Rio to New York in 6 Months

It was a 6 hour drive from Yosemite to Vegas but we really like driving as there is always
something interesting to see. I saw a sign at the side of the road the other day that said,
“Drinkin’ dulls your thinkin’ on or off the job”. There is always something to see it is cool.

Anyway, we got to Vegas and what a contrast it was from Yosemite. We made the mistake of arriving on a Friday night without a room reservation so we ended up staying in the dodgy motel that only rented rooms by the night. We realised what kind of motel it was when we switched on the TV and saw that thay played hard core porn movies 24 hours a day.
The hotel was at the bottom of the strip but we could still see the MGM sign and the other big casinos so we thought we would try to walk. We realised after about an hour that maybe the distances were a bit decieving. We decided to get a bus after that. We could not believe the scale of things in Vegas. The casinos and hotels were huge and they are
still building more.
Here is a picture of me on the strip in the day. You can see the Eiffel Tower from the casino, “Paris” in the distance.

There is the Paris casino that has replicas of all the main things in Paris and there is the New York, New York casino that has a statue of liberty and all its hotel buildings are like the new york skyline. It is pretty amazing.
While we were in Vegas we went to see Toni Braxton perform in the “Flamingo” casino showroom. The Flamingo is one of the oldest casinos on the strip and it only held about 700 people so it was a really good atmosphere. We had a little booth we were sat in to watch it.
We also went to see a variety act show called “V” in the “Aladdin” casino which was really good. We got free tickets to see it but we had to go to this timeshare presentation to get them. They were really pressuring us and we ended spending 3 hours there but at least we got something free. We also got free buffet tickets for the Luxor casino but I lost them which I was quite annoyed about.

We stayed in the dodgy motel for a couple of nights and then moved to the Barbury Coast casino which is in the centre of the strip. We did not check in until about 5 o clock and they must have run out of standard rooms as we got upgraded to a suite for free.
Here is a picture of the Barbury Coast hotel and casino. You can see the Eiffel tower and the Flamingo hotel in the background.

While we were staying at the Barbury Coast we found some deal or no deal slot machines that we ended up getting addicted to. We played them all night one night until 6am. We were pretty wasted too as we were getting free vodka red bulls all night while we played. Here is a picture of Kelly with a girl we met who was playing the maching next to us.

We also met these guys while playing the machine too.

We only stayed in the Barbury for one night as they did not have any rooms the next day so we moved to the Circus Circus casino which is at the far end of the strip. In the Circus Circus casino they have a high wire act that performs above you while you are gambling in the casino. It was really cool. Only in Vegas !!!

Here are a few more picture of vegas at night.

We went to see the fountain show a couple of times at the Bellagio casino (you see the fountains at the end of Oceans 11) which was really good and we also saw the volcano thing at the Mirage. Here is a photos of the pretend volcano erupting at the mirage.

Here is a photo taken from the Mirage looking over at the strip.

Here is a picture looking down at the inside of the New York, New York casino.

And finally, here is a picture of Kelly next to the MGM lion (largest bronze sculpture in the USA)

Thats it for Vegas.

Next Stop….

The Grand Canyon.

James

Tags: Las Vegas, Travel, USA

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 26th, 2006 at 2:57 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.