Vegas Baby!

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We are in Vegas! Kamie got 10 days off work so we booked this trip < 2 weeks ago. We have never been to Vegas and we can't go anywhere else (basically) so we thought we'd see what was up with this place. For the record, thanks to our jobs, we are both COVID vaccinated but we are still wearing a mask everywhere. We both wore double masks in the airport and on the plane. However, on the plane we were told they recirculate the air every 3 minutes with fresh air and the quality of the air on the plane is the same used in hospital surgical rooms. We flew out of Springfield and the 3 hr flight should have been uneventful but there was an incredibly strange 20-some man in the seat behind me who clearly had some sort of mental issues. He ran on the plane last huffing and puffing, loudly dropped his phone as the flight was taking-off and scared the heck out of everyone, and then lost his passport somewhere on the plane somehow. He was a mess. This is a pandemic, right? The plane had 29 rows of 6 so 174 seats... I counted 8 empty seats. There was a large group (maybe 15 people) at the airport that surprised a guy who showed-up with his girlfriend - it was his 50th Birthday and they were all joining him to celebrate. People are traveling but our seats were in the back so we had no one in our row but the two of us. Btw, that's my flight tip to you - if you book the back of the plane it's always where the extra/empty seats are located and it's quieter than other areas.

Flying into Vegas is definitely a canyon, desert-type landscape. We arrived in the airport and the first thing you see are slot machines. They are in every terminal. Next, Kylie Jenner makeup kiosks. I saw at least three of them. If you know anything about her lip gloss, it sells out in like 10 seconds the day it is released. I'm not a Jenner-Anything fan but how is it that you can buy it here in the airport but nowhere else. About $30 for a tube so I passed. We took Uber to our hotel - Planet Hollywood. Again, the landscape is new to us. - definitely a desert surrounded by mountains. Vegas looks clean and well kept driving from the airport to our hotel. Our Uber driver tells us you can't just "walk the strip" and we need to take Ubers up and down the strip. She's wayyy wrong.

Planet Hollywood Hotel is fabulous and in the middle of the famous strip!! Great hotel choice on our part! We go to check-in at the self-service kiosks but I had a plan so I chose a kiosk that had a "check-in helper dude" next to it and I didn't put-in my driver's license all the way so the system kicked it out. He offered to check-us in. I handed him my license, our credit card, and a $20 bill and ask if there might be a room with a fountain view available. He winked at me and said he bet there would be! After moving us to the 31st floor with an amazing view of the strip and the Bellagio fountains, he said he greatly appreciated our business and away we went! I read about this online and apparently, it works like a charm. By the way, not only can we see the Bellagio fountains but we can hear them because the water is being pumped so high into the air it lets us know when they are going-off which seems to be every 30 minutes. It's nice.

We didn't even unpack. We got a drink and started walking the strip. We walked over to the Bellagio Resort and through the high-end shops (security standing at every door), then through their poker tables (packed and it's 3-4pm), slot machines, and on to their conservatory. The Bellagio entrance has a ceiling of blown glass which is beautiful. We walked through the conservatory and then down to see the four-story chocolate fountain. We walked outside and watched the fountains and listened to the music. Nice. We walked over to Caesar's Palace. It was busy because by this time it was 5:30pm and the California weekender crowd was arriving. Their sports betting bar arena area is huge. We walked by and took a picture. When we walked by an hour later, there were people everywhere and a long line of people waiting for a seat at the bar to bet. We found "Difar Pizza" which online is a big deal and supposed to be ranked #1 pizza in Vegas. It was a tiny place with so-so pizza. We were hungry. Slice of pizza was $9 and a teeny bottle of Fiji water was $8. Vegas ain't cheap. We walked around a different way to get back to Planet Hollywood, stopping at CVS for water which is what we noticed everyone else was doing too. We had walked over 14,500 steps and it was 7pm (according to my Fitbit). The strip is loud but only in the sense that you feel like you are in an episode of The Fast and The Furious with expensive racing cars making loud noises and peeling out and burning smoke and race bikes too. Interesting. Yes, there are showgirls walking all over the strip getting paid to get their pics taken with people and hitting on the large groups of guys. They walk straight-up to the men and solicit business, no hesitation about it. Some of them are classy. Some of them are gross and sad. The strip has musicians playing here and there - some authentic and nice to pass by while others are "F" this rappers who want "money to fly home" (not kidding). There is A LOT of weed on the streets here. Vegas legalized marijuana in the last year and it smells terrible - skunk weed- as they call it - or cheap weed - is everywhere. Every other block smells like a skunk. We walked out of our hotel onto the strip and it hit us in the face. We saw weed cigarettes laying around. We watched people buying and selling it. We saw people smoking it. We saw everything - from the ultra rich shopping in Chanel with their own private security guards to "The Weed Guy" hawking money on the bridge from Bellagio to Caesar's Palace. The main thing we saw was a completely packed strip at night. We couldn't believe how busy it got but apparently, it's usually a lot busier. I think we came at a good time. Anyway, by the time we got back to Planet Hollywood, we noticed there were "call girl" cards littered all over the streets on the strip - they were basically card-sized pictures of naked girls with their phone numbers and apparently you could call them. I'm assuming there is a market for this since there were so many of them everywhere. Vegas is a vice town. Choose your poison.



We finally decided to gamble. We put away our water, I changed clothes really quick, and we bought two regular, small-sized drinks - $36 in the casino. Dumb move. We decided to play slots. I sat at a Chihuahua game for 2 hours and played on $20 the entire time. We also both got 3 free drinks during this time so gambling is more than worth it when you look at it that way! Free drinks while gambling pays off. I like the fun little games that makes lots of noises and I only have to bet 30 cents at a time and even though I only win $1-$10 at a time, it's fun. Where else can you get entertained for 2 hours for $20? I did play a Princess game later around 11pm and I won about $36 dollars in about 15 minutes. In the end, I came out ahead maybe $30-40 and Kamie lost every penny he played which was $40-50. He knows I'm writing that. He doesn't like gambling and he doesn't believe in luck. It's just not his thing. That's okay. We finally stumbled into the Cafe Hollywood around 1am. We were too sleepy and tired to eat so we had a few bites, got bags to go, and came to the room. My head hit the pillow after being awake for nearly 23 hours straight.

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