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Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Las Vegas Trip Day One

For those of you who weren't aware Will was treated to a Las Vegas trip through his company.  He has spent the last nine months in a training program.  At the end of the training they had a test and whoever got the best score got to go to Las Vegas for an IBM conference.  Well, William got 100%!  
When we found out he was going we had talked about me possibly going with him.  Now would be a great time to go since I would only have to pay for my own expenses.  We kinda let it go and a few days later Will sent me a surprise email.  In the email was flight reservations for me!  


Here are a few of the first pictures we took.  


This is a picture Will took out his window when were we coming into Vegas.  

I didn't know this at the time, but Will rented a car for us for the week.  Once we got into Vegas we drove straight over to Red Rock Canyon which is about 20 minutes off the strip.  


It was beautiful!  A perfect way to spend our first hour in Vegas before hitting all the lights and the craziness.  


It was cool to see all the different vegetation that can actually survive in this dry land.  


They were hard to spot but we did see a couple creatures on our hike.  




After our hike we headed back into town.  We hit up an IN and OUT Burger for lunch.  A place Will can finally mark off his list of places to eat.  It was pretty good.  Will says the burgers were great and the fries were ehh ok.  We both agree the strawberry shakes...were awesome!  

After lunch we went to Albertson's for some groceries.  I have to pay for all my own food so we figured we would just get some breakfast, lunch and snack options for me.  

We finally made our way to the hotel and checked in.  It was like a maze trying to find our way around the hotel but we found our room.   Finally.  It's on the 26th floor, alllll the way at the end of the hall.  It's worth it though because the room is amazing.   

You walk in and go down a short hallway and to the left are French doors that open up into the bathroom.  This is looking to the left once you open the doors.
Center.

And then to the right.  I love that the toilet room is separate.  I need that at home!  

Here is our room.  There is 2 large flat screen TV's on the wall.  (Also a smaller one in the restroom in case you want to watch TV while showering in your glass wall shower.)


Once you go down 2 stairs you enter the living room.  There is a couch, coffee table and 2 chairs.  There is also a table with seating and a desk.  The entire room is over 700 sq feet!

Side note.  Remember our grocery shopping trip?  Well keep in mind if you ever stay at the Venetian Hotel that the rooms do not have coffee pots, microwaves or fridges.  Well I stand corrected, they do have a fridge that is prefilled with outrageously priced items like $5 sodas and $7 beers.  So if you bring in your own food-plan accordingly.  Oops.  Who knew.  I spoke with the concierges office and they told me that coffee pots and microwaves were against fire regulations.  Sigh....

Here is the view from our room.


Once we got settled in we went for a walk.  The Venetian is known for their Gondola rides.  Here are some pictures of that.  It looks like it is outside but it really isn't.  The ceiling is made to look like the outdoors.  Pretty crazy.   Some of the rides do take you to the canal outside.   They row you around on their little boats and serenade you.  I liked the idea until I actually watched and the canal really isn't that large, it's shallow and people just stand around and stare at you!  It's fun to watch though.  

Just another shot of the ceiling.  

After exploring for a little we made our way back to the room and took a little cat nap.  We are so old.  We had been up since 2:45 am.  Vegas is 2 hours behind home so the time change made us think we were crazy to see that it was only 4pm and we were totally wiped.  We got up around 6ish and headed out to find some place to eat dinner.  

We were excited to find Buddy V's.  The famous Cake Boss!  

This was our appetizer.  Fried Mozzarella.  It was in between bread, that was fried and soaked with Pesto and on top of marinara.  The meal was pretty amazing.


After dinner we continued to explore a bit on the strip.  This is standing outside our hotel looking across the street to the Treasure Island Hotel.  

 Waterfall outside the Wynn and Encore Hotels.

This was inside the Wynn Hotel.  These walkways had huge flower balls hanging from the trees.  They were REAL flowers.  All different varieties of flowers made up each ball.  Then there was this hot air balloon.  It too was composed completely of real flowers.  It was truly amazing.  



 It's been quite the experience so far.  That completes Day 1 of our trip.