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Published: December 24th 2008
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We left for our Las Vegas trip on December 15th, leaving behind -44 with the wind chill. We arrived in LV around 11:30 pm. We checked into our hotel, The Flamingo!! The Flamingo is one of the oldest hotels that is still on the strip. It defines Las Vegas, washed in pink lighting and lots of neon lights flashing! It was first opened in 1946, and was by built by mobster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel. We walked around for an hour or so before going to bed.
The next day we woke up reasonably early, when we opened our curtains on our 7th floor room we found we were over looking the lagoon and the back part of the hotel. We also could see some of the Mountain ranges that surround Las Vegas. Both Dave and I were surprised to discover that LV is surrounded by mountains. They are high enough to get snow and there are even ski hills. We thought we were heading to flat desert! About 2 million people live in Vegas and houses stretch throughout the valley stopping only when they reach a mountain range.
The plans for our first full day was to go shopping
at one of the many outlet malls located around Vegas. We decided to go to one on the Californa border, only 45min bus ride from the Strip. We stayed at the mall until 2pm and were back in Vegas just before 3pm. We had an early supper at Margaritaville that was located in our hotel. Food was really good and drinks could put hair on anyone’s chest, but that could just be because I can’t drink like I used too!
Our final event for this day was to attend a Cirque Du Soleil performance. There were 4 or 5 different Cirque performances at various hotels but we went to KA, which was at the MGM Grand. Our tickets were for the 2nd row so we had awesome seats. The show itself was great too, the actors were running and performing on a stage right in front of us, or flying right above our heads. The show was full of acrobatics and martial art it was really, really good. We couldn’t take pictures or video camera of the show unfortunately, but I can understand why the actors didn’t want flashes going off in their eyes when they’re suspended 80ft in the
air!!
Our next days events was a tour to Hoover Dam, which was only a 45min drive out of LV. Hoover Dam was built in the 30s was a make work project but was also constructed to control the Colorado River. The city that was established while the building was going on was Boulder City; it is still there and is home to a few Hollywood stars. Roger Moore had a home there, as well as Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Sylvester Stallone have houses that look out onto Lake Mead. We got to do a tour into the dam itself, stood above the huge pipes that had 80,000 gallons of water rushing through them! Once done the tour inside the dam we got to walk around the top of it. It is pretty impressive when you look down and see how big it really is, and then think of the guys who made it. They would sit on plank seats and swing out over the cliffs, 96 men died while building the dam. Some facts about the dam are its height is 726 ft, length is 1244ft, thickness at top 45ft, thickness at bottom 660, concrete used 3.25 million cubic
yards and weight is 6.6 million tons. Currently they are building a huge bridge and new highway that goes around the Hoover Dam because at the moment vehicles drive right over the dam. Because of 9-11 the government stopped semi and any buses that have cargo under the bus from driving over the dam. Now everyone who goes over the dam has to stop at a security check point, which is a caravan that has its wheels taken off! Very state of the art!!! On our way back into Vegas we got a little bit of a surprise…. SNOW!! Who knew it snowed in the desert! Despite the snow it still was a lot warmer then it was in MB so we didn’t complain too much!!! The airport got shut down and records got broken for the amount of snow that fell, the Strip got 1.7” and surrounding areas got 3”.
Once back in Vegas for the evening we decided to walk around the Strip a bit despite the weather. We went to Madame Tussauds wax museum, it was pretty cool they had a bunch of different rooms with Hollywood stars, sports stars and all that sort of thing.
Me and Tiger
Its a tough call Dave didn't have much hope for it when we went in but by the time we finished he'd enjoyed himself!! It was awesome because there was only a hand full of other people in there, we didn't have to wait in lines to take pictures. In fact most things we did was great because there was hardly anyone around, there is something to be said for going in the offseason!
We were supposed to do our Grand Canyon tour on the Thursday, but because of the snow it was cancelled. So instead we spent the day touring the Strip, it was really great. We bought all day passes for the Deuce, the bus that travels the Strip and just cruised! We went up the Stratosphere and got could views of Vegas during the day. Walked around the big shopping malls that are located in the casinos, and the highlight for me was going into the Secret Garden at The Mirage. They had dolphin and tiger habitats, and they had a 3 month old baby dolphin and some baby white tigers. We also got some great pictures of the Strip at night. We went up the Eiffel Tower at the
Paris Casino at night to get views of the city at night. We also watched the Bellagio fountains from up there. The Mirage also had a volcano that erupted after dark as well.
Our last day was Friday and we re-booked our Grand Canyon tour for this day, eventhough we were flying out that night. We figured we would have lots of time because our flight wasn't until 11:30pm and the tour was going to get back into town around 5pm. Which would still give us time to see the rest of the Strip that we hadn't had time to get to yet. Also to try our luck at gambling, we hadn't taken the time to do that yet. When we got to the tour office they told us that our West Rim tour was cancelled but we could go on the South Rim tour if we liked. We just assumed that it would be about the same time and distance, boy were we wrong!! The South Rim was a f#*k of a lot farther then the West Rim! We drove on the bus for 5 hours before we got there, then we spend 1 1/2 hours at the
Canyon before having to drive 5 hours back. Which put us in the City at around 9pm! Little tight to get to the aiport and through security to make our flight!!!! Good lesson learned, always ask when changing tours how long will this tour be!! Overall the grand canyon was pretty good because it is so impressive! The temperature was 0 degrees and there was 3ft of snow. We did get back into Vegas in time for our plane, we got in the city at 9pm and was at the airport by 9:45pm. Once there we found out that our plane was also 2 hrs delayed because of the cold weather at home.
We had a really good time in Vegas and we want to go back. We didn't get to see all of the things we wanted to get done before we had to leave. We will be more prepared for some things when we got back also, like food and drinks are not cheap on the strip. And we learned a couple important things as well, first nothing is ever free in Vegas. People may tell you they have free tickets, but only if you listen to
their 2 hour speel of why we should move hotels to a more expensive one. Very annoying and they are people in every hotel you walk into trying to get you to move. Second thing just because you can see the hotel doesn't mean its close or that's its easy to get to!! We got lost a couple times trying to find the entrance to some of the hotels. Best piece of advice we got before we left was to wear comfortable shoes, and it is sooo true!
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