Viva Las Vegas

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Well only just over 3 hours from our hotel stop and vegas is on the horizon. It’s hot hot hot and we’re finally a bit more up beat knowing that we are nearly at our first stop. You literally are driving through desert type surroundings and then suddenly you get over a brow of a hill and the skyline looms up. The first thing you notice is the Stratosphere, it’s over 900 ft high and looms up above everything else.

We arrive at our hotel, The Luxor at the end of the strip. You’re met with a huge Sphinx at the entrance and a huge pyramid. The hotel is typical vegas, over the top and kitsch but amazing attention to detail.

Our first night is spent checking out all the other hotels. It is hard to put in to context the sheer size of some of these places. All of them done differently but amazingly.

After a few hours we decide to go for a beer and to one of the casinos. The boys were playing Poker and Anna and I were the cheap night out on the 1 cent machines!! Little did we know that if you are playing on a table or machine, you get free drinks brought to you about every half an hour. All you do is tip a dollar, so a dollar for 2 or 4 drinks depending where we were wasn’t bad! However alcohol is the poison of life as the boys found out.

Anna and I left at a semi reasonable time of 0300 and the boys tipped up at 0700 somewhat worse for wear. They had managed to get split up, Danny making his way back and Nick getting hopelessly lost. He ended up on the back streets, the wrong direction of our hotel and in some fire escape of some other hotel which is still a mystery to him and us!!

Needless to say yesterday (Tuesday) was a gentle day. And an earlier night - and no gambling!!!

It’s now Wednesday and we are currently on our way to the Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon

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