If New York is the city that never sleeps, than Vegas must be the city that never sleeps on CRACK. I have never seen anything like this place in all my life. It's earned the nickname "Sin City" as I can honestly say is very fitting. This place literally is a living breathing organism. The electricity in this city pulses through your veins. I felt safer walking the streets at 4:30 in the morning there than I ever would downtown in my home town. At 5:00 in the morning the Strip was still full of traffic, people were out everywhere, and they never missed a beat. As many downfalls as Las Vegas has, I really liked it and not for reasons you might think.
As we touched down in Vegas from Charlotte, a middle aged black man with his wife behind yells, "Time to start sinning!!" It's at that point I realized, "I'm actually here." From the moment we entered the airport I knew I liked it. It was clean, and it smelled like an attractive man. Weird right? But it wasn't just me who noticed the smell, the other girls did as well. As we went to get our baggage we were surrounded by flashing lights, and the noises of 100 slot machines just waiting to have their mechanical arm pulled. We were in Vegas and we were about to embark on 4 days of fun in the desert.
As our shuttle driver drove us to our hotel I knew I was in a place I was going to like after we passed a huge sign for In-N-Out Burger. I absolutely love this place but they only have them on the West Coast. They need to move their way up toward the East! My whole entire trip I was determined to eat at In-N- Out but guess what? I didn't get my Double Double and I'm still a little bitter about it.
Our shuttle driver made his rounds to all the hotels. Everyone was getting dropped off at 4 and 5 star resorts and here we were being dropped off at Circus Circus. I was a lil embarrassed at our accommodations but hey, it was cheap and when I say it was cheap, I mean it WAS cheap. My sister's room had a welcome present of smelling exactly like a bowling alley after the local police department has been there for hours lighting up their cigarettes. They also had a nice present of someone else's dirty sock in their room.
Once we got there we were all a little tired from the flight to Vegas so we chilled. I was super stoked about night number 1 because it was
THUNDER DOWN UNDER NIGHT! If you don't know what it is, click the link. :) Jess and I were going becaus we thought it would be hilarious and in the end we were right. The other girls ended up seeing Cirque Du Soleil Zarkana which they said was really weird. Now the food in Vegas is WAAYY overpriced as we had come to find out. Our first night in we ate at the
Todd English P.U.B. at the Aria hotel. Food was good, but for one burger and one beer it was over $35 for me. YIKES!
My favorite night definitely had to be night #1 with Thunder and than night #2 at Koi. Let's just say we met some intersting people, but what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas so I'm not sure I can divulge that kind of information. :)
One of my other favorite excursions was renting a car, and high tailing it to Arizona to see one of the 7 natural wonders of the world. You guess it, the Grand Canyon! Due to extinuating circumstances our date got changed from Thursday to Friday so we had hardly any time there. Yes, I was bummed but I was really glad to see it. We had paid $60 bucks a person to go on a party bus Friday night and we had to be back in Vegas at 9:30. The drive to the Grand Canyon itself was about 4 hours and we were planning on stopping at the Hoover Dam. Which we of course did. You can't go to Vegas and not go on a DAM TOUR. :) Sorry, had to fit in a dam joke.
The Dam was amazing but the Grand Canyon was breathtaking. I thought I was standing on the edge of a fake background. Jess and I climbed out to this crazy rock that had no railings and got a ton of pics. Some of the other girls were a bit scared of heights so they stayed back on more stable ground. I really wanted to hike and take advantage of the scenerey, but we were soooo pushed for time it was a bit ridiculous. After our hour and a half visit we hit the road and headed back to Vegas town.
We were five females driving in a car across two different states, so naturally bathroom breaks will happen. We stopped right outside of the Grand Canyon at this well lit little gas station. As Kelsey and Kali were waiting in the car for the others to finish their business this older man comes up to my halfway rolled down windows and motions for me to roll it down. I just give him a bewildered look and he does the motion again only more intentionally this time. If you think I'm going to roll my window down for a tall skinny tattooed man with a gray pony tail and yellow stained teeth than you are severely mistaken. I just said, "no that's okay. My win
dow is good right where it is. He then proceeds to ask what 3 attractive young, ladies (he used the word ladies. Always a sign of a creeper) are doing out in the middle of the desert and if he could accompany us. I have to give the guy props for his boldness but if he thought that was going to work he ha another thing coming. I was polite as possible without being rude but it started getting to the point where I needed to be a lil more assertive. He then asks if we had seen the sunset from the Grand Canyon and how we need to do that and yadi yadi yah. Meanwhile the only thing I'm thinking about is how stinkin long Jess and Rachel are taking in the bathroom. Finally I had to just pull away without them to get this weird motor cycle dude to get the hint. If you're thinking if I left Jess and Rachel at the rest stop the answer is no, I had to drive around to pick them up at the door. But seriously! Not even cool.
We finally were back on our way to the Sin City and surprisingly enough we made it from that rest stop all the way back to Vegas without one single stop. That's a miracle for five female bladders especially when one is my sister. We were in the rush of our lives to make it back in time for our party bus. So much in a rush we had skip the one single thing I was determined to have while in Vegas. In-N-Out Burger.
Five females literally got ready for a night out after hiking and being in the car all day in 20 minutes flat. Jess was a kind soul and ran down and got all the starving females burgers in all our "spare time". Come to find out we didn't even has to rush as after we met at 9:30 we had an hour to sit around and chill out in the lounge. Oh I was pissed. We could've gotten In-N-Out, we could've had more time to get ready but the paper said if you're not here AT 9:30 the bus leaves without you. Vegas is full of liars! It's teyible!
While people were sitting around in the lounge we decided to go to the casino. I won 7 bucks in a slot machine but lost it all again on a black jack machine. Very dumb. Kali made out pretty good on her machine and won I think 12 bucks. We're big winners here in Vegas. Ha!
After our loosing and winning, it was time for the party bus. First stop HAZE night club! For some reason we thought our party bus was an all ladies bus, but indeed we were wrong. There were some shady characters on there, but we ran into some pretty cool people as well. I made friends with Pablo who was probably mid sixties with a son who was 21 and his friend who had the eye for Kali around the same age. Unfortunately for the friend, Haze has a very strict dress code, and since he wasn't wearing dress shoes, he had to go home and change. Glad we wore our heels and were looking our best because another girl wasn't able to get in due to wearing flats. Tough crowd right?
When we got to the night club the first thing we did was head to the ladies room. My feet were already killing me and this was the first stop of the night. Fix makeup, make sure everything's looking good and then make the way to the dance floor. We found a good spot on the floor and started dancing the night. Got dancing with a bachlor party and had a fun time with them. All of his friends were making a big deal of the bachelor and were encouraging him NOT to get married. I mean, I would not have wanted to marry this guy by the way he was acting, but whatever. Not my choice.
I was taking pictures left and right of this place because it was a legit club. Kind of like the ones you see in movies. They had a VIP bottle service section where you could pay like $900 to sit and get a couple of drinks. A little over priced if you ask me. One of the crazy features of the club were these dancers who were all over tables, and the front stage area where the DJ was. They were half dressed and wearing crazy neon colors with these huge neon orange eyelashes and crazy makeup. To be honest, I think their job looked really fun and other than being half dressed I'd totally do it. I'm just not confident in skimpy clothes. Us girls were dancing around with different people, jamming to the music, when this little Pakistani guy came up to me and started dancing. Well at first it was fine we were just having a good time and then he got real grindy. So I started making my way through the crowd to get away. Well, he wasn't seeming to get the hint. I gave Jess the, "Help ME!" look and she knew right away what I meant. I mean this is why you gotta have a gill have your back. Otherwise you can wind up in a bit of trouble. Jess grabbed me and pretty much blocked me. Well then he started making his way over to the other girls. He would NOT go away. We think he was there by himself, which was weird anyway. Who goes to a club alone? Weirdos, that's who. Finally we all had to pretty much do the huddle to get this guy out of there. I think we ended up getting drinks at the bar finally get away. After the drama with the Pakistani we went back to the dance floor and this dancer came out surrounded by two bouncers. She had this huge long piece of cloth with her and this hook dropped down from the ceiling. She started doing all these crazy Cirque De Solei moves and we were all just watching with our mouths to the floor. I have never seen anything at all like that. It was amazing. After the dancing girl we had to head to the bathroom to get away from teh Pakistani guy. He was a CREEPER!
Well at this point, my feet hurt like the dickens and I was ready to sit down. It was party bus time!
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