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Published: April 20th 2012
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Hi All,
The last blog!!! We arrived in Vegas on the afternoon of 5th April and caught a shuttle bus to our hotel, The Cosmopolitan. We checked in and had to find our way to our room, a simple task in most cases but this hotel was huge and very difficult to navigate!! Once we found our room we were very pleased, it was extremely luxurious and felt more like us than the hostels!!! We settled in and then went to explore the vast hotel, stopping in one of its many restaurants for dinner. We checked out the hotel's casino but didn't gamble, just looked at all the games we may be able to play. That night we had a spa bath (together ;-) ) and enjoyed a cosy night in!
The next morning we slept in and then went to view our surroundings. Our hotel was next to the Bellagio and opposite Planet Hollywood. We went into the shopping centre of Planet Hollywood and found a cheap lunch place called, The Earl of Sandwich. It was very nice and was a welcomed change to seeing burgers and chips on the menu! After lunch we tried our luck on
one of the slot machines in Planet Hollywood casino and promptly lost $20 in about 3mins! We needed some serious cash or fantastic luck if we were going to last longer!! Next we headed out to watch the Bellagio fountain display, it was to a Michael Jackson song and was quiet impressive but we decided it would be better at night, so we went back to our room to get ready for the evening and then headed out to see the fountain show in the dark. It was to a piece of classical music this time and was great to see. We found a cheap Chinese eatery for dinner called, 'Panda Express' and then went back to our casino with our daily gambling limit of $40 to spend! We thought we'd try Roulette but the cheapest table was $10 minimum bet each play! We played like the other people on our table and put our chips on individual numbers rather than black or red, or odds or evens and very quickly lost our $40. We realised that our gambling evenings were going to be very short! Anton wasn't that impressed so we decided to go back to our room. On
the way we found a $1 bet, wheel of fortune and decided to play with $10. We lasted about 10mins this time and had a lot more fun! Once our money was gone, we went back to our room and noticed that our clothes really smelt of smoke as smoking was allowed in all the casinos and shopping areas - gross!
The following day we went to explore the hotels around us. First we went in the Bellagio, it was very plush and had a beautiful flower display. Each of the hotels also had large shopping malls with all the posh shops! I just window shopped with envy!! Next we went to Caesers Palace which was absolutely huge! It was hard to comprehend its size. It looked at little dated and the casino was so big that it was uninviting but still, it was good to experience. Next we walked up the strip to The Venetian. It was stunning and had frescos painted on the ceilings. We saw the canal with the gondola rides and decided to book an outside, evening trip. We also booked into a Mexican restaurant in the Venetian and thought we'd have one nice evening!
It was already 6pm by then and our dinner was booked for 7:15pm, so we had to quickly walk back to our hotel to get ready. We hadn't realised how far we had walked and it took us over 30mins to get back. After a quick change, we opted for a taxi back to The Venetian to save time, but the traffic was so bad, that it may have been quicker to walk!! We enjoyed a lovely meal and at 9pm we headed outside for our gondola ride. We shared our gondola with another couple but it was still romantic and our gondolier sang opera to us; he had a wonderful voice! After the gondola we went into the Venetian casino and played on the roulette machine, as it allowed 25c bets ratherthan the $10 on the roulette table. As our luck is not the best, Anton lost $20 and I lost $10 :-( We decided to stop and walked back to our hotel.
The next morning we were up early for our trip to the Grand Canyon. We went on a shuttle bus to Boulder City Airport and then boarded a helicopter for our adventure. It was the
first time either of us had been on a helicopter so we were both really excited. We went over the Hoover Dam and then onto the Grand Canyon. The views were spectacular, we were not disappointed! The helicopter landed at the Canyon and we stopped for a champagne picnic; it was fantastic. While we were there, a couple got engaged and we all clapped, that would certainly be a day they will remember! After eating, drinking and taking photos, we got back in the helicopter for our trip back. We had such a good trip, well worth the money. Our trip had lasted about 5 hours but we were both exhausted from the excitement so rested in our room until evening. After dinner we thought we'd try our luck once again on the roulette machines in our hotel... Once again we lost most of our money, but in one last ditch effort, Anton put our last $1.25 on his lucky number (24 - black) which i thought was a terrible idea! Wouldn't you know it... He won! We banked our $45 win and headed back to our room with a slight skip in our step!
The following morning it
was hot and sunny, so we went down to one of our hotel's 3 pools to get some much needed tanning done! Well, some more than others obviously... It wasn't as hot as Fiji so we stayed out for much longer than we managed in Denerau. We ordered lunch by the pool and had hummous with pitta and some lovely little 'Sliders' which was merely the American name for small burgers. After lunch, Anton decided he was brown enough so went back to our room while I stayed out for a few hours longer until the sun went behind one of the many skyscrapers surrounding our hotel.
We had seen an advertisment for an all you can eat Japanese sushi restaurant a few days earlier, and had enjoyed the sushi dinner that Malia had treated us to in San Francisco, so we decided to give it a go. We had left a lot of time between lunch and dinner to build up our appetites so were determined to eat more than our moneys worth! I managed 2 plates of very tasty sushi rolls, sashimi and various other Japanese delights. Anton managed 3 mountainous plates of much the same. (his
first plate must have had about 25 sushi rolls on it)! We were both stuffed... However, as many of you know, there is always room for dessert! The selection was really good. Individual portions of mostly every dessert you could think of. We filled our 'dessert stomach' (Lauren knows what we're talking about) and waddled back to our hotel room.
Las Vagas really isn't the best place to be when you can't afford to do anything! The plethora of shopping malls, eateries and gambling culture was not suited to our budget, but we had a great time experiencing 'Fabulous Las Vegas' and visiting the Grand Canyon. Our last day was spent by the pool trying to get those last few rays before we would be back in England. On our last evening, we went for dinner at our favourite cheap, chinese restaurant 'Panda Express' and afterwards walked to get a better vantage point to watch the Bellagio Fountain Show for the last time. We managed to get ourselves into a good spot and watched the show. It was the same one we had seen before, so I said we should stay to watch another one, and seeing as they
were every 15 minutes apart, we waited for the next show which was different to the previous one and much more spectacular. It has the song 'Con Te Partiro' playing during it and was really moving... We both had goosebumps! We went back to our hotel to try our luck on the roulette machine one last time in the hope of making our millions... After 10 minutes and $35 down, we called it a day. That night, we packed for the last time in 6 and a half months.
Thank you for reading our blogs and we hope you enjoyed them? We did!!!
Lots of love to you all and special kisses to our little people XXXXXXXX
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