Viva Las Vegas Baby!

You know the usual saying… “What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas.”  Well, I can assure, we did nothing that should have stayed in Vegas but its probably a good idea that what goes on in Vegas, generally stays in Vegas.  I’m not sure one could maintain that lifestyle on a daily basis.  But, I guess… people do live in Vegas.  But, I’m not sure its made for me.

First of all, we had a blast in Vegas.  We aren’t drinkers or big gamblers, but we still had a lot of fun.  I walked away with about $60-$80 in gambling winnings.  Now, I did win quite a bit more than that, but I like to play with my winnings.  It’s really fun to hear that slot machine go “ding, ding, ding.”  I could easily be addicted.  In fact, on our last night, I won $110 dollars on a quarter slot machine, cashed out… but then really thought about going back.  But I saw this sign on the ticket machine that said, “Be Responsible.”  So, I cashed in my winnings and went home with them.  J

Okay, that’s kind of a lie… Rob and I played a nickel slot machine for an hour at the airport before our flight home.  But in all fairness, it was Rob who convinced me.  And we did play for a complete hour.  Where can you buy an hour’s worth of entertainment for 5 bucks?  Nowhere!  So, I think it was a good investment.  Though, I had tripled my money ($15) but managed to lose all of it.  And then, I saw lady go to my machine and not ten pulls later got the triple sevens.  That will kill you. Haha. 

Awesome ceiling fixture in The Bellagio

But, anyways… Vegas.. .I’m not sure what I expected, but it was not quite what I was expecting.  It was not overly hot (in fact, on the first day when we got there it was 59 degrees when we landed and it was 74 in Houston when we left at 5 AM).  It was crowded, but I wouldn’t say overly so to where we had a hard time waiting in lines or anything.  What really surprised me was the push of strippers, topless bars, girls direct to you, etc.  Now, I’m not naïve… I know these things exist.  I know people go to them.  I expected it to be prevalent in Vegas.  But, they were EVERYWHERE!  Every two feet someone was wanting to hand something to you about topless bars, etc.  There was hardly a picture that could be taken where there wasn’t a truck driving by advertising some strip club.  In fact, me, Rob and Ryan took a picture (stacy was w/ the camera) and when she snapped it, there was truck advertising some strip club right behind us.  It was a little disturbing.  I can definitely see why my Frommer’s Vegas Guide said Vegas was no longer kid friendly.  I will say thought I did see quite a few families in Vegas.

In front of the New York New York hotel and Lady Liberty

There was this one guy who was trying to give out some kind of tickets to Ryan & Stacy about some night club and then said, wait.. “You aren’t old enough to go a night club.”  I can assure, if they had seen us with R&S, they would have said the same thing to us.  What’s kind of weird is really didn’t get ID’d at all.  There were a few times that they stopped us and asked if we were 21 or what our birthday was, but no one actually asked to see the physical ID.  I had brought our passports along so that no one could doubt us!  The only time someone asked us for physical ID was at the airport when we were on our Nickel slots.  (Pretty sure after they asked us for physical ID I stopped winning on my slot, I think that was on purpose by them…)

Our hotel was fabulous.  Both of us (here I’m referring to both couples of R&S and R&J) got upgraded to THEhotel at Mandalay Bay.  Or in order not to get confused by the name, we called it TEHhotel as its kind of weird to say I’m saying at “The Hotel.”  People are like, what hotel?  We were originally supposed to be just at The Mandalay Bay.  Our rooms were over 700 square feet big.  I guess I should really say, our suite, not our hotel.  50 inch TV in the living room.  Had a half bath in the living room as well.  Floor to ceiling windows.  Huge master bedroom.  Even huger bathroom.  Standing shower and deep tub.  TV hanging on the wall in the bathroom.  Let me tell ya, I could really get use to watching TV while taking a shower.  It’s quite nice.  Maybe one day….

TV in the bathroom

Bedroom

Living room

Another thing that was surprising to me was the amount of people that pose as “special characters” on the sidewalk for tips.  We saw many a Elvis walking around.  Also, lots of Mario’s and Yoshi’s.  There was a whole group of men that were posing as different Johnny Depp characters (Pirates of the Caribbean, Edward Scissorhands, Alice in Wonderland, etc).  I will say, the Pirate of the Caribbean Johnny Depp would have easily fooled me for the real deal.  He was quite a good imitation of the real character.  We also saw Bumblebee from Transformers, Iron Man, and a few other characters that paid homage to Robert & Ryan’s childhood.  Stace and I tried really hard to convince the boys to take a picture with their favorite superhero’s but they wouldn’t do it.  I could tell they really wanted to though.  We wouldn’t have judged….too much.  We saw a guy pretending to be a band member from Kiss, but he looked really old and just seemed to smoke a lot.  Never saw anyone take their picture with him.  I kind of thought maybe I should just quit my day job and find a good costume and take pictures with people.  Can’t be too bad.  I wonder how much money they make a day??

We also went to the Hoover Dam where we went on a Dam tour with our Dam guide and had so much Dam fun.  We walked through all of the exhibits and even had our picture made.  We got to actually go inside the dam and see all sorts of cool stuff.  Okay, so it was mostly concrete.  But, they knew when they built the dam that they wanted it to be a tourist attraction so the floors were made of marble.  Doors trimmed in gold.  Light fixtures were fancy and even the air vents were made to be appealing to the eye.  It was really cool.  It was all still original from the 30s as well.  Then they draw lines where they see cracks and some were marked from the 1940s.  The cracks were still petty much the same size as they were in the 1940s, no worries.  No leaks here!!  I wouldn’t really recommend the dam tour if you are closter phobic because you are in these little tunnels walking around.  Apparently before 9/11 you used to go all the way down to the bottom of the dam, but that is no longer.  Stupid terrorists and them taking away our freedom.  Anyways….

Hoover Dam

Another thing that I thought Las Vegas did well were the pedestrian over the road walkways and moving walkways.  You didn’t have to get just too close to the roads b/c when you think about the people that are probably driving those cars… you probably shouldn’t get any where near those drivers!  We rode lots of escalators and moving walkways.  I could get use to those as well.  Unfortunately, even with the moving walkways and sky ways for pedestrians we still didn’t see all of the strip.  We didn’t get to see the Volcano at The Mirage or see the Wynn or Encore hotels.  We tried as hard as we could, but we just couldn’t see everything.  Also, there’s absolutely no way you can walk the whole strip.  We even took the trams from the Mandalay to the Excalibur and the tram from the Monte Carlo to the Bellagio.  That will get you all the way to Mid-Strip.  We never made it to the North strip except to eat dinner at a place in the Stratosphere.  If we ever go back, I think I’ll stay mid-strip as that seemed to be where most of everything went on and where you really wanted to be.  I think the inside of the Bellagio and Caesar’s Palace were my favorite as well.

We saw the Fountain Show at the Bellagio which was just spectacular.  That was probably my favorite “free attraction.”  I enjoyed the music and the fountains were very entertaining thing to watch.  I only wish the show lasted more than about 3 minutes a turn.  But alas, if you are watching fountains then you are not gambling which is not good for business.  On our way to the fountains, Stacy had a man that was dressed up as a pirate (I think that is right anyways) who then shot out his fake knife and said “on guard” really loudly and pointed is sword at her (all in good fun).  It was quite frightening!  Oh, the streets of Vegas!

Part of the Bellagio Fountain Show

We saw to fabulous shows while we were there:  The Lion King and Cirque De Solei’s ‘O’.  The Lion King was really my first broadway show to ever see and I just loved it.  I just love the Circle of Life song.  Makes me feel all warm inside and to burst out in song (which is never a good thing).

Ryan & Stace at The Lion King

The Lion King

The show ‘O’ was very good as well.  The whole thing was done in and above water.  Very impressive… I’m not sure if there was a story or not, but the tricks and stunts were very impressive and enough to keep me entertained for the hour and a half.  After that show, we did a little gambling and that is where I won my $110 dollars that I spoke of earlier.  Stacy was caught yawning by some guy that walked by and he came up to her and grabbed her by the shoulders and told her how she shouldn’t be yawning.  Well, it was 12:30 at night and she was sick, so she had perfectly good excuse to yawn.  I was yawning too.  But he just like kind of appeared and the way he approached her I honestly thought he knew her.  We were definitely all caught a little off guard and just kind of standing there and watching like, who is this guy that is approximately 12 inches from her??  He left soon enough, but it was quite odd.  We were waiting to play the Deal or No Deal game.

Before the start of 'O'

Let me tell ya, do not play the Deal or No Deal game at a casino.  Sure, it may sound exciting, and it is, but it is a rip off.  Worse than playing a dollar slot machine.  You have to keep betting at least a dollar until you land on a “bonus” and can begin the game.  Each time you are betting a dollar, your actual reward only goes up by like 30 cents.  So, your potential reward does not even go up by the dollar you are betting.  It’s not a good deal.  We ended up betting all of our dollars before we landed on a bonus round and didn’t get to play but one round of the actual game.  Very disappointing.  Good thing we played with the $10 dollars that I won (part of the $110 dollars).

Sweet butterfly in The Conservatory at The Bellagio

On the last day we spent the day out by the pool.  Stacy was feeling pretty bad, so she stayed inside.  I will say the Mandalay pool was quite impressive.  It has sand so its kind of like being on a beach.  The sand was even extremely hot, so it definitely reminded you of the beach.  It had a wave pool, regular pool, and a lazy river.  Quite large.  The only downside:  it was PACKED.  It took us 40 minutes to find chairs.  And we only found chairs after we determined we would have to just stay in the sand w/ no chairs.  People were leaving so I grabbed two and then we eventually found a third and grabbed it.  What’s really funny is once we got down to the pool, I realized Robert had on blue plaid shorts and Ryan had on red plaid shorts.  This is to typical twin of them.  Robert was the twin that always wore blue and Ryan always wore red.  Just classic that is what they would revert to in a swimsuit.  Even to this day, Robert has a hard time wearing a red shirt and says that it is Ryan’s color.  Just the nuisances of twinness I guess.  They are so cute.  J

We also ate Charlie Palmer’s Steakhouse in the Four Seasons on our last night before we saw ‘O.’  We also took a group shot of the four us in front of the classic Welcome to Vegas sign.  The steakhouse was awesome.  Both of us (couples) each shared a 14 oz strip and got different potato sides (us au gratin and R&S got little baby round potatoes) and R&R shared broccoli.  We also go desert (us a peanut butter bar and R&S chocolate cake).  Both were delish and it was quite an enjoyable evening.

The only caveat to our dinner was the fact that when we got the bill we realized that the soda’s cost $5 each.  And for each refill as well.  Ryan drank three cokes.  Stacy had two.  Good thing I only had one.  Kind of ridiculous!  I guess that is how they get you for not ordering alcohol??  Still, they might have mentioned it when they kept refilling our glasses!  Not cool to pay $25 for soda.  You could have bought like at least 60 cokes for that price.  Definitely crazy.  That was the only downfall.

So, what else did we do while we were there??  We toured the Valley of Fire State Park (pretty brief tour b/c it was kind of a long drive to get there and we were a tad bit tired from already doing the Hoover Dam thing all morning).  It was very cool though, I will say that.  We spent a lot of time in the Coke store as well as the M&M stores as well.  I do love both of those things!!!!  We spent some time at the Lion Habitat at MGM  We also toured each hotel from the Mandalay through Caesar’s Palace.  That’s kind of a lie.  We skipped the inside of the Luxor and the Excalibur.  All that in itself was exhausting and completely filled our days.  We didn’t even get around to any shopping, and everyone knows how that is my favorite thing in the whole wide world.  We ate lunch at Serendipity 3 one afternoon, which was spectacular.  I think Frozen Hot Chocolate might be my new favorite drink!!!

At the M&M store.

At the Coca Cola store (the picture that you could buy cost $30 bucks, so we passed)

New favorite drink.. Frozen Hot Chocolate!

Valley of Fire State Park

We also went to

Fremont Street

in downtown Las Vegas.  Can’t say I was that big of a fan.  I really just found it crowded, smoky, and loud.  Lots of vulgar people kind of walking around and the casino’s were definitely old and very smoky.  I don’t mind the smell of smoke in a casino if it’s light… but I don’t want to like inhale smoke when I walk in.  That’s not a good sign.  I even saw this woman with like no clothes on except some flower petals on her know whats.  I do not know where to look when this occurs.  Do you blatantly look down to where its noticeable you aren’t looking???  Or do you just walk by as though the person is fully clothed??  It’s a very awkward situation to the passerby.  I guess a man wouldn’t typically have this problem, but for some reason the guys say they didn’t notice this woman (I’ll pretend I believe them).

You may have noticed I never mentioned Robert or Ryan gambling at a table or anything.  Well, that was because we could never find a table that was less than $10 a bet.  That’s a lot of money to bet in one hand when you aren’t an expert!!!  At night sometimes you couldn’t even find a table that was lower than $25 a hand.  Even on

Fremont Street

downtown.  The only way to even find a $10 table was to wake up early in the morning.  If you know Rob, it takes a lot of motivation to wake up early and unfortunately losing money was not on this list.  So, it was really just me gambling away at the slot machine!!!  But, I did walk away a winner and everyone liked to watch me win or lose… so we had a good time doing it.

All in all, I call it a very successful vacation.  Not extremely relaxing, but well… we’d never been to Vegas and it was time to go.  I can successfully mark that off my list.  I would definitely go back, but maybe next time the beach and all-inclusive resort or something might be calling my name.  J  It was hard to pay a high price for every meal you ate in Vegas.  Okay Ryan & Stacy, where are we going next?!?