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Published: August 18th 2015
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And so it begins
Me, Amit, Laura, and Serena Day 1. Las Vegas. What better way to start off a road trip than by going to the best place to lose all your money?
After a breakfast of sandwiches, Serena and I packed up and headed over to pick up Laura and Amit, our road-trippin buddies. Laura, as predicted by Serena, was not ready, so we headed down to the UPS pickup store, where a package Serena had ordered to Laura was waiting that never got delivered. We ended up getting on the road in the early afternoon - not too bad timing, since San Diego to Las Vegas isn't a horrifically long drive; a bit over 4 hours. For now, only Amit and I are driving - Laura's out of practice and didn't want to do busy roads, and Serena hates driving in traffic and cities. But once we hit more open road in a few days, they'll jump in too. He and I traded off a few times before getting into our hotel - the Stratosphere, at the far north end of the strip - in the early evening.
Along the way, we cruised through the Mojave Desert, hitting temperatures as high as 117
o. We also
went through blasted rock formations and towns. It was quite a day of views to start a trip like this.
We get settled into our room, then went up to the lounge, on the 107th floor of the tower (it resembles the Space Needle slightly), where we got drinks and took in the view. Las Vegas is quite a sight to behold even from afar, but after the lounge, we went down and walked downtown. Maybe not our best idea; we're staying about 2 miles away from the meat of the strip, but it's summer and nice and warm. Downtown, we walked around exploring. Serena needed an ATM to take out money, because of course we're going to gamble if we're in Vegas. The most convenient one was not convenient: on the 4th floor, in the back corner, of the M&Ms store.
The Strip is one of the most unique places I've ever visited, I must say. There's truly a bit of everything, and it's particularly strange because I can't name another city that was built purely for entertainment. Every building, every billboard, every sign, is for entertainment. Casinos, shows, pools. And yet because they all want you
to stay and play at their casino, they all stand out from each other, so it's not even like it becomes a blur. We eventually made it into the Cosmopolitan Casino, where we found electronic blackjack. I can't say that I'm complaining about walking away $160 richer than I came in!
We did eventually head out from there and back to our hotel, where we stayed downstairs and played real blackjack. I ended up down a bit there, but from such a strong start, I'm still up overall for now. Although we'll see after tomorrow...
Note: if you want to follow our trip,
here's our general map. I'll update it as we go so it follows the routes we actually took!
Also, if you want to see a grand map of where I've been, and you haven't been accessing these from my profile,
check it out
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