Brian was chosen as one of the lucky members of his staff to go and cover the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), held annually in Las Vegas, Nevada. He went last year, and did such a great job, that they wanted him to go again. Since we were already planning Christmas vacation on that side of the country, we were able to extend our vacation a few days and just go directly to the show. This worked so much better than Brian having to fly back west a few days after we returned to New York. And I was able to tag along.
We were in Vegas January 4th through the 8th. My parents were able to fly down from Idaho and spend a few days playing tourist with me while Brian had to work. And work he did. I hardly saw him at all while we were there. Only briefly in the morning while he got ready to head out and briefly again at night when he stumbled in the door. He was out the door before 7:00 am every day and didn't get back to our hotel room until 10 or 11 pm. His days were spent running from meeting to meeting while trying to cram in some writing time. After returning to our hotel, he would then stay up a few hours more, finishing all of his writing and sending it back to the magazine in New York. Not a fun few days for him. He usually comes out of these tradeshows a little loopy from lack of sleep and good meals, and always has a cold. However, this year, he went into the show with a cold, which miraculously subsided a bit during his four work days, and came back in full force afterwards. I felt a bit guilty getting to play while he was working so hard, but I had a wonderful time seeing my parents.
We flew into Vegas from Concord, CA, and instead of just having one direct flight, we had two. Our first flight took us down to San Diego, where we had a one hour layover, and then boarded our second flight to Las Vegas. Kind of annoying, but that's what you have to deal with when you book the cheapest flights. We arrived around 1:00 pm on the 4th and immediately were assaulted with slot machines as we exited our gate. We traversed through the large airport and Brian went to pick up his press pass at the information booth, while I headed over to grab our bags. We then waited in line for a taxi to take us to our hotel.
We stayed at the Westgate Las Vegas Resort and Casino (formerly the Las Vegas Hilton or LVH) on the north east end of the strip. It was a fairly nice hotel.
The lobby contained a statue of Elvis Presley and quite a few piece of memorabilia like clothing and jewelry. They also had his personal gold plated Walther PPK on display. Apparently Elvis performed 837 sold-out shows consecutively at this hotel.
Along with being immediately exposed to Elvis stuff within an hour of being in Vegas, we saw a bride and groom all dressed up and taking pictures with their parents in a side corridor of our hotel, near the wedding chapel. I'm not sure if they had just gotten married, or were about to be. I guess the stereotypical image of Vegas is pretty accurate.
Our room was in the east wing of the hotel on the 22nd floor. We were facing away from the south end of the strip, so we didn't have a good view of all the themed hotels. We could see the top of the Stratosphere Hotel from our room's windows and we got to watch the crazy rides that they have up there. There is a bungee jump ride and another one that spins its seated riders around while hanging off the edge of the building. No thank you!
We did have a pretty good view of North Las Vegas with the old strip and all of the residential areas. Look at all that sky unobstructed by buildings...we loved it.
Luckily for us, the Las Vegas Monorail stopped at our hotel. It made it very convenient to catch a ride down to the south end of the strip, where a lot of Brian's meetings were and most of the sights for me.
My parents stayed at Excalibur the first two nights they were there, on the opposite end of the strip from where Brian and I were. I rode the monorail down to the MGM Grand each morning and then walked across the street to their hotel. Let me tell you, each of these hotels/casinos are huge and very maze-like. It took me 10 to 15 minutes to walk through the MGM Grand to the street. It was kind of annoying that you just couldn't cut through to where you needed to be, instead of having to wind your way through the corridors and casino floors.
Before coming to Vegas, I looked up all the free sights and shows available to see. Plane tickets aren't cheap you know, so Brian and I have learned to travel as inexpensively as possible...and that means taking advantage of any and all things free. So I had a list of things I wanted to see and show my parents. My Mom has been with me before while sightseeing -- she and my siblings came to visit me in New York in 2010 and I ran her a bit ragged trying to show her everything -- but my Dad has never played tourist with me before. I don't think he was expecting to walk as much as we did. We were all limping a little at the end of our second full day together.
We started our sightseeing at the Luxor, on the strip's south end. My Mom and I are fans of anything Egyptian themed, so this was kind of cool. We really like the giant Sphinx outside, and the pyramid-shaped hotel, but that was about it. We walked around briefly inside, but the exterior was the coolest part.
We really didn't ever do much at the Excalibur Hotel in the way of sightseeing... looking at the outside was pretty much it. Aren't my parents cute?!
We ended up spending quite a bit of time in New York New York. Maybe I was feeling homesick (I don't think so) but it was kind of cool.
A lot of the interior shops were places that can be found in NY, like Nathan's Famous Hot Dogs, the Hershey's Store, and Shake Shack. The walkways around all the shops were labelled with street signs named after NY Streets such as Houston and Bleeker. The "buildings" above the shops were reminiscent of buildings in New York. It was just kind of fun...and it's probably the closest I will ever get my Dad to visiting New York.
There were multiple Statues of Liberty about, including these made of chocolate and jellybeans.
It was kind of fun that one of the hotel's entrances was designed like Grand Central Station (the original is so much cooler of course).
They even had a Brooklyn Bridge.
And just for fun, here is a couple shots of New York New York at night.
The weather was great while we were there. It stayed in the high 50's, low 60's. It was so sunny and just felt wonderful. We only needed to wear a long sleeve shirt or sweatshirt...other than my coat I only had my Zion's Bank sweatshirt, so that's what I mostly wore. I got a few looks for that one, but whatever.
We passed by the PBR Bar and we had to stop and get a few pictures for my brothers, who are rodeo fans.
We wandered a bit through all the shops in Planet Hollywood. When we took a moment to sit down and rest our feet we were sitting outside this pond area. The pond's surface started getting foggy, lights started flashing on the ceiling, thunder sounds effects played over the speakers, and "rain" started falling from the ceiling. It was a weird, hokey rainstorm show, not much different than the one you see at the produce section of Broulim's grocery store in Rexburg, Idaho. There was a crowd of people that gathered to watch.
After grabbing a quick bite to eat for lunch, we started walking back down the strip again. We wanted to see the Paris Hotel.
The exterior of Paris was actually pretty awesome. I'm sure it's nothing compared to the real Eiffel Tower, but for what it was it was fun to see.
We ducked inside for a bit, and thought the interior was pretty, but that's about it...it was still basically a casino surrounded by shops. After visiting our second or third hotel, they all started to feel the same, even with their differing themes.
I loved all the palm trees growing everywhere.
After the Paris, we crossed the street to visit the Bellagio. We ducked inside for a bit because we were still a little early for the first fountain show.
The Chihuly glass sculpture chandelier hanging from the ceiling of the lobby was gorgeous! It's called Fiori di Como and consists of 2,000 hand blown flowers. Quite impressive.
The back of the lobby opened up into a room with a glass ceiling where the Bellagio's indoor botanical garden sits. I was disappointed, because it was under construction and there were no plants to be seen. Behind all the tools, ladders, and torn up flooring was a mound of fake rocks on top of which stood some animatronic goats. We thought they were just statues at first, but upon closer examination we could see their heads turning back and forth really slowly. It was weird.
Back outside, we found a great spot to watch the fountain show.
We were still a little early, so we wandered back and forth a bit along the sidewalk in front of the water. We found this guy doing the "floating man trick." It was really weird, and my Mom talked to the guy asking how it worked, but he wouldn't say. So we wandered back to our spot and looked up the trick on our phones. Basically, his stick connects a metal chair to a flat base hidden under his rug. He wears baggy clothes to hide the chair. He wasn't the only street performer we saw while we were there.
Finally the show started. It was so awesome! Honestly, it was so much cooler than anything else we saw there.
We were able to see the fountain show a total of three times during our visit -- twice during the day and once at night. As cool as the fountain shows were during the day, the show at night was even more so. There was just something so fun about the combination of lights, and water, and music, and the whole thing is just so much bigger than I imagined. The song playing during our nighttime visit was "Singing in the Rain" by Gene Kelly. It was perfect.
They have a Serendipity III in Vegas. It sits between the Bellagio and Caesar's Palace. We didn't stop but I snapped a picture as we walked by. I loved the giant Tiffany-esque lamp outside its entrance.
The grounds outside the entrance to Caesar's Palace were very pretty. It was nice to see so much green and even some flowers in January.
Caesar's Palace was quite the giant place. It just kept going and going as we were walking along the sidewalk.
Caesar's Palace was quite decorated inside and it was kind of fun to see all the statues and ceiling paintings. Las Vegas is a crazy place, and there is a lot about it that is just awful, but it was kind of fun to just see the sights. All of the buildings were so big and fancy. It's kind of astounding to think of all the work and money that must have been put into each of them.
We wandered through the maze-like passageways of Caesar's Palace to find their saltwater aquarium. Coming from landlocked Idaho, I still find anything aquatic amazing. My parents are the same way. It was really fun to see all the different kinds of fish swimming around in the tank, most of which we had no idea what they were. We unintentionally arrived during feeding time and got to watch a scuba diver passing out chunks of food to the tank's occupants.
One of our evenings in Vegas, we ate dinner at a place right across the street from The Mirage. The place had a great view of the hotel and even a little balcony that you could walk out onto to watch the strip.
The Mirage also has an aquarium, which sits behind the front desk. We stepped up to the counter, along with a whole other line of tourists to watch the fish. There was an eel swimming along the bottom of the tank. It was so cool! It was a lot bigger than I imagined eels to be.
We made a stop at the Venetian to see the gondola rides. The exterior was impressive all lit up.
The interior was just as cool as its exterior, with painted ceilings, chandeliers, and canals winding along the corridors.
One gondola passed by us with its driver singing in Italian to the couple riding with him. My Dad wanted to see where the canal lead, so we followed him, walking along side the water.
We only stayed out after dark one of the evenings we were there so that we could watch the Bellagio fountains. The strip lights up brighter than a Christmas tree after dark. It reminded me a lot of Times Square. I'm glad my Dad was there to see it, so that he could experience what some parts of NYC are like after dark, without having to visit.
The lighted buildings all looked really cool, and some of the light displays were quite impressive.
The last two nights they were there, my parents were supposed to stay at the Stratosphere, but there was a problem between the hotel and Expedia (which they used to book their trip). After a couple hours on the phone, Expedia was unable to work it out with the Stratosphere, and their reservation was cancelled. Expedia booked them a room at the SLS, just one monorail stop north of my hotel. It ended up working out better than if they had stayed at the Stratosphere, because it was closer and we didn't have to spend time walking back and forth between our hotels.
Our last tourist day in Vegas, we walked over to Circus Circus. We had pretty much seen everything else that we wanted to. This hotel seemed a little older and for lack of a better phrase "run-down" than the others.
While at Circus Circus, we got to see some free circus act performances. They weren't anything exciting, but it was something to see. The first performer was a clown with a string and yo-yo and he did some juggling as well...not that great. We really liked the second performer though, and after watching her, we decided to stay for a couple more. She balanced and spun things with her feet. It was actually quite impressive.
The next couple of performances were okay, but not as good as the foot twirler. These guys were a little weird in their stretchy suits, but we watched their double rope trapeze act anyway.
The last act we stayed for was a single trapeze. Overall, it was okay, but you could tell why they were free acts.
Brian finished up his work that night and arrived back at our hotel room in time to see my parents for a few minutes before they left for their hotel. My Dad was teasing us, saying that they finally had proof that Brian was even there in Vegas. They were flying home the next morning, so we all said goodbye before they left. It's so hard to say goodbye to my parents after seeing them, because we don't get to visit each other a lot.
The next day, I woke up not feeling well at all, and didn't think I could make the flight home. We were able to delay our flight by one day and Brian's cousin Jennifer, and her husband Kevin (who live in Las Vegas) graciously let us stay overnight with them and then gave us a ride to the airport the next day. It was really great to see them and their cute kids and was such a blessing to have family so close and willing to have us over on such short notice.
Our flights were fine for the most part -- the landing coming into New York was quite turbulent, but we survived. While descending into New York, we had a great view of Manhattan. I handed my camera to Brian who was closer to the window and asked him to try and get a few pictures, but the ride was so bumpy that only one turned out kind of clear. The center island is Manhattan. I think that's the Williamsburg Bridge spanning the East River from Manhattan to Brooklyn on the far left and then the Empire State Building is on the far right. On the far side of Manhattan is the Hudson River and then New Jersey is at the top of the picture.
We arrived at creepy La Guardia airport (when we arrive at night it always feels so little and dirty, the lights are turned off, everything is closed, and the only people around are the cleaning crew) and waited the usual forever for our bags. We then went outside where the bitter, freezing cold hit us like a brick wall. We had been enjoying nice balmy weather in AZ, CA, and NV and weren't prepared for the frigid NYC air. In about 20 minutes we were back in our apartment.
Overall, it was a really fun trip and we loved getting to see everyone, but three weeks and three states makes for a long vacation. It was nice to be back in our own home.
Beautiful! And I think you found all the good things in Vegas. If I ever go there again, I will use this as a guide.
ReplyDeleteI think La Guardia is creepy too. And Las Vegas (McCarren?) isn't a very nice airport either. What gives? Both cities need fly-in tourists. Weird