Vegas Ohh Yeah!

Friday afternoon we met Ian and Brian again at Cleveland airport for our flight to Vegas. Surprisingly they arrived with plenty of time to spare, but it didn't take long for an 'incident' to arise. We cleared customs and turned around to see how Ian and Brian were going getting through, only to see them both standing there with their bags wide open and the customs officials searching their bags. It turns out that they both had liquid in their carry on luggage which is banned. Brian had to throw out a few drinks and we had to post Ian's new cologne back to our house. We had a bite to eat and boarded the plane, not before Ian losing his boarding pass and searching his bag and pockets for 5 minutes trying to find it (apparently this wasn't the first time this had happened - he had to pull apart his entire bag on an earlier flight!)
We arrived in Vegas 10pm local time (the airport even has its own casino!) and somehow managed to jump an extremely long taxi queue, and checked into our luxurious hotel - The Venetian, which is modelled on Venice in Italy! It even has canals running around and through the hotel, as well as 2 pools, an exclusive beach club ($200 each just for entry), nightclub and 15 restaurants. Our room had a marble bathroom and a view of The Strip.

In our room having a drink

After dumping our gear in our room, we walked around the Strip for a short time. There are these men that line the streets and flick cards with pictures of naked girls on them that you can call for a good time, we got some and started our very own card collection. We went back to our hotel and looked around, then we went to bed about 2.30am (5.30 Pennsylvania time), leaving Ian and Brian wandering the Casino.

Cards from our collection that the men on the street hand out (and who Brian rang)

3am our bedroom phone rings, Ryan answers and the conversation goes like this:

'Hello Brian?'

'No, it's Ryan'

'Brian?'

'No, he isn't here, it's Ryan'

'Oh, well your entertainment has arrived. She is downstairs, just go down and get her'

'My what???'

'Entertainment. She is waiting downstairs now'

'I think you want Brian, he isn't here at the moment, he should be back soon'

'ok, bye'

10 minutes later, the phone rang again, and the exact same conversation took place. This happened another 2 times after this again! The phone rang again, and this time Ryan just hung up on them. Phone rings again, hang up, rings again, we hang up. 5 minutes later Brian comes up to the room and said he couldn't get past security without a room key and he rang 3 times to get our permission to come up! We had a bit of a laugh, but we were also very tired and sick of being woken up. Brian goes down stairs to get Ian (who had also rung to get permission to come up stairs). Finally we were all in bed and going to sleep. The phone rings again (Kristy let a few words fly):

'This is your wake up call!'

Ryan: 'Wake up call?'

'Is Brian there?'

'No, he is asleep'

(voice getting very cranky) 'Well, we are downstairs waiting!!'

Somehow Ryan manages to get them off the phone after a few more minutes of the same conversation and finally we get to sleep with no more phone calls!

Saturday

After lounging by the pool for only a short time because it was soooo hot (even the artificial grass was too hot to stand on bare foot!), we booked tickets to a show for the night and instead, Brian booked a helicopter flight for Sunday over the Grand Canyon. We were also supposedly added to the 'VIP' list for some nightclubs and handed some free entry to others too.

The gondola through the inside of our hotel

One of the towers in our hotel

We then walked the Northern end of The Strip up to Circus Circus and walking through other various casino's along the way to get drinks and get out of the heat (it was about 107F or 38C).

The heat made us VERY thirsty

We then caught a cab right down to the South end of The Strip to the Luxor (where we stayed last time) and walked through a few more casino's.

We then cabbed it back to our hotel (it is just too hot to walk and The Strip is quite long too), and made ourselves pretty for the night. The 3 of us went back down to the MGM Grand to watch 'Crazy Horse Paris' - a show based on the actual Crazy Horse night spot in Paris, with 12 gorgeous Parisian women topless dancing. It was a really good show, and very classy too. In the meantime, Brian rang another girl from the cards and was getting his own show back in the room. We were supposed to meet up with him at 10pm, but we got caught up looking through Casino's (including the MGM, which has a live lion enclosure. There is a glass tunnel you can walk through, taking you into the lions cage. One of the lions was running on top of us while the other one came face to face with us and was literally 2 inches from our faces - it was amazing!). We got back late and missed Brian. We went to make use of our VIP status at Treasure Island casino, but (surprise!) our names were not on the list. So we went home for the night.

Sunday

After brekkie, Brian left for his flight over the Grand Canyon, while we lounged around the pool for a while. We then walked The Strip, weaving in and out of casinos along the way.We caught up with Brian in our room later that afternoon, we tidied up and went over to the Belagio (a very nice 5 star casino that is used for Oceans 11) where we had dinner, and watched the infamous fountain show. We also went looking for an Armani shirt for Kurt at the Belagio. When the guy told us the shirt was $550, we knew we had the wrong store! We eventually found it for $25 at Caesars Palace.

Dinner at the Belagio and having a drink to celebrate Ian and Brian's last night in the USA

The fountain show out the front of the Belagio

We all got in a cab - we dropped Ian and Brian at one club while we proceeded to The Palms casino, which is made famous by the Girls Next Door reality TV show in the USA, based on the day to day lives of Hugh Hefner's 3 girlfriends (they visit the casino regularly). We started off at Moon on the 53rd floor. There wasn't a whole lot happening there, although we did have some drinks ($11 per drink!) and went to the open outdoor balcony which gave a very nice view over the entire city (we didn't have our camera, so don't have any photos). We then went down to the 52nd Floor, which was the newly opened Playboy club - the first one since the 1980's. We didn't have our camera, but really wanted a photo with a bunny (yep - all the girls there were the bunny costume). We asked another couple there who had a camera if they could take a photo of us and email it through, they were really nice and took the photo for us (although we haven't got it yet - i will put it up when we get it).