Shout out to American Airlines. Four flights in total and not one delayed or any issues.
We're here!
Check in desk at The Venetian Hotel. Yay she gave us an upgrade to a room with a view.
We dropped off our bags, ran and grabbed something to eat and met up with Mike & Wendy straight away.
We first went for a walk to The Sphere so as to locate ourselves for the concert the next night to know what time we needed to leave at and the route to take etc.
After that, straight into fun Las Vegas activites - Mike and Patrick signed up for a poker game and Wendy and I circled the casino, chatting, having a drink and playing the odd slot machine for fun. I showed Wendy my "method" (invented by myself and Katie Bebbington circa 2007) for playing the slot machines...and I kid you not she won $85 on like her 3rd/4th spin. Crucial to my "method" is that on a big win like that you cash out immediately. She did, and she ended the trip up in dollars: win win.
We headed to bed that night excited to think that the concert was tomorrow night.
Saturday morning! Okay, so ahem, things go a little crazy/Las Vegasy (just a little, honestly) at this point.
Patrick and I woke up really early at about 6am. I opened the electronic drapes from the bed (lol) and we lay there watching the sun rise over our hotel view. At 7am, Patrick suddenly says, come on, we're in Vegas let's go for breakfast and have drink. For one split second I am all serious and "oh no, the concert, we said we would go easy beforehand" etc and then come to my senses. "Yes, feck it, let's do it!" We also talk about how we will go for a nap before the concert "it will be fine"
Of all places, we go to Margaritaville. A place we would NEVER go to in Key West. I voted for it mainly for their special offer of a morning $7 margarita.
We had a burrito and bacon. It was actually really good. And the beer and margarita was good too!
Reader, do not fear, we DID go for the nap before the concert and everything WAS fine!
The concert was amazing. Small blog about it
here. U2 have still got it and I am proud to be Irish.
The next morning Wendy and I got up at 7am and went on a small bus tour to the Hoover Dam.
Thoroughly, thoroughly recommend this. It is about 45/60 minutes away and some beautiful views along the way too. Excellent tour guide driver and then excellent government tour guides at the dam. What a feat of engineering done in the 1930's...I am not sure if a project like this could be executed as well these days. It finished 2 year ahead of schedule!
Patrick and Mike, in the meantime, got together and planned a fancy lunch for themselves. Ha! They made the mistake of telling us about it when we were just heading back so we were like "hang on for us, hang on for us!" I am joking. They had indeed planned a boy's boozy lunch, but they were perfectly fine to hang on for us also.
I had oysters to start, then a tuna burger for my main and baklava for dessert - which Patrick shared with me. I had an espresso martini to drink.
Patrick got a starter of three Greek Spreads (Tzatziki, taramosalata and htipiti) and Pita. For his main he got sea bream pictured above. He ordered greek yogurt for dessert but mainly ate my baklava :)
To wash all this fare down he actually did the wine pairings so had a greek sparkling wine with his starter and a white wine from Cyprus with the sea bream!
Okay, no more photos :( But let me tell you how we closed down the Las Vegas trip. We spent Sunday afternoon in Mike and Wendy's room (we both had suites of a nice size with a big sitting area) watching football and following some bets that Mike and Patrick had made.
After that we went and got ready for the evening (and packed for the morning - we had an early flight) and met up at a fun Italian restaurant called Battistas Hole in the Wall. Lively and the most dreamy lasagne, plus some wine and lots of craic. It was a great evening.
We walked down the strip and at this point said goodbye to Mike and Wendy :(
As Wendy summed it up to me in text later that week: "sad it is over, but happy it happened".
Next morning Patrick and I were up at 4am (shudder) for the long haul back to Key West. But thankfully as noted at the start, all flights were smooth, we both slept a decent amount on them too. We were home in good time and shape and delighted to see the little cat, who was also delighted to see us.
Las Vegas. Great as always.
