What Happens in Vegas Gets Posted on This Blog

A month later! Here is a belated run-down of our vacation adventures from last month:

• Nick mountain biked through McDowell Sonoran Preserve, while I attended a few board meetings in Scottsdale, Arizona. The weather was beautiful and I think he had a great time (my meetings went well, so I had a good time as well).

• While in Scottsdale we had the chance to have dinner with an old college roommate, Elissa, and her husband, Ed. We enjoyed visiting with them and wish we could see them more often (it had been 4+ years).

Then it was a road trip onto Vegas via the Hoover Dam. The view across the dessert was amazing. What a gorgeous structure the Dam is! And the new bridge over the Dam area--- very neat.

• Getting to the Strip in Vegas was actually pretty easy. Getting into our hotel was a little more difficult. After about 3 times of driving down the Strip we made it into the parking garage. We also got lost a number of times IN the hotels. Those places are huge, and at times we felt like the signs telling us where to go were put there by 'mistake' in order to take us through the entire casino part. Either way, it was fun and we got to see more of the hotels/casinos. We were greeted by this beautiful scenery inside our hotel, The Venetian. The picture does not do it justice- it is beautiful.
  

• We walked a lot! My feet were hurting by the end (OK, middle) of the trip. For anyone familiar with the Strip, we walked from our hotel to MGM in order to see these guys:
  

• We saw Zumanity at New York New York. It is a Cirque Due Soleil show and I really wanted to see a Cirque show. Here is the description: http://promo-www.cirquedusoleil.com/las-vegas/zumanity-shows.html It was interesting. A little (or a lot) more provocative than Nick or I expected going into it... but we can now say we have been to a Cirque show, and overall we did enjoy it. I am still amazed at how big everything is. This picture is of one hotel and there are how many of them on the Strip. Even if you don't gamble- taking a trip just to see the hotels is worth it.
  

• The food was good. We ate at Pink Hot Dogs at the Magnificent Mile mall at Planet Hollywood. I had never imagined all the things you could put on a hot dog! I would definitely recommend to anyone traveling to Vegas- neither Nick nor I finished our dogs.
  

• In general, Nick and I are not gamblers. But being in Vegas we wanted the full experience. We had trouble finding a simple black jack table (they were all some different version of it that confused us) so we settled on the Big Six game where you bet on a number, they spin a wheel and you get paid out (or not paid out) based on the number. I liked it because we kept our bets conservative and thus spent more time at the table (without losing much money). I think the first night we had 4+ hours of gambling entertainment for $20 between the two of us. Our favorite casino was at the Bellagio. It was clean, didn't smell like smoke, had a great dealer (Linda, who had been to Iowa before) and the waitresses visited our table frequently.

• My favorite part was the Bellagio Water Show. We saw it a number of times and enjoyed it each time. If you want to see more pictures check out the Shutterfly Family Share Site--- we took a lot.
  

• Since my feet hurt from walking we took the monorail down the end of the strip in order to see the Stratosphere.

• We have never been to Paris and it will be a while before we get there (maybe once Ellie is out of college?). We settled for second best and took a ride up in the Las Vegas Eiffel Tower.

This is what we saw from the top… a great summary of our vacation.