Well, we’ve made it to my 21st blog so far and I’m going to concentrate solely on our 5 days in Vegas as we had an amazing time and there is a lot to tell!

We arrived on the Thursday before my 30th birthday - the reason we were in Vegas. That morning we’d been to the very underwhelming Hoover Dam and I was delirious with excitement as we drove down the strip towards our first hotel, Circus Circus. For my birthday Kav had surprised me and booked 3 nights for us at the Bellagio so we only stayed at Circus Circus for the Thursday and Friday nights.

As we walked in to the lobby to check in we saw the first of many happy and excited (and old we noticed!) brides we would see over the next 5 days! Twenty minutes, a mile of walking and 4 elevators later, we found our room. It was very nice but not hugely different from all the motels we’ve been staying in while in the US, apart from not being able to park right outside our door.
After settling in, we ventured downstairs to take a look around the casinos and the inside amusement park they have called Adventuredome although that was more geared towards kids, not adults. Circus Circus also has various circus acts performing in the hotel throughout the day so we watched some Eastern European girl swing beautifully from the rafters for a few minutes then tried our luck at Midway, the hotel’s kiddy ‘casino’ – we weren’t ready to tackle the big tables just yet! First we played the game where you roll the ball up into various holes which denote points to make your horse run across the track behind the attendant. Know the one? There were 5 of us playing but Kav suddenly came from last to first, winning us a cute gorilla soft toy. A few minutes later we played the game where you point the water gun at the clown’s head to fill the balloon so that it bursts. Well it must have been our lucky day because I won that one and won us a soft toy sunflower! For anyone who’s been counting, that’s now the 5th soft toy coming home with us from our trip. We’ve already shipped home Koali (the koala bear Kav bought me in the Blue Mountains) and Goldie (our dog from DreamWorld), and now Mickey Mouse (from DisneyWorld), Happy the gorilla and the sunflower will be coming home with us in a few weeks! Feeling very embarrassed we took the new ‘kids’ upstairs and went back down to share a pitcher of frozen margarita – start as you mean to go on we thought!!

An hour or so later we were due to meet an old colleague friend of Kav’s and her boyfriend in a bar at our hotel but there must be about 10 so it was a while before we eventually found them, also a few drinks down. We downed another quick drink for dutch courage and made our way outside on our way to the Stratosphere Tower to tackle the world famous rides on the top!!

Now, a few weeks ago while watching TV in Orlando, we happened across a TV programme showing the most intense rides in the USA. Both Kav and I watched with delight and made note of rides and theme parks to see if we could fit them into our already jam packed schedule. That is until they started talking about the 3 rides on top of the Stratosphere Tower in Las Vegas! As you know, when it comes to rollercoasters, not much scares me. Sure I might have my usual “I’m going to die if this harness suddenly flies open mid ride and I plummet to my death” moment at the start but half way through I’m loving it and want to do it again and again. But when I watched the footage of the Big Shot, X-Scream and Insanity I knew there was no way I would be able to do them. I wasn’t even sure if I’d be able to stand at the top of the tower, not alone go on the rides. I’ll explain them to you and then you can decide whether or not you would do them and which ones you think I did! Just remember that the top of the tower is 900 feet high – that’s a long way up (or down)!

The Big Shot – imagine a 4 sided tower 100 feet tall with 4 seats on each side. You sit in one of these seats with a harness over your shoulders and then shot up to the top at high speed before being left to drop to the bottom and then bounce around a bit before being brought down to the bottom. You get to around 1000 feet in the air but the view of the strip is amazing, especially at night.

X-Scream – We’ve all been on see-saws as kids right? Nothing too scary about that? Well, X-Scream is a see-saw except one half tilts over the edge of the building, remember, 900feet in the air! You sit in a pod that holds 8 people with just a bar across your stomach. As the ride starts you are slowly lifted up in the air (as if someone is on the other end) and your pod goes flying over the edge of the building, and then stops just as you feel like you are going to fall to your death! This repeats a few times, plus one time they let the whole thing drop a few feet so that you feel like the ride had broken and you are about to fall to your death!

Insanity – Imagine a claw and on each ‘finger’ is a pod that holds 2 people with a bar across your stomach to keep you in. Once everyone is safely in, the claw lifts up, spreads out and starts spinning quite fast. Doesn’t seem that bad, except you are spinning over the edge of the building, again 900 feet up in the air!

Just watching these on TV made my heart pump way too fast and my hands actually started to sweat – no joke. I made Kav feel them 3 or 4 times because I couldn’t believe how scared I was just watching the rides on a TV screen! I had decided there and then that there was absolutely no way I would be able to do any of them!

So, guess which ones I went on…

Well I was just brave enough to go on Big Shot, but I didn’t enjoy it that much. When we were on our very fast way down my stomach nearly escaped out through my mouth and when I tried to stand up afterwards I needed help. Needless to say I had a very stiff drink after that. Being scared of heights actually didn’t affect me that much because there’s not much time to really think about how high up you are, it was the drop that I didn’t like. But, the view was stunning so kind of worth it!
The other 2 I didn’t dare go on, but Kav did, so if he writes about them on his blog I will put some of his quotes on my next blog so you know what they were like!

After the Stratosphere Tower we went on a bit of a bar crawl stopping for drinks at Slots of Fun (at Circus Circus) for $1.50 beers, then to the new Wynn Hotel. This is the newest, poshest and most expensive hotel on the strip and it really is gorgeous. What I loved about Vegas is that all the hotels welcome you in whether you are staying there or not and you don’t feel out of place anywhere. We sat at the bar at the Wynn and had a very expensive round of drinks and played Blackjack on the machines on the bar and then decided to move onto the next place before we bankrupted ourselves on our first night. We had one more drink at a random bar on the road, said goodnight to Gail and Andy (Kav’s friends) and headed back to our hotel to grab a midnight snack before bed (pizza and subway in case you are interested).

The next morning we woke up with quite a hangover but I managed to walk down to McDonalds and Krispy Kreme in the hotel for some takeaway breakfast. After some coffee, McMuffins and doughnuts we were ready to face the day. That’s another thing I loved about Vegas – you can do anything you want at any time you want. If you want a cocktail while playing Craps at 7am you can, or if you want Krispy Kreme at 3am you can – love it!!

Kav insisted that we see every hotel on the strip during our visit, so on the Friday we managed to see the Wynn (again), the Venetian, Paris and Planet Hollywood. The Wynn really is stunning. It’s the epitome of wealth and glamour. The cafés sell $20 muffins, you need to re-mortgage your house to have dinner and all the horrendously haute couture shops look forward to visits from Victoria Beckham and Donald Trump because they are the only people in the world who can afford to buy anything from them. It is fun however to walk around just to see the sights, and I’m not talking about the décor or beautiful paintings hanging on the walls, the people are fascinating. Lots of women walking around in far too short dresses and dripping in costume jewelry desperately trying to look like they fit in and staying in the hotel, and lots of smarmy looking men sat at high stake casino tables trying to look like they know what they are doing. Having said that, Kav and I said that when we return to Sin City we will stay there. Well you have to after the Bellagio, don’t you?

The Venetian is actually far more my bag. Just being outside feels like you are in Venice. As you walk towards it you can see a smaller version of the Rialto Bridge, a canal with (overpriced) gondolas and singing gondoliers, and the front of the building looks like it belongs in St Mark’s Square. As you walk in the experience just keeps going and going. You are surrounded by classic Venetian columns, marble floors and stunning gold adorned ceilings. As you walk into the Canal shops area the ceiling turns into a dusk sky and you feel like you are stepping outside into real Venice. There are real life statues dotted around, costumed courtiers, beautiful Italian shops and restaurants and a smaller version of St Mark’s Square. The ambience is also amazing. It doesn’t feel like you are in Vegas anymore, which can be a bonus if you’re feeling a little bit Vegas’d out. Being a big Italy fan and a huge Venice fan I loved being in this hotel and would love to stay there to see if the experience extends to the bedrooms too.

Next up was Paris. I knew this wasn’t going to be my favourite for 2 reasons. I hate Paris and I hate the French. Harsh I know, but I worked for a French company for 7 years putting up with arrogant, selfish French people and had to go to Paris more times than I would have liked and so therefore hate it. I can’t see one appealing thing about that city. Sorry, French rant over. The Paris hotel didn’t change my mind. Don’t get me wrong; from the outside it looks pretty amazing. They have an enormous copy of the Eiffel Tower as part of the building, which also has a restaurant at the top, and a smaller version of the Arc de Triomphe to the side, but inside it’s pretty ghastly. There’s nothing special or memorable about it, and it’s pretty confusing to walk around too. It’s typically French – unorganised, unattractive and boring. ‘Nuff said I think.

I was seriously starting to flag at this point and the hangover wasn’t letting up so I put my foot down and demanded that we went back to the hotel after we’d seen Planet Hollywood. At this point it was 3 o’clock, my feet were bleeding from walking, my head was pounding and I was starving hungry. Planet Hollywood as a hotel is nice, but put it up against the likes of New York New York, The Venetian and the Bellagio, it doesn’t do too well, in my eyes anyway. There’s not much to connect it with the Planet Hollywood brand apart from the recognizable celebrity hand prints on the walls outside, and even then it’s really only Stallone, Willis and Schwarzenegger’s and that’s because they are the faces of the chain. Inside it’s slightly tacky. They have a zone in the middle of the main casino where near naked girls dance on poles while desperate men sit at the tables spending more and more money so that they can watch these girls dance for free (wake up guys, you’re paying for it on the tables!!). They also have a peep/strip show as their main attraction which is starring Mel B from the Spice Girls at present but didn’t look very popular I must say! Plus, their main bar is a Hawaiian Tropic bar where ‘waitresses’ walk around in tiny bikini’s and glowing tans – more strutting than waitressing goes on though!

We were finally done but still had to make the long, long trip back to Circus Circus where we went to the $13.99 per person buffet for a well deserved stomach stuffing. Not sure if it was the hangover or the food but I only managed to eat some very dry tortellini and breaded shrimp with mash with gravy! OK OK, I had some blueberry pie for dessert too. After that, I felt like someone had been beating me up all day, so we went back upstairs to our room and collapsed for the rest of the night!

On the Saturday we moved from Circus Circus to the Bellagio. Apart from being at the bottom of the strip, Circus Circus was fun to stay in as it didn’t take itself too seriously, was fun and has great amenities (especially Krispy Kreme!). Walking into the Bellagio was like going from a rack of ribs to fillet mignon –there’s nothing wrong with yummy and cheap but sometimes you need something a bit more high class and seriously tasty.

Although, I must say, the Bellagio didn’t exactly endear itself to us immediately. When we checked in we were asked to wait and wait and wait some more before we could have our room. But, three hours later we walked in and we weren’t disappointed. It really was stunning. The bathroom was bigger than most motel rooms we’d stayed in, the bed was huge and so comfortable (although not as good as the Maui Coast Hotel bed) and we had electric curtains for goodness sake! Plus I even had some birthday flowers waiting for me from a friend, which made my day (thanks again Ems!).
One gripe – every single motel we’ve stayed at has had free Wi-Fi. At the Bellagio, you have to pay $14.99 per 24 hours for the privilege! Cheeky b******s (said Peter Kay style).

After settling in we took a stroll across the boardwalk to Caesar’s Palace Hotel. This place is huge, the biggest on the strip and is incredibly impressive, outside and inside. Every little detail is made to look Roman and it does a great job of creating the right atmosphere for its theme. We took a stroll down through the shops and then, in the distance, I spied the Cheesecake Factory. Now, if you’ve never been to the Cheesecake Factory, the next time you are in the States, try and find one! Jamie first introduced me to this culinary delight back when he was at University in Chicago and I’ve never looked back. Kav had never been, so I insisted that we have our main meal for the day there and now, which of course, he agreed to! Kav loves cheesecake, and the chain is famous for offering its customers no fewer than 40 different cheesecake flavours, so I knew I couldn’t lose! I ordered the meatloaf lunch plate which came with mash, gravy and veggies and Kav ordered the dinner plate of my favourite dish there – Chicken and Biscuits. It’s a serving dish size plate with an enormous dollop of mashed potatoes in the middle, 4 chicken fillets leaning up against it, 2 biscuits (delicious savoury scones that come with everything in the US), peas, carrots and mushrooms and then all covered in thick chicken gravy. Sound yum to you? It’s so big, every time I’ve had this I’ve eaten about a third and taken the rest home with me in a doggy bag. I started to eat my meatloaf, which was very nice, and about 10 minutes later looked up and saw that Kav’s plate was empty, licked clean practically, and he had a very happy and satisfied look on his face. I couldn’t believe it! If I remember correctly as well, he managed to have a few bites of my leftovers too. After that, we shared a delicious white chocolate and macadamia cheesecake on a cookie crust and ordered and plain slice to go (for later). I think Kav enjoyed his first Cheesecake Factory experience!
That night we met up with Gail and Andy again for drinks at Planet Hollywood’s Hawaiian Tropic bar, then moved onto one of the bars at the Bellagio for some wine and chats, and finally went to bed at 2am.

The next day, my last day as a woman in her 20’s, we walked up to New York New York to go on their rollercoaster, which costs $14 per person, but was actually quite good. The actual hotel is also very cute. It’s full of small building facades that make you feel like you are walking down a New York street, with American Irish pubs, hot dog stands and even an ESPN Zone restaurant/bar. After New York New York we walked down to the very cheesy and tacky Excalibur hotel. Now this place is amusing! It’s a great attempt of trying to look and feel middle England and in a crazy way it does work. It’s very cheap to stay there and looks like quite the party hotel with wet t-shirt competitions, crazy drink deals and entertainment. From there though you can walk through to the Luxor which is very disappointing inside in comparison to its impressive exterior, and then we walked across to the MGM hotel. In MGM we went to see the famous lions that live in the hotel lobby, who were very inactive and snoring away, and then booked to see David Copperfield for the next evening – I was practically wetting myself I was so excited! David Copperfield is a legend!

That night we walked back down to the Venetian to meet Gail and Andy for a quick pre-birthday drink and then walked back up to the Bellagio to go see Cirque du Soleil’s ‘O’. Kav had booked tickets a few weeks prior as another birthday surprise but they don’t perform on Monday’s so we had to go the night before my birthday. We had amazing seats, but unfortunately I was sat next to Mr and Mrs Chatty who insisted on talking, loudly, to each other the entire way through. It was a shame because even though the performance is great, my experience was totally ruined because of these 2 horribly selfish people (typically American though). I’m not one to try and ignore it so I made lots of huffing noises and stared a lot in the hope that they would get the hint, which they didn’t, so I ended up shouting at them instead. They were quiet after that, but it was too little too late as it was only 10 minutes before the end of the show (there was no interval so I couldn’t have ‘a quite word’). To be honest, it’s not the best Cirque du Soleil show I’ve seen but there were parts that were absolutely spectacular and very funny and it’s incredible how they use the water tank as well as fire and fantastic acrobatics.

The next day was my birthday so we ended up hanging out in our room, watching movies and TV and having lunch and then in the evening we went to Smith and Wollensky’s, a famous steakhouse chain in the US. Kav was skeptical as it was in huge competition to the Ruth’s Chris he’d had a few weeks before in LA, but actually it held its own. The steak was perfect, the fries and creamed spinach were great, but it just lacked that special something that Ruth’s Chris has. After dinner we strolled down to Treasure Island to see the free 15 minute show they have 3 times a night outside the hotel but were bitterly disappointed that they have apparently recently changed it from a pirate show to a tragically bad girly show. It was so tacky and crap that we ended up leaving half way through and ended up catching the Mirage’s volcano eruption before heading back up to MGM for the David Copperfield show.
We entered the tiny theatre, were shown to our little table and ordered some drinks. A little while later we were all looking at a TV screen above the stage at a 5 minute montage of various talk shows, TV shows and movie lines that have mentioned David Copperfield. Very self indulgent I must say, but interesting and funny none the less. After that, out popped David Copperfield, from the side of the stage. Not much of an entrance for a magician I thought! But his show was fabulous! He’s very charismatic and charming and loves the ladies! Every time he needed someone from the audience to participate up on stage he looked for the youngest, prettiest girl he could find, would use her in the trick and then demand a kiss on his cheek before she returned to her seat. He’s also looking much older and has had some very obvious hair plugs in recent years, bless him. He did some amazing tricks like getting a car to appear in mid air, he disappeared and got 12 people from the audience to disappear, made flowers and ties float and dance in mid air and did some crazy number prediction thing with members of the audience.
All in all we really enjoyed the evening and it was a perfect way to end my birthday and our time in Vegas.

We were both so sad to be leaving the next day, but vowed to return sometime soon so that we can try out some more of the world class restaurants (there are more Michelin starred restaurants here than anywhere else in the world) and see more shows, plus maybe do some more gambling next time! I forgot to tell you, I got quite addicted to the roulette machines and managed to leave the city about $25 up!

Next blog will cover Arizona and California so make sure you don’t miss it!

Love to you all,
Sally xxx