Las Vegas 1-2008

Well, the trip was a blast. Lost an arm and a leg, but had fun in the process. I probably walked 20 miles walking up and down the strip every day. The weather was in the mid 50's, so a long sleeve t-shirt and pants did me just fine. I enjoyed the whole thing quite a bit. I will wait to talk about the food in a second post, as it was a major and good part of the place. My favorite casino from the outside was definitely New York New York. My favorite inside was Caesar's Palace. The skyline of New York New York was just amazing along with the roller coaster that intertwines it. Caesar's was just beautiful architecture and the ceilings were all painted like sky with many large fountains inside and the feeling that you were in a small village when shopping around. The Eiffel tower was pretty cool, but I did not go up in it ($). I believe I went in every major casino on the main part of the strip. We did not however, ever get down to Fremont Street for various reasons. That is the one thing I wish we could have done, but didn't. Kate was in meetings all day every day, so I was left alone to enjoy walking the strip (which I did all day long every day). Paris was also very nice inside. MGM Grand didn't impress me too much except for the giant lion outside. The Bellagio was very classy and the fountain show was top notch (especially after dark {night and day difference [haha]}). The Luxor had a very cool entrance, but once you got to the actual casino floor, it was nothing to speak of. The Venetian was cool with the river inside, but I found it much the same as Caesar's (don't know who copied who), and I enjoyed Caesar's more. Everywhere you walked there was porn on the streets. It was in little news stand things and the later in the day it was the more guys there were trying to hand you flyers for call girls. It wasn't too bad during the noonish hour, but in the evening, they were everywhere. We walked all the way to Circus Circus, and the atmosphere went downhill the further we got away from the main part of the strip, so we never made it to the stratosphere either. Though I saw quite a few of the free shows that were 5 minutes long, we only went to on major show that you had to by tickets for (due to Kate's tight work schedule). We saw Penn and Teller who were amazing. They are very funny and their tricks and superbly done. I also got both their autographs after the show on my ticket (yeah!!). We stayed in the Rio which was very nice, though off the strip a little. They provided a free shuttle to the main strip, which I used endlessly. Because of Kate's work and conference, we were getting free drinks every night, so the alcohol bill total consisted of 2 beers we bought at a restaurant. Not too shabby. It was a wonderful trip with good weather, lots of fun things to do, and lots of fun things to see. The mountains in the background topped it all off too. We took about 150 pictures, though none can do justice to the real thing.