A place has never been more worthy of its name. Known as ‘Disneyland for adults’ this money pit is ready to swallow you whole. Bright, flashing lights send you into a daze as you wade through numerous hands thrusting business cards advertising an array of illustrious women into your path . If you avoid the temptation of a yard of margarita for $5 then you will inevitably fall foul to one of the casinos. It’s Vegas baby! Having never been to a casino in my life I feel like Vegas is one hell of an introduction. You can’t help but be [View Full Entry]

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Anyone who has been to Las Vegas will think what they are about to read here is bog standard in the City of Sin. For us, however, it was a bit of a shock to the system. We headed to vegas to break up our 8 hour journey back to LA with our only other goal being to eat as much as we could for our $24, 24-hour buffet ticket at the Tropicana. We did achieve this in some style but the day would be remembered for a different reason. There we are eating away and Lindsay strikes up a conversation [View Full Entry]

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Hi, I've had a busy couple of weeks. A group of us went to Virginia City which is the oldest city in Nevada (I think)... it's a staggering 150 years old, hardly the same as in Europe! It was good to see though. It's a small place up in the mountains with lots of wooden saloons. That weekend also happened to coincide with a bikers festival called Street Vibrations. It was crazy. I've never seen so many bikers in one place and they were all so stereotypical. They seem to have some strange tradition where the women sit on the back [View Full Entry]

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After we left Gilmer and Steve's house, we meandered around a bit, then ultimately found our way to the correct rout out of LA toward Las Vegas. It was actually a pretty straightforward trip through the suburbs, over the Sierras, and through the desert. We arrived in Vegas well before dark and checked in to Treasure Island (they had the best-priced room on the Strip). After making it through registration, we settled into our room, then headed out for our big night in Sin City. We saw many of the typical Vegas sights, including the "volcano" at the Mirage, the dancing [View Full Entry]

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Hi, this is David Paulsen, you are are listed on the travel blog for David and Barbara Paulsen. I will be traveling to China, Russia, Kazakhstan and Vietnam without Barbara in the Fall and Winter of 2009. If you have been following our travels, Barbara writes the blogs, you may want to click the unsucribe at the bottom of the page. Travelblog asked that we do no delete emails that we don't recognize because there are individuals that have subscribe whom we do not know... For those of you who hang in there here's the deal. I have wanted to do [View Full Entry]

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i've never been to one of these and it was very interesting and fun. they have to fly early or late in the day before it gets to windy. it takes about an hour to get the balloon in the air. once their in the air they can control their vertical rise or drop but are pretty much at the mercy of the wind so far as which way they go. after the balloon is airborne the ground crews become "chase crews" and follow the balloons until they decide to land or are forced down for some reason. it was a [View Full Entry]

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This morning we had a very unhealthy breakfast: a Nutella crepe, with cappuccino gelato on the side. It was really good. We went to the European pastry shop in our hotel. They have the world’s largest chocolate fountain there. It was not the type of fountain I was expecting, but still really cool. It had 3 different types of chocolate in it. After breakfast, we drove just down the street to our new hotel: The Venetian. We wandered around the hotel before attempting to check in early, which worked, and was a very good idea. The lines can get really long [View Full Entry]

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Day 21 - We got up very early to head to the Grand Canyon to do a hike. The idea didnt completely go to plan as we got a bit lost on the bus and left later than planned but we eventually got there! We set off down the Bright Angel trail which went down the canyon pretty steeply. We blistfully headed 3 miles down the canyon thinking it was a piece of cake, the only thing was that it got hotter the further down you went. On the way we past some mules that were transporting food etc down to [View Full Entry]

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Most of the pictures turned out blurry because of my inexperience with taking photos in the dark, but I thought I'd share some of the light pollution that is Las Vegas on a winter's night. A few friends and I rented a van in Phoenix, AZ, and drove up to Vegas one afternoon, spent the night there, and drove back the following day -- during a conference all of us were attending. It was totally worth it. --- Coming up: Deception Pass, WA; Colorado vignettes; Tybee Island, GA; and Dyer, IN. [View Full Entry]

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While we waited to check into our hotel, we walked along the Strip for a little bit. Our first stop was M&M World. It was fun to look at all the different M&M items they had for sale. There was even a free 3-D M&M's movie to watch in a theater there. After we had lunch, we continued our walk along the strip. It was pretty hot, so we walked through some buildings, which were air-conditioned, instead of just walking along the street the whole time. The only problem with walking through the hotels, was that you could get lost in [View Full Entry]

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