Getting up at 5am after going to bed at 1am was never going to be easy. Missing breakfast - as horrible as it was - just made things that little bit worse. We were picked up at 6am and shuttled to the underground carpark of the Planet Hollywood casino complex, where we were offered a complementary "breakfast" consisting of a museli bar and a bottle of water. We finally left around 7:45am. First stop was Hoover Dam. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to stop on the "impressive" side, we only got glimpses of it on the way through. Security was tight - the bus was inspected for bombs and chemicals before we could cross. They're building a bridge across the canyon atm a few hundred metres downstream. You'll get good views I suspect but you won't be ... read more

Normally I look forward to the free "all you can eat" breakfast in hotels, but there was absolutely nothing to look forward to for our 5th breakfast at The Holiday Inn Express. The only remotely healthy choice was Raisen Bran (already with sugar) and scrambled powdered egg on toast. Even the orange "juice" was cordial. Uggh! Not that there was much else to choose from - the fried bacon and iced pastries particular standouts - so it was the _same_ breakfast every day. Well, almost, I did have a cold boiled egg once or twice. Leaving LA was a bit of an ordeal, with the merging, branching and criss-crossing freeways still confusing even with a GPS. But eventually we cleared the city limits onto country roads and settled back for a much more relaxed drive than ... read more

Up for an early breakfast and then downstairs right on time to meet the shuttle at 9:15 to take us to the airport to pick up our car. 9:35 and it still hadn't arrived, so we rang. "3 miles away" I as told. 9:45 and it still hadn't arrived. Talking to the girl at reception - she mentioned that they'd already been! At 9:15. We weren't there, so they left! No waiting. No calling the room. Just left. And we were there at 9:14 by our watch. Not impressed to say the least, we were advised that we could catch the metro to the airport. Turns out we needed a $1.25 train and a $6 bus. Then a complimentary shuttle to the car hire. After all that, we arrived about 12pm - 2 hours later than ... read more

Up at 6:30am for what was going to be a _very_ long day. This trip was going to be quite different from our last - after all, we had "Will & Grace" to watch this time rather than "King Of Queens"!!! Check-in, and I hoped this was a good omen for the whole trip - not only were we assigned the _two_ seats behind the emergency exit - we were upgraded to Premium Economy!!! Not quite sure what Business Class has over premium, but as far as any long-haul trip could be described as "pleasant" - it actually was!!! More legroom than we could use, wide seats, really nice food, larger screens with real headphones; it was nice to see how the other half lived for a change! We arrived at around 6:15am on the same ... read more

No breakfast included - despite what we read on the internet - so we deposited our bags with reception and headed out to find something suitable. One thing we've found in general over here - some things seem incredibly hard to buy, at least when you don't know where to look. A simple bagette and a bottle of orange juice is all we wanted. After wandering for an hour we cut our losses and ordered a bacon and cheese bagette - made possible only because of a kind English lady whose partner spoke fluent Spanish who offered to help as we looked hopelessly lost trying to decipher a menu in a cafeteria. We sat and ate them with our water we had brought with us as we couldn't even find a shop selling take-away orange juice! ... read more