Day 13 - Las Vegas!

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Today, we were moving to Las Vegas! We woke up in our room at Cecil hotel at around 7:30am, after a slightly better night's sleep. We got ready and packed up all of our stuff into our cases and went to find somewhere to eat breakfast. We had spotted a 7-eleven down the street, so Emma had a croissant from there whilst Craig had a meatball sub from a Subway next door to it.

We brought it back to our room to eat it, then collected all of our belongings and went to check out. We then went to the bus stop just over the road from us and waited for the number 60 bus, which would take us to the Greyhound station, where we would get our bus to Vegas. The bus turned up after about 15 minutes of waiting, and we went over to the terminal building (it was kind of similar to the Birmingham National Express coach station if anyone has been there).

We went up to the desk where the woman checked our tickets and attached some tags to our cases, then we went and sat by our gate, where our bus/coach would pull up. The bus was due to leave at 10:40am, but the bus didn't actually arrive until about 11. Once it had finally shown up, we gave the guy our cases to put in the luggage compartment, and boarded the bus.

We set off at around 11:10am, knowing that we also had to stop off a couple of times along the way to pick up new passengers at various locations in L.A. At the first stop, the driver somehow managed to get the bus wedged in between a wall and a police car, which resulted in the driver trying to manouvre backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards for about 10 minutes, trying to get out! He managed to finally get the bus out and we carried on to the next stop.

At this stop, a passenger got on and was looking to sit next to a man who was sitting alone, but the man's bag was occupying the seat that the he was looking to take. The driver came storming up the bus and told the man to move his bag, who kind of looked around as if to say 'well where do you want me to put it?', as most of the overhead storage was taken up by other bags. The passenger who got on said it was fine and that he would sit elsewhere (as there were other seats available), but the driver went Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde on the seated man's ass (out of NOWHERE) and demanded that he get off his bus. This lead to a soap opera moment, that lasted around 15 minutes, which resulted in the driver getting a policeman escort the guy (who was very calm and hadn't really done anything wrong!) off the bus and talk to him alone. The driver came and got the guys bags from where he was sitting and we left the stop without him.

The journey to Vegas lasted around 6 hours, with one stop about half way to get some food and use the toilets. The drive there was pretty much what you would expect, basically being surrounded by deserts and mountains on both sides, occasionally passing through fake attempts at Las Vegas hotels/attractions. We spotted a rainbow in the desert (something we didn't expect to see!) which was caused by some low clouds over the mountains.

We finally arrived in Vegas at around 5:30pm, although we did get stuck in traffic on our way to downtown, where the bus terminated. Once there, we got off, grabbed our cases and made our way over to the 'Fremont Street Experience' (they call this area 'Old Vegas' as this is where most of the original hotels and casino's are), where we knew that we could get a bus to the strip. We bought some 3 day tickets for the 'Deuce' bus (which goes all up and down the strip 24 hours a day) and hopped on the first bus that arrived. Unfortunately, this was the express bus, which doesn't stop at all of the stops that the regular Deuce bus does, meaning that the nearest stop to our hotel was around a 15 minute walk away!

We dragged our cases past various hotels such as Caeser's Palace, the Bellagio, Flamingo's and Planet Hollywood before finally arriving at the Imperial Palace, where we would be staying for 4 nights. We checked in and walked through the casino to our room, which is near the back of the building. Although it is one of the cheaper rooms on offer, it is still very spacious and clean, and we also have a queen bed each!

We got settled in the room, and had a bit of a break for around half an hour, before setting off out to see what Vegas had to offer! Because it was about tea time, we noticed that there was a McDonald's next door to us, so had a quick bite to eat (and tested the internet there - SLOW! - so we might not be upload any/many pictures for a while, although we will try to update the blog). After eating, we set off on our long walk down the strip, which was was now all lit up as it was pretty much dark by this point. We walked past Caeser's Palace and took some pictures, before heading to the Bellagio to watch the fountain show, and we ended up staying there to watch 3 in a row, getting better views of it each time! We took plenty of pictures and a video and we will try to upload some soon! The fountains were amazing, elegant and pretty and the power that must be behind some of the water jets is astounding, they go so high!

We carried on down the strip, seeing some of the other famous hotels/casinos, such as Paris, the MGM Grand, New York New York, and Excalibur, just to name a few! The hotels are so huge that it literally takes ages to just walk past the front of them (it felt like we were walking past Caeser's Palace for about 25 minutes!). In total, we probably spent about 3 hours just looking at the outsides of the hotels before our legs got a bit tired, and the early start to the day started to catch up with us.

As we had our bus passes, we decided it would be much easier to hop on the Deuce back to the Imperial rather than walking aaallll the way back, so we did! We got the regular Deuce back this time, which us dropped us off much closer, literally about a 2 minute walk from our hotel. We had a wander around our casino once we got back to the Imperial Palace, and we had a few goes on some of the less expensive slot machines (where you get bet between 1 cent and a dollar per go).

Our biggest win of the night was $2.50, which inevitably went back into the machine anyway! After about 20 minutes, we went back to the room to get some well earned rest (it was about 11:30pm by this point) ready for another long day of walking around Vegas tomorrow!

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