Christmas in Las Vegas 09

Hi everybody.

Yes i have been neglecting the blog again sorry. Hope everyone had a lovely Christmas and New year. Now THIS IS THE 1ST OF 14 ENRTIES about our recent trip to Las Vegas, that is in capitals because last time I did a mammoth set of entries a few people only noticed the first 4.

Anyway we opened all our presents on Christmas eve night as we had to get up at 4 am to be at the airport at 5am Christmas morning for our 7am flight. Our flight to Las Vegas went via Salt Lake City, so we can say we had a white christmas this year too because we had to get off the plane on the tar mac and walk through the snow to get into the terminal. We arrived in Vegas at about 11.30 and pretty hungry as domestic flights don't serve food.

This trip was all about doing the things we missed out on last time oh and enjoying some sunshine because we had forgotten what that was. We stayed at Caesars Palace, we wanted to be in a more central location on the strip this time. For some unknown reason we have no photos of caesars itself I'm unsure how we quite managed that. Anyway it was really nice, we had an over 100m walk from the elevators in our tower to our room but hey we had to walk off all that xmas food anyway. Part of Caesars is the Forum Shops (which we missed last time somehow?) which was really cool gave us a lot more food options than just the restaurants in the casino too and shopping.

Vegas was a lot busier than I thought it would be at this time of the year, but then again most of the people were asian or indian so maybe they don't celebrate xmas anyway. But we were really surprised at how many people were there with small kids, you would walk throught the casinos and there were these poor kids sitting up against the walls and in the corners playing on there nintendo ds's while there parents gambled it was really sad.

Christmas Day we arrived and went and picked up our Ka tickets (Cirque du Soliel) from the MGM then we jumped on the monorail (which is expensive but rather handy and goes the whole length of the strip pretty much which we didn't realise last time) and went down to Stratosphere so scott could do all the rollercoasters at the top of the tower. We went to the buffet at caesars for tea and ate far too much the desserts were amazing there was a chocolate fountain.

Boxing Day we went out to the outlet mall and did some shopping (along with everyone else), and had a wander along the strip. We did a bus tour out to Hoover Dam on the sunday which was really cool more about that later. Sunday night we went to Cirque du Soliel's Ka it was really cool very different to the other cirque's I've seen a bit more masculine perhaps (there is kung fu) the stage was pretty amazing it tilted up 90 degrees and spun around and moved forward and back.

The next day we did the winddancer tour with Maverick helicopters to the Grand canyon, it cost a bit but it was well worth it. The tour was in 3 legs the first took us over lake las vegas, lake mead and the hoover dam to the grand canyon where we landed at the bottom and got out and had champagne and pastries and a wander around. The next leg Scott and I were in the front seats and we went through the canyon abit and out of it and to a refueling station now although this was the shortest leg I think it was the best to be in the front as it had all the sweepy corners and stuff where the other legs were pretty straight. The final leg took us back to Vegas and over the strip. It was absolutely amazing well worth it and it was both of ours first time in a helicopter which was cool.

On the tuesday we had a last wander down the strip before heading out to the airport 3 hours early as the tv was making a big deal of all the extra security precautions, but they had extra queues open so it wasn't too bad at all.

We had an absolutely fabulous time, if anyone is considering going to vegas do it is is awesome even if you don't gamble.

Just a reminder this is the first entry of 14, please check them all out, you may have to click on some of teh ones on the side to bring some of them up.

Oh and the first picture is the gingerbread house we made before christmas it was really yum too.

catch ya later

love Monique and Scott

Stratosphere

This is one of the 3 rollercoasters at the top of the Stratosphere tower that scott did on xmas day. And yes it is hanging over the edge, it opens up and spins around. I just went up to the top of the tower and took photos. It was quite funny everyone else on the ride we screaming there hearts out except for scott and teh guy sitting next to him who looked like they were having a good old chat. The stratosphere is quite a long way down the strip away from the rest of the casinos so the area is a little dingy. It was quite cool though when we went into the casino it was daylight and by the time we got our tickets and lined up it was dark so we got to see all the lights it was an amazing view.

Only in vegas

We joked about finding a costume rental place and renting a white dress and a tux just to wind everyone up, but i just had a photo with the sign instead.

MGM

This was taken at the concierge of the MGM when we went to pick up our tickets for Cirque du Soliel. This was our first stop after we had checked in at our hotel, thought we would get that job out of the way, but everyone obviously thought the same thing we had to line up for ages.

There weren't really as many christmas decorations around as I thought there would be. They had some giant mirrored presents at the Belagio but when I saw them I didn't have the camera (I had swapped bags after one of our tours) and when I went back the next day to take a photo of them they had gone.

the strip

This is us out side new york new York. A trip to vegas isn't complete with out a photo of the strip at night.