En route to Vegas, we drove along the famous route 66 and passed a lot of historic little towns still making money from the road that was. Then, there was the Hoover Dam and the recently constructed bypass bridge. A rather large engineering feat that we could not miss! Aside from all the tourists in the area snapping photos aimlessly and not having any appreciation of the intense design and construction complicities of the structure, it was definitely an impressive sight to see! We even had fun playing the car park game after our self guided interpretive walk.
Then it was onto Vegas, where we negotiated our way through town and down to our hotel, The Mirage. We thought it best to leave our bags in the car and check in first in order to avoid the usual stares at our unusual (and large amounts) of luggage! The check in line was very similar to that at an airport, as we were greeted by a hostess and channeled through to a maze where we waited about 45minutes with the other guests (most dragging their Louis Vuitton and Gucci luggage..) we finally checked in, mazed (again) through the casino floor and up to our room. We were greeted by the small luxuries we were starting to miss, a real bed with clean sheets and fluffy pillows, a bathroom (including towels and toilet) and of course, space. The view wasn't too bad either as it overlooked the volcano at the front of the hotel and down the infamous vegas strip!
After unpacking, we quickly threw on our togs and hit the pool, of course with rediculously sized (and priced) frozen cocktails!!
We had no intention at all on gambling so decided to spend our money instead on shows. So after a delicious seafood platter we were off to 'Love', a Beatles inspired Cirque de Soleil. The show was great, combining good music, a story we could follow and of course the amazing circus acts with the implementation of my favourites... roller skates!
The next day brought with it our first solo time of the trip. We had been on the road for over a month and the most time we had spent apart was probably going to the bathroom. Rhys went to drop jimmy off for a service and I decided to sweat it out at the gym instead! An hour and a half later we were reunited and both seemed to have survived the separation.
We then filled our day wandering around the strip, going into a few of the other casinos and the shopping malls (and i bought a dress, finally felt like a woman again!) before heading to the David Copperfield show. On the way to the show we needed to grab a bite to eat and made our way to our first buffet. Not only did we have buffet lunch, we paid $50 for all we could eat buffet for 24hours... Which meant we could have dinner after the show and breakfast and lunch the next day! We were set :) ..although it was quite a dangerous investment with all the delicious temptations !
Anyway, after over stuffing ourselves, we were off to our first magic show, and magical it was. Within about 10 minutes of being seated and of course sipping on overly priced frozen cocktails, we were approached by a girl who worked for the show, and were asked if we would like to watch from the front row, how could we say no! From here we were able to see how a few of the tricks we'd performed (as our engineering inclined brains were just asking 'how' and probably not appreciating the magic as others were!). Our new front seats also gave me the opportunity to go on stage, not once, but twice!! The first time I was a key holder of a box that contained some numbers and a usb stick with a voice file that had been locked inside the box before the act started. A few audience members nominated some completely random numbers, including birthdays and days of abstenance, and these numbers of course alleared on the piece of paper inside the box, and of course on the file on the USB. They then appeared on the car licence plate of the car that David made appear on stage!! From there, we watched a duck disappear, David slice himself in half, a butterfly appear, some hilarious (unscripted) dialogue with some non english speaking audience members (it started with trying to get the guys girlfriend to stand up and finished with another audience member translating, but with lots of laughs from the audience and lots of patience on davids behalf) and then it was time for the final act; the disappearing act.
Volunteers for this act were randomly selected by catching frisbies. One was thrown in my direction and I totally missed it (because I'm not very good at catching!), luckily another one was magically directed my way and this time I was prepared! I didn't get to disappear but was the 'look out ' person for the act to prove David didn't cheat during the act! David led me to the back of the stage while asking my name and where I was from and I then stood to watch the act with one of the camera guys! I got to see the whole thing unravel from a completely different perspective! It was prett cool!!! After the group of people had disappeared off stage and reappeared at the back of the audience, we all went backstage and got to meet David and get autographed photos from him! Meanwhile, Rhys is sitting in the audience after the show has finished wondering where the hell I am!! I reappeared with a big smile on my face and my David autographed photo ! We walked back along the strip to our hotel, past all the lights and over the top things you see in Vegas! We had dinner with some flamingos, just missed the fountain show at the belagio (but we then watched it on YouTube from the comfort of a Starbucks in the middle of nowhere!) and saw the volcano explode outside our hotel! All in all, an eventful evening and quite a nice way to spend our last night in Vegas!
The final morning of our mini 'holiday' had just enough time fit in a quick gym session, dip in the pool and the last buffet of the 24hours (at what looked like a nearby casino but felt like it was on the other side of town after the walk there!) before getting back into a rejuvenated Jimmy and heading north!
No comments:
Post a Comment