We, we are home...and as Dorothy Gale says, "There's no place like Oz!" We had a wonderful time!
jd and I had a very aggressive plan for our 5 days in Vegas Proper. We challenged ourselves to play as many of the 40+ casinos along The Strip and surrounding area as we could, and to visit at least 2 attractions per day.
We are exhausted.
The first Part of Day One:
A view from the plane...
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| Yes, the Grand Canyon! |
We arrived at our hotel
at 10:30am after an expensive cab ride from the airport. When we visited there 25 or so years ago, all of the hotels had complimentary airport shuttles --- but not any more. At every airport exit, there is a "Disney-like" maze to wait in line for a taxi. Not a shuttle in sight!
Taxi = $Cha-Ching$!
At the hotel, we were talked into "Upgrading" to a Tower Suite for an extra $106.00 for the 5 days. There were many good reasons (according to the front desk clerk) for doing so. The Tower rooms were all 'newly renovated'. We would be on the 12th floor, and so would have a "view". Fewer families with children (Circus, Circus is famous for catering to families) stayed in the Tower. Free Buffet the first day! 2 for 1 Margaritas the first night! etc., etc.
We bit. Hand over the credit card, please!
And up to the room we went. It DID appear newly renovated, but was hardly a "suite". It WAS on the 12th floor. But, here is the "View" ...
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| Yeah, that's what WE thought, too... |
Oh, so what! We won't be spending a lot of time looking out the window, anyway. We're gonna be walkin' The Strip !
And I won't even mention the number of toddlers we saw in the elevator.
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After settling in to the room, then checking out the lay of the land, we were pretty hungry, so we decided that our first order of business would be to take advantage of the free buffet, call the kids to let them know we arrived safely, and plot our adventure. The Buffet was so-so. The call to the kids was an instant message. Plotting the adventure caused a minor disagreement.( I thought we could hit a few casinos before heading out to Downtown for the evening, Jerry thought differently. Turns out, Jerry was right.)
And, They're Off!
We put on the comfy shoes , and headed out to the Stratosphere.
Let me remind everyone right now that jd and are are no Spring Chickens, and we are Out-of-Shape Chickens at that. So when I thought walking a city block would be a piece of cake, I thought a city block was, well, a city block! Turns out a single resort/casino in this town takes up about 5 of your normal city blocks, and that's for a small resort. Caesar's Palace, for example, is roughly the size of Boston.
The walk from Circus, Circus to the Stratosphere nearly killed us.
It took us so long to recover that we spent more than the allotted $20.00 each in the Stratosphere Casino. We never did make it to the Top (but we figured that, since we did that on our first trip to Vegas, we could pass this time). We had a VERY heated discussion about modes of transportation for the rest of the week. jd favored taxicabs, I was adamant that $33.00 every time we set foot in one was NOT gonna happen. So we compromised on a plan to ask about alternatives when we got back to the hotel.
IF we ever got back to the hotel...
Tomorrow: The rest of the first day.
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