A couple weekends ago we headed out to Vegas
with 4 other friends for a fun filled weekend.
Mark M. and Hayden (whom we went with last year), Mark H. (aka
Hurricane) and my coworker whom I’ve become friends with over the past year,
Jenny, rounded out our group this year.
We left late Thursday on a direct flight to
Vegas. Our flight was delayed due to
weather and then as we were leaving the pilot announced that it would take an
extra hour as we would have to go around the storm down thru Texas and then up
to Vegas. UGG, I hate flying in bad
weather! But it really wasn’t bad, it
was bumpy but nothing that was overly unsettling. It was just a LONG flight. What should have taken 3 hours, took 4
hours. We were pretty tired when we
finally arrived in Vegas at midnight.
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| Aaron, Erin, Hayden, Hurricane, Jenny & Mark |
But to no a due, we had an agenda! Off to the Mexican restaurant we visited last
year to conquer the burrito challenge.
Prior to us leaving, the guys were already figuring out their competitive
advantage to conquer this burrito. It was
hilarious; Jenny and I ate tacos while the guys got busy downing their massive burritos. Aaron completed the burrito challenge last year;
he was the threat. On top of finishing
the burrito, they also had to finish a yard of margarita.
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| Food has been served! |
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| THE BURRITO CHALLENGE! |
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| Aaron pulling the burrito down |
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| Hayden's burrito |
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| Hurricane struggling with the burrito |
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| Mark devouring the burrito |
Mark finish first, Aaron shortly behind
him; Hurricane and Hayden paced about the same and finished 3/4th of
the burrito. Gotta love a good food
challenge! All the guys were rewarded
t-shirts for their hard work. The
joke that weekend was the guys were impregnated by a 5 lb burrito, after every
picture we took; we would critique it to see who had the biggest burrito
bulge still.
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| T-shirts for conquering the burrito |
After our midnight ‘snack’, we headed to
New York New York for some gambling. I
was super tired, it was 2 am and Jenny reminded us it was 4 am back in Iowa. I had already forgotten about the time change
so we rounded up the guys and decided to head back to MGM Grand and go to bed.
Friday we woke up refreshed and ready for
the pool. Honestly, the best part about
Vegas is the pool party. The energy,
music, sun, warm water, summery drinks, everyone enjoying themselves…just so
much fun! The pool makes the trip and it
didn’t disappoint this time either. It’s
so easy to make friends there; we ended up befriending a group from Texas on
Friday and hung out with them on Saturday too.
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| Breakfast at The Hard Rock Cafe |
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| Kicking off the morning with mimosas |
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| Hurricane drinking a hurricane for breakfast, what a goober! |
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| View at breakfast, NEW YORK NEW YORK! I love that casino! |
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| POOL! |
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| The Guys |
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| Hayden and Hurricane |
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| Some of our Texas friends in the back of the picture |
After a long day at the pool, we were ready
for dinner at Planet Hollywood’s PBR Rock Bar.
Best part was the mechanical bull at this restaurant…Jenny, Mark and
Hayden gave the bull a ride while Hurricane, Aaron and I sat back and got a
pretty good laugh at them.
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| Jenny's shot at the bull |
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| Hayden, what a goof! |
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| Mark was bound and determined to give this bull a run for it's money |
We had tickets for the Night Train that
evening. The Night Train is basically
same thing as a pub crawl but in Vegas they have clubs. We started at Aria Casino/Hotel, which by the
way that place was awesome, very Vegas. At Aria we started at The Deuce, which was a
lounge. I really liked this lounge, the
DJ was great. From there (with 120 other
people on this crawl) we headed to Haze, which was a club in Aria. This was my least favorite place. The music was techno and the dance floor was
so packed you couldn’t move. I felt like
the flow of this club was not very good, there was no good place to stand and
the music was way too loud.
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| The Deuce Lounge |
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| Aaron and I at The Deuce Lounge |
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| At Haze |
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| Dragon made out of chocolate at Aria, I'm tryng to take a bite of it |
After Haze, we hopped on a very nice limo
bus stocked with drinks. Hayden did a
fine job playing bartender for us. The
bus drove around on the strip and I noticed a University, it then hit me… why
didn’t I go to college in Vegas!?! HA!
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| the sweet limo bus |
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| Mark and Jenny across from us on the bus |
Our next stop on the Night Train was at
Hard Rock’s Club Vanity. This was our
favorite. The music was good, the dance
floor wasn’t nearly as packed so you could actually move, the go-go dancers
were entertaining, they threw out light sticks to the crowd, confetti fell from
the ceiling, there were many places to stand off the dance floor, the
atmosphere was not stuffy, and the bathrooms were clean. Great place!
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| Vanity, Aaron and Hurricane |
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| Catching glow sticks! |
When it was time to leave Vanity, we hopped
back on the bus for our last stop of the night, Luxor’s Club LAX. I was excited to check out the Luxor but
was disappointed. Very outdated and
I actually thought it felt dirty. At
LAX, I felt like the club had a gothic feel to it. The music was good but the atmosphere creeped
me out. By this point, my feet were
killing me, I was in 3 ½ inch heels and it was going on 2 am, so we were ready
to call it a night.
Next morning, time to do it all over again!
Pool day was even better, which I
already knew it would be because Saturday is far more ‘happening’ than
Fridays. After jello shots,
margaritas and what I thought would be a good idea to skip taking a nap, I was feeling
pretty beat by dinner time.
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| Pool Day #2!!! |
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| JELLO SHOTS! |
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| The guys |
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| Making friends... |
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| Making even more friends... I'm telling you this pool is SO much fun! Nothing but a bunch of happy people! |
Quick story, so there was a mini fridge in
our room and it was stocked full of alcoholic and nonalcoholic beverages. I know better than to open any of these items
because they are ridiculously overpriced.
But I moved out the items to make room in the fridge for our bottled
waters. The fridge had a locking code on
it, which we didn’t feel the need to set.
When we came back up to our rooms from the pool, I tried to get into the
fridge and it was locked. I called the
front desk, they informed me it was locked because we surpassed our $300
preauthorization on our room. I was like
WHAT!?!?! And explained, no we hadn’t
consumed anything in the fridge; we were just making room for our personal
items. The lady then told me that all of
the items in our room is weighted, so every time we picked up the hotel’s soda,
that fancy bottle of champagne, or the package of peanuts we were getting
charged. HOLY CATS, I PANICKED! We had touched darn near EVERYTHING!!!
I then explained that we just moved the
items, we hadn’t consumed them and requested the charges to be reversed. The lady informed me it would be a $50
restocking fee to have everything reset and put back. I quickly replied that is fine! I know we had touched possibly upwards of $1,000
of items. $50 was a drop in the bucket
at that point. In the end, we got all
the charges removed, even the $50 restocking fee. Lesson learned, don’t touch anything unless
you want to buy it! YIKES that was a
close call!
For dinner Saturday evening, we went to
Maggiano’s. I had no idea we would have a
floor to ceiling glass view overlooking the strip while enjoying dinner. AMAZING!
The food was divine! Dinner was
very relaxing. We were serenaded with
some authentic Italian songs that we all sang along to. It actually ended up being quite the
memorable meal, we were all really enjoying ourselves.
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| Maggiano's |
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| Maggiano's dinner |
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| Look at the view behind Jenny and I, this place was incredible! |
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| In good company! We have awesome friends! |
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| May I sernade you? Why yes you may! |
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| Hurricane and Mark being serenaded! HA! |
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| We were singing along 'It's Amore!' in our best Italian accents |
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| By the Venetian |
After dinner, we walked the strip all the
way back. Maggiano’s is on the north end
of the strip and MGM is on the south end. I knew it would be a jaunt because we did it
the year before from the Venetian, it takes a good 3 hours to walk back. But the walk takes extra long because we
stopped at places along the way.
We walked thru Treasure Island, Cesear’s
Palace, and The Bellagio. We watched the
fountain show at the Bellagio several times.
One thing you can NEVER skip in Vegas is the fountain show. Impressive every single time. We saw a lot of crazy people dressed up on the
strip, lots of performers. Even saw
someone get arrested and being filmed by a camera crew. You just never know what you will stumble
upon on the strip!
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| Bellagio Fountain Show |
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| Erin, Aaron, Hayden, Hurricane, waiting for the next fountain show |
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| Paris, Bally's, and Planet Hollywood across from The Bellagio |
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| Witnessing a filmed arrest! |
Sunday morning, Aaron and I hadn’t gambled much so we
got up early and headed down to the casino.
He was really into single deck blackjack. I walked over to the Roulette table, put down
$40 and lost it all in a matter of 30 seconds.
Feeling totally defeated, I hit the quarter slots for awhile as I
continued to lose at a slower pace. By
the end we basically broke even with Aaron’s winnings and my losses. Which was fine by me, it ended up being free entertainment
as I never expect us to win big.
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| You know... just some light gambling on a Sunday morning with a little coffee |
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| He acts so cool... like he does this all the time... LOL |
Our flight back was very smooth. I couldn’t believe how clear it was all the
way home. Saw the dessert, Grand Canyon,
the Rockies, the forest fires in Colorado… I’ve never flown in such a clear
weather. Enjoyed the flight home.
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| Heading home! |
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| The entire way home, Hurricane and Mark were chatty cathys and I had to listen to their nonsense for 3 hours straight! |
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| The dessert |
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| Grand Canyon |
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| Colorado Rockies |
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| Snow Capped Rockies |
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| Can you see the forest fire? Hard to see thru the picture but we saw it |
Overall, another great trip to Vegas was had!
Rarely do I ever care to revisit a place more than once, I feel there are too
many other places to see but Vegas is one place we just can’t get enough
of! We don’t have another trip planned
but I have a feeling Vegas will be near in our future again.
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| And this is why the post must end here :) |
