Vegas Baby

We left things last time as we were heading from San Francisco to Vegas, via another night in LA. We were back on the old faithful greyhound buses that we'd spent half our Aussie live's on. Fortunately for us these were only six to seven hour journeys.

The landscapes we travelled through were pretty amazing; quite different to those of New Zealand where everything seems right up close, but the vast expanses of the plains and the mountains in the distance made for some great window gazing.



Despite being impoverished travellers, scraping by on 30 quid a day each for most of the last 5 months, I'd pulled out the big guns and treated us to four nights in a super fancy hotel for Christmas. Thanks to everyone who made suggestions on where we should stay, we ended up going for the Bellagio - one of the fanciest places on the strip.

As soon as we arrived we felt totally out of place wandering through the amazing shops with our backpacks on, everyone there looks so filthy rich, and by the time we made it through to the reception we thought it was only a matter of time before they busted us and pointed us down the street to some grubby hostel. Thankfully, in Vegas anyone's money is good money, even in the swankiest of places =)



The lobby was a crazy combination of flowery glass arty ceilings and fancy Christmas decos, and about a million people all fighting for the check-in queues! It took a fair while but eventually we checked-in and headed for room sixteen-thousand and something... they are mind blowingly big hotels, that's for sure.

We'd arrived in the last evening, so we headed straight out to get our first hit of the Vegas atmosphere and stroll down the strip as everything was lighting up.



No sooner as we'd left the hotel the famous water fountains sprang up and we joined the throng watching the show, with the Paris hotel in the background.



This is the view back towards the Bellagio from the lake, sadly a bit blurry but it gives an idea of the size of the water area at the front of the hotel. Our room was right around the other side, I guess you have to pay the big bucks to get the fancy rooms overlooking the fountains!

It didn't take any time at all before we were swept up in the maelstrom of neon, adverts and noise as we headed up the strip taking in the sights. We got as far as Caesar's Palace before we caved in and headed to get a beer and do some gambling =)



We'd not done all that much research on the way the bars work in Vegas, but it became clear quite quickly that if we played on the video poker/blackjack machines they'd give us all the free booze we wanted. Each different place had slightly different rules on how much we had to put in, and what the minimum stake was, but before long we became pretty good at roughly breaking even whilst enjoying the complimentary booze. Happy days :)

The next day (slightly later in the morning than originally planned..) we set off for a longer trip to check out the sights and the wacky stuff going on inside the various casinos.

We liked the European themed ones quite a bit, maybe something to do with feeling a bit homesick - I liked Paris the most whilst Alex went for the Venetian, complete with its fake-sky indoor St Mark's Square:



Despite it being Christmas Eve, there weren't quite as much Christmasy spirit things going on around the place as we'd expected. Although we did find a good bit in the Bellagio once we'd got back and done some more exploring in our own back yard.



That evening we hit the casinos again - after an hour or so of polishing our blackjack theory online to maximise our drinking scheme returns - and played on the various machines and got merrily drunk again. I really wanted to play some 'proper' blackjack at a table, so we headed away from the Bellagio's 20 dollar tables to a cheaper place up the strip. I merrily lost forty dollars in the space of about six minutes (despite having been practising the theory stuff all day!) thanks to a wicked run of luck from the house. This quickly put an end to my dreams of "making it big in Vegas" and we headed back home relatively early so we'd be in good spirits on Christmas Day.

The big day arrived and we spent the first few hours on Skype calling our families back home. As we were talking to my lot there was a knock on the door which we thought was the room cleaners - so we sent them packing - but the shouts of "let them in" that flew back out of the screen meant we quickly opened the door... the little schemers back home had ordered a nice bottle of bubbly to be delivered to our room, so that set the tone for the day and we had a great day of eating and drinking.

We couldn't resist hitting the room service to get some tasty breakfast to go with the champers :



By the time we'd finished the feast we realised we'd only got another few hours until our lunch booking, so we quickly rescheduled that until later in the day to avoid any the inevitable culinary overload.

We went for a nice stroll to work off breakfast - and its amazing that there was absolutely zero difference between Christmas Day and any other in Vegas. The casinos were still busy, there were still throngs of people everywhere you could see outside, and the traffic was still crazy! Definitely a case of no rest for the wicked.

We'd booked at a table at one of the nice restaurants in the Bellagio for a late lunch, and when we arrived they mistook us for someone else who'd kicked up a big fuss to get a lake-side table outside. We didn't exactly do much to try and clear up their confusion, and before we knew it we'd been whisked through to a great table right on the beautiful lake with the fountains.



Hopefully this didn't leave another couple having an angry confrontation with the maitre d', but you've got to take your chances, especially in Vegas ;)

Sadly we couldn't get any traditional Christmasy food, it was a bit too fancy for that, but we both ended up choosing a really tasty chickeny-orangey thing which made us very happy indeed.



After all that food and drink we were definitely feeling the Christmas spirit, and took a stroll back in the other direction down the strip to walk it off, followed by more (mild!) casino action in the evening. We'd already booked our next days activity so wanted to be in a clear headed state to head off to the Grand Canyon by helicopter on Boxing Day.



It was both of our first times in a helicopter, and I'm not sure if there is a better place on earth to try it than the Grand Canyon.



The tour we'd booked involved a 45 minute flight to and from the canyon, with a flight down into the canyon and then stopping at a crazy cowboy ranch nearby. This last bit sounded a bit ropey on paper, but actually it kind of made the trip.



Our host at the ranch played and sang made up songs whilst we had a tasty bit of lunch, and then there was an opportunity for a horse ride (which we declined, it was extra and it was also freezing cold outside!) and we could stroll around the ranch. They put on a daft western shoot out demo as well, it was all quite cliched but good fun. Then we hopped back into the helicopters for the flight back.



The journey back was more direct than the way out, and the views were just as great. Before landing we took a route across the strip and had a chance to see all of the hotels from above which was amazing.



And that was about it for our frantic four days in Vegas. We didn't get to any shows, mostly because we'd spent so much money on the helicopter ride, but that gives us something to look forwards too next time we visit. Hopefully next time we'll not be backpackers, and have a bit more money to spend - it is possible to have a good time and not spend much, but we both get the feeling it'd be a whole load more fun if you could go crazy for a few days and do and see everything on offer!

It was pretty sad leaving our amazing Bellagio room too, this was definitely the pinacle of luxury so far on the trip, but we had to face the reality that we were heading for some pretty low budget hostels in Mexico for our next stop!