Viva Las Vegas!

You, my faithful readers, may have been wondering if I've already abandoned my blog after just two entries...Fear not! I've just been on vacation for the past four days in Las Vegas (as if you couldn't tell from the title)!

My boyfriend Kyle and I, along with three ladies he works with (Janet, Mary, and Becky) left for Vegas Monday morning around 10. The timing was great as we landed around noon Vegas time (PST), so we still had the entire afternoon and evening to spend around town. The flight wasn't too bad, but there was some pretty bad turbulence for the last 30 minutes or so due to the heat. Once we collected our luggage, we caught a shuttle bus and headed to our hotel, the Excalibur which is towards the South end of the Strip. We checked in, grabbed some lunch at the food court and were off to start sightseeing!

Janet, Me, Kyle, Mary, and Becky on the shuttle to the hotel.

Our hotel, the Excalibur!

We decided to hit all the casinos and attractions at our end of the Strip first, so we headed down to the Luxor, which is Egyptian themed and has a pyramid as the main building. Our main goal at the Luxor, aside from just seeing the casino, was the exhibit they are currently hosting, Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition. At $30 per person, it was the priciest attraction we visited all week, but it was well worth the money. The layout of the exhibit is such that you are guided from the conception of the ship through construction to boarding to the voyage to the crash and finally the sinking. The exhibit features a wide range of artifacts recovered from the debris field - clothing, personal effects, dishes, equipment, etc., as well as quotes from survivors and profiles of passengers and crew members. Several of the more impressive articles are a recreation of a first-class stateroom, one of the ship's whistles, a re-creation of the grand staircase, a scale model of the wreckage at the bottom of the Atlantic, and an actual iceberg you can touch. At one point, you pass through a door and are out on a re-creation of the deck at night - it is cold, and you can hear the water rushing and see the stars in the sky. To me, the most extraordinary part of the entire exhibit was The Big Piece - a 17 ton section of hull that formed part of two first-class cabins. It was awe-inspiring and beyond moving to have such a large piece of the ship sitting right in front of you. If you ever go to Vegas, I highly recommend setting aside some time to visit this exhibition!

The front of the Luxor. Those statues were hot, hence the expression on my face!

Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition

Kyle, Janet, Me, Becky, and Mary on the Grand Staircase.

After the Titanic exhibit, we made our way to Mandalay Bay to visit Shark Reef Aquarium. This is more reasonably priced at $16.95 per person. That price gets you access to 14 exhibits featuring over 2,000 animals, including 15 shark species. The set up of this aquarium is really cool - it's as if you are traveling through an ancient temple that's slowing being reclaimed by nature. You get to see all kinds of animals - crocodiles, komodo dragons, monitor lizards, fish, piranhas, jellyfish, octopus, sharks, turtles, and sting rays. There's also a touching pool where you can get up close and personal with rays and horseshoe crabs. The great thing about the aquarium is that before you get started, you are given an "audio wand". Each exhibit has a number(s) on it; if you press the corresponding numbers on your wand, you get a mini-talk about the creature in that exhibit. The talks play singly, so you can pick and choose what you want to listen to. After the Shark Reef, we headed back into the casino and spent some time at the slots before heading back up the Strip.

Kyle, Me, Mary, Becky, and Janet at Shark Reef Aquarium.

A Komodo Dragon, fish, and more fish.

Sharks!

The touching pool!

Next up was New York, New York. The entire casino is the New York skyline, with a roller coaster interwoven among the buildings. Kyle, Mary, and Janet decided they wanted to ride the roller coaster and I volunteered to be the designated purse/purchase holder; that bad boy went upside down twice and I don't do upside down! After braving the coaster, we headed across the street to the MGM Grand to see the lion exhibit, but we missed them by 15 minutes.

New York, New York and its roller coaster.

By that time, we were ready to eat so we decided to head up the Strip to the Paris to eat dinner and check out that casino. By the time we were done with dinner, Mary, Janet and Becky were pooped and headed back to the hotel, but Kyle and I were still raring to go so we set out for Caesar's Palace.

Paris, complete with Eiffel Tower!

Once at Caesar's, we headed to the gift shop dedicated to Bette Midler's The Showgirl Must Go On show. We picked up a few items we just couldn't live without and headed to the recently-opened Serendipity3 for desert. We got an ice cream sundae that was absolutely huge, but we suffered through it!

Caesar's Palace!







Before and after!

After dessert, we were exhausted so we began the long trek back to our hotel. Let me tell you, distances on the Strip are very deceiving! It may not look all that far, but it took us a good 30 minutes of fast paced walking to make it back to our room. Once there we unpacked and passed out for the night!