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May 01 Vegas, Baby!For our birthdays this year, we took each other to beautiful Las Vegas, NV! Shawna and I had always heard friends raving about how great it is, and how ridiculous it was that we'd never been there before, so this year we decided to find out first-hand.
Always willing to sacrifice sleep to maximize vacation time, we flew in at 6:00am Saturday morning and flew out at 11:00pm on Monday night. To ensure a proper Vegas party atmosphere we brought along our friends Bill and Katy, who are always up for travelling and excitement and were great fun to have along.
If you haven't been to Las Vegas, it's basically a theme park for grown-ups with a few key activities that fuel the excitement:
1) Drinking: We had this activity pretty well taken care of by early afternoon... in fact we took care of it so well that most of us overdid it by 4:00pm the first day and we swore off alcohol for the remainder of the trip. This was also a relatively cost-effective choice, since drinks in Vegas are around 9 bucks a pop... the legend of "free drinks while gambling" is a flat-out myth.
2) Gambling: Never one to miss out on the thrill of chasing a dream, Shawna dropped a full $2 on slots. She exercised mind-boggling self-control by stopping while she was ahead: that $2 grossed her $5, which made her a Big Winner in her book.
3) Sight-seeing: Vegas is full of heavily-themed hotels and replicas of international landmarks. They have a miniature of the Statue of Liberty, a miniature of the Brooklyn Bridge, a miniature of the Eiffel Tower, and a miniature of a Coke bottle, among other things... and by "miniature" I mean "several story-high, intricately detailed replica". They have little zoos full of rare animals and sea life; they have a hotel that makes you feel that you're walking through the streets of Venice, and one that makes you feel like you're inside an Egyptian pyramid; and they have a hotel that makes you feel like you're in a bad dream full of drunk clowns, creepy fat kids, and stuffed monkeys that endlessly churn a vat full of stuffed monkey-guts (it's true, see the video). We saw most everything, and we have the blisters all over our feet to prove it.
4) Shows: You can see everything from aged rock stars to cheesy magicians in Las Vegas, but we unfortunately weren't able to squeeze one into our schedule this time around. We did, however, spend several hilarious conversations making fun of the ubiquitous Carrot Top billboards and posters that were littered throughout every corner of our hotel, and that was pretty entertaining in its own right.
5) Food: There were a lot of great restaurants, and we discovered our favorite at the Mirage hotel. It was a Brazilian barbeque joint, and all of the food was flavorful and plentiful. Shawna had glazed salmon on a bed of garbonzos and plantains, and I had the "Radizio", which meant that a waiter came by our table every five minutes and dumped one of nine different spit-barbequed meats on my plate -- everything from fish, to bacon-wrapped turkey, to ham, beef, sausage... I lost track. But it was all amazing and we rolled out of there like happy stuffed little pigs. 6) Weather: Las Vegas is smackdab in the middle of the desert, and they boast over 300 days of sun every year. So having just spent a cold and wet winter in Seattle you can imagine how thrilled we were to climb into our swim trunks and flip-flops, jump into the giant wave pool at our hotel... and get caught in a wind and rain storm in 60-degree temps. Vegas is full of surprises! Las Vegas was a cool place to visit purely because if you don't see it first-hand, you'll never believe how over-the-top it really is. And we surely had a good time cruisin' town with Bill and Katy, and we came back with some good stories. But if I never make it back again... well, I won't cry myself to sleep. I mean, I'm sure Carrot Top does world tours now and again, so I can just wait until he makes it a little closer to home. Seriously, I can wait. Happy travels! - Jas
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