days 15 & 16 - las vegas, nv

We had originally planned for Vegas to be the last stop on our trip before heading to LA. Currently, however, we have about 3 more days before we can get into our apartment, so we've planned a new itinerary for the next couple of days: Death Valley National Park tonight, Yosemite National Park tomorrow, and San Francisco the day after before heading to Los Angeles.

We decided to spend two nights in Vegas, and we were appreciative but lazy while here. On the drive over from the Grand Canyon, we passed by the Hoover Dam, but unfortunately only saw the crappy side of it. They were building a new bridge over it though, which was kind of cool.


We got to Las Vegas and checked in at our hotel. So the night before, we'd decided that for once we should try to get reservations for a hotel (we'd just been showing up to them throughout our whole trip). We tried to get a hotel on the Strip for the first night, and found what seemed to be a nice deal at the Palazzo, the newly-constructed sister hotel to the Venetian, for about $150 a night. Normally rooms here go for somewhere around $400-500, so we figured we'd gotten some cheap room.

Apparently, we'd gotten a "luxury king deluxe suite" for our $150, which looked like the following and also included $50 slot credit and a bunch of other dining coupons. Sweeeeet!





So first thing we did was of course, to hit the slots. With our non-cashable $50 in credit, we made about $30 in real cash.

Then we had dinner at Dos Caminos, a really nice Mexican restaurant in the Palazzo, before hitting the streets to soak in the sights of Vegas.

We happened to catch a show at Treasure Island across the street, about some sirens who torture some pirates. It was a somewhat awkward show with a lot of inneundos, probably inappropriate for the many children in the audience. It did feature some special effects, like explosions and fireworks.



Afterwards, we decided to tour some of the other big name hotels, like the Venetian and Caesar's Palace.









After exploring all these places, it had gotten dark, so we got our first views of Vegas lights:




We also encountered some street performers.
The streets themselves were littered with call girl cards. We also saw several ads for some hot babes - phone number was 696-9696.


The next day we had to move hotels, as a second night would have cost us $460 dollars.

We went for brunch at the Bellagio, which had a lovely conservatory with big animals made of flowers.




Because our next hotel was about half an hour off the Strip, we took the time to do some more exploring on Fremont Street.



We attempted to find a casino that would allow us to use actual pennies to play penny slots, but apparently those don't exist anymore. We did, however, use up several dollars' worth of nickels, but this was an entirely money-losing endeavor.

Finally, we went to our hotel, which was on a resort called Lake Las Vegas. They had managed to construct a lake right in the middle of the desert and put some high-end hotels and stores around it. We stayed at the Ritz Carlton, which was nice but nowhere near as nice as the Palazzo.

We spent the rest of the day relaxing, looking for food, buying cheap souvenirs, and just hanging out. We tried some of the frozen custard at Luv It Frozen Custard, which was pretty tasty.

Wedding chapels by the side of the road:


Off to Death Valley today.