We headed out for Vegas Thursday morning about 7:30. We went with our friends Chuck & Emily. It was cold and nasty outside, we drove through a rain and snow mix until just past Gallup (about 3 hours). The drive from Farmington to Vegas isn’t exactly an exciting or scenic one. Mostly Indian reservations, sand and sage brush. We stopped in Kingman, AZ for In-n-Out Burger. It was good.
The trip went relatively quickly, until… about 5 miles out from the Hoover Dam. Since the new Hoover Bridge is being constructed and there are no highways currently finished to meet up with the bridge the construction was horrible. What should have taken 15 minutes took 3 HOURS!! By the time we got to the dam we just wanted to get through it. We did stop and check it out for a few minutes, but not as long as we would have otherwise I’m sure. Hoover Dam is pretty cool to see, smaller to me than what I had expected from pictures and movies. The new bridge is scary and cool looking. It’s almost finished, with only a few more sections left to be filled in.
Once past the dam we saw our first casino. Only about 45 minutes away from Vegas at this point the drive went really quick. We got our first view of the strip about 20 minutes away.
We stayed at the Monte Carlo. It is a beautiful place towards the south end of the strip. We were in between New York New York and the new City Center. Valet parking is “free” in Vegas other than the tip which is a nice perk. Jonathan was able to talk our room into a great deal. We were on the 31st, only one more to the top. The view was really nice, especially at night. After getting settled into our room we met Chuck & Emily downstairs and checked out the hotel casino and shops before heading to the Rio for dinner.
We ate at an all-you-can eat seafood buffet. It was great! The buffet had everything you could image, from crab legs (cold, warm or in a sauce) to sushi, and the desserts! Amazing!! We all made 2-3 trips just to the dessert section. We headed back to the hotel and took it pretty easy after all the food and the long drive, we were pretty worn out so we played some slots and went to bed.
Jonathan and I got up early the next morning, had a quick breakfast at the food court in the lobby and checked out a few hotels near by while we waited for Chuck & Emily. We saw the MGM, Excalibur, and Luxor. We met up with C&E in the City Center and headed to the mall in Planet Hollywood. We split up while they shopped and headed to Bally’s and Paris. We had an amazing lunch at the café in the Paris hotel. I had an opened-face shrimp salad sandwich and Jonathan had a duck and brie sandwich, each with fries and soup. After lunch we were stuffed and went back to the hotel for a quick nap.
Later that night we had dinner at D.Vino. A wine bar and Italian restaurant in our hotel. It was great. We started with a bottle of wine and had a cheese and salami tray for the table. Jonathan and I split a salad and had a dinner for two meal of Porterhouse that was carved tableside with red char and potatoes. It was SO GOOD!! We shared Tiramisu for dessert too. After dinner and a change of clothes we all went out to see the Bellagio fountain show. The Bellagio is gorgeous and the fountain show was my favorite thing from the entire trip. I could watch it over and over. He watched from the front of the hotel looking out over the fountains and at the Eiffel tower at night. Beautiful!! The show was set the Andrea Bocelli and Charlotte Church, “Time to Say Goodbye”. It was so beautiful and perfect; I can’t put the words together to describe it adequately. Afterwards we walked through the largest hotel I’ve ever seen, Caesars Palace. This place is huge. It has a huge mall, hotel, casino all in one place. This place really wore us out.
Afterwards we went to Treasure Island to see the Pirate show, but just missed it. We waited around for a while for the next one, but didn’t want to wait the entire hour for it, so we went back to the hotel for some slots and sleep.
The next day Jonathan and I slept later than we have in a while. We really were tired after all the walking the day before. We ate lunch at the hotel at Dragon Noodle Co. We had dim sum for the first time. It was really great.
We headed back down to the Bellagio, The Mirage, and The Venetian that afternoon. These are all beautiful, huge hotels. I especially loved The Venetian since I have always wanted to go see things like it in Italy. Jonathan made the joke through each hotel we saw, “Well we don’t have to go to Paris now”, he’s so wrong! They were all amazing and made me want to see the real things even more.
That night we had tickets to the Tournament of Kings dinner show. It is like Medieval Times. None of us had gone to one of these shows before. It was a lot of fun for our last night in Vegas. We headed back to the hotel afterwards and played some Roulette and slots before heading to bed and preparing to leave.
Vegas is a fun and crazy place! We want to go back this summer and see so much more. There are many, many places we didn’t get to see.
I am still trying to sort through all of our pictures but will get them posted as soon as I can.
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