Fabulous Vacation! (Long Post Warning)

We did it. We finally took a trip; a real vacation. It was our 10 year wedding anniversary in December and leading up to it we knew that we wanted to do something fun and out of the norm. Neil found out about the Shot Show 2011 in Las Vegas and got a way into the show that is only for people actually work it the firearms industry (courtesy of some fabulous friends with a FFL).

So, we searched around for deals for flights and hotels. We wanted to keep it relatively inexpensive, after all we aren't made of money. So, we finally booked with Travelocity.com and just booked the least expensive hotel that didn't look trashy. The Orleans. It's quite a bit cheaper because it's pretty far from the strip. However, a free shuttle down to Bill's Gamblin' Hall, a sister property, and you're there! This is our hotel room. Neil broke out into song all the way down the long hallway to Room 1814. (Gold Star to you if you know what song.)

The night we arrived, we ate dinner at our hotel at the Prime Rib Loft. It was fabulous. Great prime rib and no fluff and not a bad price either, as I recall. We might have saw a movie that night. We saw two movies, I can't remember which day we saw the first one. There is an 18 screen movie theater and a 70 lane bowling alley at The Orleans. Also, it's the ice hockey team's arena. Pretty cool.

Monday, we headed down to the strip to see what we could see. Wow, it's crazy. It was warm and sunny - short sleeve weather for sure. It got up to about 70 degrees; it was fabulous. (Yes, that is the word of the day!).

We ran into a half price ticket booth almost immediately after getting off our shuttle. There was no line this early in the morning, so we checked it out. We got a 1/2 price breakfast buffet at the Flamingo. It was fabulous; they had a Crepe lady. Freshly cooked crepes made to order - heavenly. Only three choices of fillings, but really, she's making like 900 crepes in her 8 hour shift, so we can't complain too much. We both had strawberries with chocolate and whip cream (the real stuff!). It was so good.

We went into Cesar's Palace and that took about 1/2 the day. That place is HUGE and I don't think we even saw it all. We did see a store that brought be back to Junior High. I am pretty sure, you will be jealous too when you see this:
That's right! Swatch Watches! Complete with Swatch guards, even! I really wanted to buy one, but I was having trouble deciding which one and I really haven't worn a watch since like Junior High, so I decided to leave the past in the past and just take a picture of the greatest watch store ever! Cesar's Palace also has a fabulous Gelato shop. Would love to get some more of that. It's SOOOO good!

We also hit up the Eiffel Tower, the small one from Las Vegas! We took a ride up, it was pretty cool. I have been to the real Eiffel Tower in Paris, France and this replica is pretty spot on, just 1/2 the size. The workers give you a little bit of facts about the tower as you ride up. It is truly half the size of the real one and it was built before the casino/hotel. They built around the base and there are legs of the tower inside, it's pretty cool. The inside of the hotel/casino looks like you are outside with little shops and cobblestone streets. The boys really had three requests for us when we told them we were going to Vegas. One was to get a picture of the Eiffel Tower, the small one from Las Vegas, said Paden in his best Gru voice. (You have to watch the movie Despicable Me, if you haven't already!)

We took the bus out to the outlet mall, which was fabulous and HUGE as well. Everything is HUGE in Las Vegas, by the way. We bought new tennis shoes and that was so heavenly. Our feet were so sore by the afternoon of the first day, I am sure I would have died had we not bought new shoes. I went out on a limb and tried on brands I've never tried before. I ended up with Sketchers Tone-Ups (they look better in person than they do on that link). They are pretty sweet and comfy and I will love them forever. They totally saved me from dying a slow painful death.

Monday night, we went to dinner with one of Neil's HS buddies who lives down there. We went to the Cheesecake Factory, which was pretty good. I had Baja Chicken Tacos. I also had some fabulous cheesecake of course. Neil despises cheesecake - too bad for him, I guess. :-) After dinner, Riley & his family dropped us at our hotel and it was like 8pm and we went out on a limb and decided the night was just beginning, so we headed down to the strip like real Las Vegas tourists. We had earlier seen some people walking with a huge drink in . . . you guessed it . . . an Eiffel Tower. We thought the boys would enjoy it, so we had to get one. It was spendy and they wouldn't sell it cheaper without the drink. So, we shared a HUGE pina colada (without whatever type of alcohol usually goes in that).

One of the other requests that the boys had was to get a picture of the statue of butts. Yeah, I wasn't sure what that was all about, but Neil apparently found something on the Internet about this statue and the boys thought it would be great to see it. So, we found it. It's at the Riviera, in case you need to see it in person some day. It's kind of funny, but not really, in my opinion.

We caught the fountain/light show at the Bellagio. It is totally awesome. You can find some videos on YouTube, but it's not the same as it is in person. It's spectacular. I think that pretty much wraps up Monday. I haven't a clue what time we got back to our hotel. It was late for us old folk though, that's for sure.
Tuesday, we got up and had breakfast our hotel's buffet, which was not all that bad. It filled us up. We headed off to the Shot Show. We got there like around 9:30am or so and WALKED ALL DAY LONG. No breaks. No lunch. Just walked and walked and walked. Thank you, Sketchers. I was tired, but my feet weren't really hurting. There were some places to sit, so I would usually sit while Neil gabbed with the people. So, the Shot Show is like a Home and Garden show for firearms dealers, law enforcement, gun range owners, etc. You can't buy anything, but you can place orders for your store. Luckily, we don't really have "store". Seriously. Neil saw so much awesome stuff.

After the show, we saw this:
We saw some other people putting their heads in the lion head, so of course Neil had to do it too. Goofball. :) We then visited our friends at the 1/2 price ticket booth. We picked up some tickets for a dinner buffet at the Rio and ticket to see Blue Man Group. Dinner was fabulous. They had great, tasty, wonderful prime rib at the buffet. This stuff was better than our two company Christmas parties! All you can eat, can't beat that. This buffet was the LARGEST I have ever seen. And for the 1/2 price that we got, it was totally worth it! We rolled out of there and went over to The Venetian for the Blue Man Group. It was hilarious, awesome, amazing, crazy and fabulous. I totally recommend seeing this (just get the tickets at the 1/2 price place!). The most expensive seats are $147.50 if you buy them from the Blue Man ticket counter. We got pretty good seats, it's not a big theatre really, for $60 each. Great deal!!!
We rushed back to our pick-up spot for our shuttle. The last pick up from Bill's Gamblin' Hall is 12:30am. We made it just in time and didn't have to find a sketchy way to get back to our hotel. Phew!

On Wednesday, we were BEAT! We had been walking around for two days straight. We really needed a break, so we were trying to find a movie to watch. We didn't really have any plans for this day. We kind of left it open. We did have a third request from the boys. The Statue of Liberty. We headed out to New York, New York: "The Greatest City in Las Vegas". We hadn't been to that end of the strip yet, so we headed down on the bus. The buses, by the way, are the the way to go. They are super clean and cheap, really. It was great. Anyway, we didn't eat breakfast before we headed out and we had slept in a little bit from being out way, way past bedtime the night before. So, we caught an early lunch at NY, NY. We ate at Nathan's and had super-overpriced Philly cheesesteak sandwiches and even more overpriced soda - regular, run of the mill Mug root beer - nothing special. The food was good, but not great and we were more disappointed that it was so expensive and not great. Ya know? We walked around a while to let that food settle.

I think NY, NY has the most enormous slot machine ever, so of course we had to play it. It was a dollar one. We only played one dollar and DID NOT hit it big! Dang it!

After a while, we went on the roller coaster at NY, NY. Yes, I was totally nervous. I seriously can't remember the last time I went on a roller coaster. Seriously. There was no line. In fact we had to wait for there to be enough people. There has to be 10 people for them to run it. We didn't have to wait a super long time, but we were really run down, exhausted and sore from walking, so it seemed like forever. From where you wait, you can't see the roller coaster at all, you can't see where it goes or how high it is or anything. I suppose that is a good thing, I probably would have chickened out.
Yes, that crazy thing goes UPSIDE DOWN!!! I was screaming with my eyes closed most of the way. I get motion illness sometimes and I was a little worried, so I couldn't look. When something whacked me in the head as we were coming out of the upside down loop, I opened my eyes to see if I could see what it was. I couldn't, but it was by my feet. When we got off, I found a cell phone belonging to the lady who was sitting a couple cars back from us. How fortunate she was! That's what the lockers are for, lady. Anyway, no major injuries to my head from the blow.
I was a little shaky after that ride. I did have to buy a one dollar water from the street vendor, who had purchased a case of Costco water for $3.00 and was selling them for $1 each. Wow, I can't believe I did that. It wasn't all that bad. I think I could do that again, but I think that might be my limit. I am a wimpy chicken and I am OK with that. I can't wait until the boys get older and bigger enough to ride, then I am off the hook! Gunnar has got about an inch and three-quarters to go!

Down by NY, NY is M&M World, so we checked out the FOUR floors of M&M craziness. We saw a free mini 3D movie, "I lost my M in Las Vegas." It was pretty cute. That place was insane. There's also a giant Coke bottle elevator next door. We didn't ride it; I couldn't press my luck after the roller coaster. There's the Hard Rock Cafe and giant guitar on the front. There is so much cool stuff to see. We didn't even see half of it, I am sure - probably not even a quarter of it all.

Wednesday night, we got 1/2 price tickets to Treasure Island buffet. It sucked. Yeah, we didn't have the best food experiences on Wednesday. We did see a movie that day, The Green Hornet. It was an OK flick. I was getting pretty annoyed with how rude that guy was, but the stuff that Kato cooked up was pretty awesome. We had to call it an early night - about 10:30 or 11:00pm, so that we could be rested to head back to the Shot Show on Thursday.

Thursday, we got up pretty early and had breakfast buffet at our hotel again. We had gotten a coupon the first time we ate there for $4 off. I thought it was $4 off the total, but it was $4 off each person. The total for two people for the breakfast buffet was $8.63. It was fabulous. They had french toast and Neil got fresh fried eggs. Totally worth the money! We finished packing our stuff and headed back to the Shot Show and walked and walked and walked some more. We didn't see ALL of the show. It was so big that we didn't see it all. We skipped a large portion of the law enforcement section. Crazy.

We had only taken back packs and carried them on when we flew down. We had to buy a back to pack stuff in on the way back. We checked it on the plane, it was HEAVY! All the stuff that Neil got from the Shot Show weighed a lot. We didn't by a whole bunch of stuff, but had to get an extra bag to fit our extra shoes and the Eiffel Tower for the boys. It worked out well. When we got to the Shot Show, we checked our bags at the Concierge desk and picked them up on our way out to the $6 (per person) shuttle to the airport. Perfect.

We really hadn't played any slot machines or anything, so we had a few minutes at the airport. I put in dollar into a penny slot and played. I cashed out at $3.00 and we went and got some food and waited for our plane.

The entire week was FABULOUS. We didn't have any issues. Our children were well cared for by the fabulous Cassidy, one of many great nieces that we claim. :) We had fabulous food, entertainment and enjoyment. We had to start making a list early of the "next time" stuff because there is so much to see and time goes so fast there.

I know there are a lot of naysayers who thing that Las Vegas is all about gambling, drinking and naked chicks. There is a lot of that. But, you can definitely steer clear of all of that (except the driving billboards of almost naked chicks with such proud fathers) and have a great time.

Phew! I hope I have sufficiently recovered from my vacation. I totally needed a vacation from my vacation and pretty much did not do a thing Friday, Saturday or today. Tonight I cleaned the kitchen and swept the downstairs bathroom and put a load of clothes in the washer. That was about all I could muster.

That is probably not all folks, but I have to work in the morning and it's past my normal bedtime and it took my like an hour and a half to write all that. I am not in Vegas anymore . . .