Day 7: Contiki Day 1 - LA to Las Vegas

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Temp: 14 Degrees

Today we woke up at about 6.30 to be ready for our 7.30am contiki departure. The drive from LA to Vegas wasn't too bad, and the tour guide mostly talked for the 1st half, explaining certain rules etc. The second half was filled with us watching the movie 'The Hangover' in preperation for our arrival in Las Vegas!
So all up the drive was about 4 hours. When we 1st arrived into Vegas we drove down Las Vegas Boulevard. This is usually refered to as "The Strip", and is the main road through Vegas. We were taken to our hotel Harrah's, which we were all suprised was actually right in the middle of the strip, so we actually had an amazing location.
We were assigned rooms and made our way up to quickly drop off our bags and head out as we had 3-4 hours of free time to see what we wanted before we were to leave at 6.30pm for our group dinner. Katherine and I along with Natalie, Lisa & Lara decided to walk down the strip and find some lunch then continue exploring. We walked to The Venetian, which was huge and found a little reasurant inside.
We then decided to take a ride on the Gondola's they have because we were already there, and why not!!? This was so much fun, the person stearing the gondola sang us a couple of italian songs, and the ride lasted about 10-15 minutes. Next up we decided to walk the oposite way on the strip, passing such hotels as Ceasars Palace and Planet Hollywood.
The weather today was terrible. Apparently it only rains twice in Vegas, and it looks like we got one of those days. It rained all day and night, someone told me it dropped to about 9, but im not sure about that one!
So at about 5pm we made our way back to the hotel to get ready for dinner, we were also going out on a little drive tour down to 'old las vegas' also known as Freemont street and then out to the night club Pure, so we had to get ready for that now as we werent coming back to the hotel before that. So at 6.30 our bus departed and made its way to dinner, im not sure what it was called but it was italian and it was yummy.
It was served 'family style' so that means it came out in big bowls in the middle of the table and we all helped ourselves. It was also someone's birthday on tour so we all had one shot each, we're not sure what it was, to celebrate!
After dinner we began our little driving tour. We made it to one side on the strip when our bus began to start cutting out. We stalled about 4-5 times, and everyone was starting to get worried, as it was still raining outside and freezing. So we litteraly rolled into a side street and the tour guide said we were going to have to get taxi's to the night club and while we waited for them we would go to the little chappel we had broken down next to. This is when everyone started to think something suss was going on.
We were all ushered into the chapel and were suprised with an elvis style fake contiki wedding! Two people in the group were randomly chosen to be married and elvis did the marrying. it was allot of fun. The bus turned out to be completley fine, and after the wedding we were back on our way. We were taken to 'PURE' an apparently happening club in Vegas at the moment. and we were given VIP treatment, where we were aloud to go in straight away and had free drinks till 12pm. So we went in and it was so busy, it was hard to even stand in one place, there were so many people in there.
We stayed there drinking and dancing till probably 1.30-2am and then walked down the strip a little to look at some sights, by the time we got back to the hotel we were all soaked to the skin and freezing. I had a warm shower and we were in bed by about 3.30am.

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Comments

[dorothy]

vegas
you story telling is fab and i loves the pics. of some of the group did the couple no each other before their got pick to the wedding how funny would that be i bet you girls were more worried about the bus. enjoy and i lookforward to your next blog love mum xxxooo