Monday 6th August

We headed to Las Vegas on the Highway 15 from LA. The trip is just short of 300 miles and the scenery turns to desert pretty quickly. Having night stopped in our car at a rest stop just out of Barstow we hit the strip around breakfast time. With an hour to spare on arrival until our room was ready we cruised up and down the Las Vegas Blvd in search of a healthy breakfast. We settle for Krispy Kreme donuts within the castle hotel/casino known as Excalibur. Yum Yum!

We checked in with ease at the Tropicana and our room was fantastic. Nothing fancy but a comfy bed, hot shower and a great view of the water fall swimming pool. After a brief rest we hit the town hard, starting at Freemont St in order to expience the largest tv on earth and get some $6.95 half pound steaks! Whilst letting our food go down we watched some crazy Russian street circus acts and then headed to the new area of the strip.

As we couldn't afford any of the marvelous shows that the hotels put on we planned to see the free shows/attractions that hotels/casinos put on to lure customers and gamblers. Just walking around some of the bigger hotels is an attraction in itself. We spent the evening looking at Belagio, Ceasers Palace, Flamingo, Paris and the under constuction Planet Hollywood. We swung by Bufflo Bills for a couple of .99 cent Maragritas. Real sour! We crashed out about 3am and slept until we could continue our adventures in the morning.

We woke up with half an hour to spare before we had to check out of the hotel. Having opted for express checkout with 2 minutes to spare we packed our bags in to the car and decided we spend the rest of the day in vegas seeing the things we had not had time for. These included the MGM lions, previewing a TV show pilot, the Belagio Fountains, the Treasure Island Pirate show and the Brand new Wynn lake of dreams.

Of course being in veges the pressure of gambling is huge and suvked us in. We opted to play the 1 cent machines in order to control the gambling demon in all of us. For a while we were up $10 but ended up crashing and burning all $6.50 that we had put aside for the experience! Totally worth it!!!