id=358 w=320 h=240 float=right]As we walked down the strip on the right hand side, we went into each hotel as we walked by, and checked out various shops and such. When we got to the Venetian hotel, Tamara noticed that they had a wax museum inside. Having never been to one, I went along with her to go inside and was pleasantly surprised at what I saw.
There were a lot of different “famous” people including Harrison Ford, Lady Diana, Jessica Simpson (photo), Britney Spears, Jenna Jameson, Sean Connery, Elvis, and the list goes on. Some of them looked VERY real and others looked very fake. It was still pretty cool to see them. There was even a video later on that showed how they go from conception to actual figure using the real person as a base. While we were there we also went through a “haunted” tour which was not very scary at all. Heard a lot of people scream while we were outside of it, but inside it wasn’t so bad.
[singlepic id=363 w=320 h=240 float=left]The last hotel we hit along the strip we didn’t go into. We were told by our shuttle driver to check out the Wynn hotel so we walked down towards it. Although we didn’t go in, we did walk around and saw some cool gardens and waterfalls. I also noticed in the sign for the hotel they had a pixelboard which showed a fairy flying around which Tamara wanted to get some pictures/video of for her “floss fairies” (ask her). Once we got that, we wandered across the street and checked out the “fashion mall”. If you thought Champlain Mall had a lot of clothing stores, they had nothing on this place. Store after store after store of nothing but clothes. We were actually looking for a toy store that had something for Dylan. After talking to a local, we got a tip on where to go next so we left there and headed back down the strip, but this time heading back towards the hotel, and on the other side of the street.
We walked into but didn’t spend much time at Treasure Island. This is a hotel on the strip that is famous for it’s pirate show. We wanted to see it but we also wanted to get to Ceasar’s Palace as it had the shops we were looking for. We snapped a few photos here and there of the hotel and made our way along the strip. We also passed the Mirage which was another hotel. We learned later that they had some kind of volcano show but we never got to see it. During our time there we also never saw the pirate show at Treasure Island so we do have a few things to see next time around.
[singlepic id=333 w=320 h=240 float=right]We decided that we needed a little bit of a break because we had been walking the entire time. We decided to go back to the hotel and rest for a bit and believe me, we needed it. As soon as we were ready, we made our way back to the strip and off to Ceasar’s Palace. This was made easy by the fact that it was connected by an outdoor pedway to our hotel. We got inside and it was really larger than life. Lots of statues and pillars and very cool stuff to check out. We made our way through the casino where at one point we went through the “Pussycat Dolls” section. This was basically about 10 Blackjack tables in front of the Pussycat Dolls club (dance bar) where all the dealers were half-naked hot women. There was even two dance stations with one of them with a dancer. Boys, if you go to Vegas, play Blackjack here. You won’t be disappointed.
We made it to the statue show inside which was basically three statues “talking”. One of them was the father of Atlantis who was trying to decide whether to give his power to one or another God. Kind of a neat show but nothing spectacular. We left there and hit up FAO Schwartz which was a bigass toy store. We found Dylan his special Spiderman gift there (which he loves btw) and bought Megan some lady bug toys and then headed back to the hotel. On the way back we spotted what were definitely two prostitutes hanging out in front of the hotel. We had seen a LOT of people around and it was quite obvious these ladies were working girls.
[singlepic id=374 w=320 h=240 float=left]By the time we were done there, we were both pretty tired so we headed back to the hotel to soak in the tub and get some much needed sleep. The problem was that when all was done, I was wide awake. So Tamara hit the sack and I went downstairs to snap some photos and hit the blackjack tables. Took a picture of the blown glass flowers in the lobby (photo) which was pretty cool. I then found a $10 table and tried my luck. I walked away about an hour later about $145 up. $100 = $245 was not bad for an hours work. If I had more cash I would have bet higher but I am not a rich man. I was tired and it was time to hit the sack.
