Las Vegas

(the last part of my 3-part USA trip waaaay back when; sorry for the delay)

Vegas, baby, yeah!

Las Vegas… people seem so surprised that it’s my first time to Sin City. But, yeah, it really was my first time and I realized that I would need a week, at least, to fully enjoy what Vegas has to offer (a week a coupla grand of cash, actually, but I’ll settle for the former).

I arrived late and got picked up by my aunt and uncle and we headed to their new home to be greeted by my favorite cousin (well, one of them, anyway) and her husband.

Just a side: I totally adore this cousin of mine. I admire her to no end – her intellect, her perseverance, her beliefs, the way she raises her kids, and just how she is. She probably won’t get to read this, but I think she knows how much I admire her and practically worship the ground she walks on. At least… I think she knows. Ah well.

This is me and my best bud… and the guy is her man. It has been… uh… 3-4 years since I last saw her and I was properly excited to be seeing her and spending time with her after so long.

This is the Stratosphere hotel tower thing, the highest point in Vegas, I guess (109-111 floors up) and we went up there to hang out and talk while Julio (her man), Candy (her sister), and Pat (Candy’s man) hung around and waited for us in the ground floor. I’m quite thankful, actually, that they all didn’t mind letting Lee and I wander around.

I met Lee in their hotel room in… in… argh! I forget the hotel name… It was a T-something… Ah! Tropicana! Went up to their room in the Tropicana and that was my first experience with a Vegas hotel. I mean, usually, you’d enter a hotel and see the front desk, right? Well, I entered the hotel and saw casinos and I had to go around, looking like the lost tourist I am just to find the front desk. And when I asked where the elevators were, they asked which tower I was going to and I had to admit that I had no idea. Anyway, lucky me, I didn’t get lost and knock on the wrong door or anything.

After they checked out, the five of us (me, Lee, Julio, Candy, and Pat) looked for a place to eat and ended up eating in the Stratosphere’s 50s-themed restaurant (forgot the name). Good food, good ambiance, and there was a cute waiter LOL

It was nice to catch up and get to talk and spend time with Lee. We had our caricature drawn in the Strat and I had promised to email/mail a copy but unfortunately, the paper size is too big and I can’t get it to fit in our scanner without folding the paper. I’ll probably try and see if I can have it photocopied and then minimized so that I can send Lee a copy.

Anyway, after that, they dropped me off at the Mirage and I waited for my family there. We went to the zoo thing and then watched the Volcano light-show thing. We were supposed to watch the pirate show in Treasure Island but my aforementioned cousin and her husband found out that there were naked women there and promptly ushered her kids (and us) back across the street to Mirage LOL

Spent one evening just hanging out with my cousin and her husband and this was when we were headed back to the parking lot via Ceasar… Cesear… how in heaven’s name do you spell that?… anyway, via the C-Roman-ish hotel and passes this Roman guard guarding the, uh, fountain. I totally didn’t want a pix, I was too shy and stuff, yknow, didn’t want to seem too tourist-y but both of them were all, “go, go, go!” so I went LOL cool pix tho. Notice the ceiling? Man. It’s so Hogwarts-ish LOL I loved it! Just a note if you’re there: try, if you will, not to stare/gape/look at the ceiling while walking. It’s really not a pretty sight to see a silly tourist fall flat on her face in the middle of the ‘street’. Not that it ever happened to me. Almost did, though. Hah!

We had dinner at the Venetian and since I love Europe I totally dug this place. It’s near the C-Roman-ish something hotel and I know that the Paris hotel was nearby too – maybe they stuck all the European hotels together? Or was it just a coicindence? Whatever the case, I liked this Venice-style hotel because it’s a like a nicer, cleaner Venice. ‘Course nothing and no place can match up to the original. But the hotel’s fascimile is the next best thing.

When my aunt asked if there was any particular place I wanted to go to, I said I wanted to go to the Bellagio and watch the dancing fountains coz I saw it on “Ocean’s 11” and I wanted to see it for myself. So, here we went. I had spent the day in my other cousin’s home, meeting his wife and kids, then we all went out for dinner so I didn’t have my jacket or my extra digicam memory stick (both were in my aunt’s house) so I ended up borrowing my cousin-in-law’s black cardigan and wasn’t able to video the entire fountain show. I wanted so much to capture the entire thing on video since I’m sure my family would love to see it, but the memory left in my memory stick wasn’t enough. I guess I’m lucky enough to have my digicam with me at that time rather than to have also left it at my aunt’s house.

This is the view from the Stratosphere’s tower at night. We went here after seeing the dancing fountain. And silly me, we were about two blocks away from the Bellagio when I belatedly remembered that I should’ve gone it to see what the Bellagio looked like inside. Haaaay. Oh, well, hopefully there’ll be a next time and I’ll be able to see it then. In the meantime, I s’pose there’s always the DVD of “Ocean’s 11”.

Above Stratosphere’s tower, there are rides that you can, well, ride, and since I am a massively huge fan of such adrenaline-pumping makes-you-wanna-scream rides, that kind of thing is totally my thing. I would not let a Vegas vacation pass without at least trying one ride up the Strat. As it turns out, because of the weather (mild rain and winds), 2 out of the 4 rides were closed. That left Big Shot and Insanity. Obviously, I wrote both LOL

This is Big Shot:

It’s a drop kind of ride (they bring you up and then suddenly drop you and then bring you up slightly, then drop you, etc) that’s situated at the very top. The red line that you see is the highest point of the tower. I was never really fond of the drop rides since I don’t fancy the feeling they give. I can take roller coasters, I can take whatever or however extreme the roller coaster is, but drops? Forget it. But this was the Strat. This was Vegas. This was special so I sucked it in and tried it out (consequently, after this, I’d like to believe that any other ‘drop’ ride will be anticlimatic so I am now officially into drop rides… since it wasn’t so bad). My aunt and uncle adamantly refused to ride in anything but I was totally fine with that. So I went up, ignored the slight drizzle, braced myself against the winds, and picked a chair to sit on. Then I asked the guy, “how long is the ride?” guy replies, “30 minutes.” Me: “30 minutes?! Are you sure?” “Yeah, 30 minutes.” Great. I was strapped in a type of ride I’ve feared and never ridden before, located 1000 ft above the ground and it’ll last thirty minutes?!! I am ashamed to say I closed my eyes during the first drop. All I kept thinking was: 30 minutes of this? Obviously, the man was mistaken. The ride was over in, I think, 30 seconds. Yeesh. All that fear for nothing. Anyway, it wasn’t too bad. And I kind of enjoyed being so dangerously close to the stars and seeing the ground so far, far, far away… and the lights, let’s not forget the lights.

The other ride that was open was called Insanity and Pat had already mentioned that it wasn’t that much of a nice ride. It’ll just make you dizzy because you go around and around and around… but, hey, the ride goes around and around and around and around as you’re staring down, down, down, thousands of feet down. So, hey, totally my kind of thing.

I got to sit with a girl I don’t even know altough we certainly laughed about our experience during and after. See, I was on her right and since the ride went in a clockwise direction, I ended up getting the side where the cold, cold wind was blowing. We were both laughing coz we didn’t know if we were shaking due to the cold or to the ride. I knew mine was due to the cold since I just loved being there. Felt like I was on top of the world and looking down at the ground. Like I was flying above small buildings and parking lots and…parking lots. I love it! And even the constant rotation didn’t really get to me much.

The trip to America was great. Even though I was totally bitin, I still had a lot of fun and I’m very happy to have spent time with all the people I wanted to spend time with :)