Vegas Vacation: Part One

April 27 - 28, 2017

Mike and I decided to take a little vacation. It may have been a little too long but it really was a fun time. It was hard being away from the girls for so long but the grandma's who watched them said they both did great so we were all good.

We headed out pretty early in the morning and had no trouble on our flights. We connected in Minneapolis (it was COLD there!) and then went on to Vegas. I got my first glance of the opulence of that whole place in the airport. Slot machines and shopping EVERYWHERE. We got to our resort/casino, the MGM Grand, not long after and after getting our stuff in the room (it was ready early!) we were able to go exploring. We looked around our resort (saw the pool, casino, shopping district, bars and restaurants... the whole place is a city block of it's own, huge!) and then went out onto the Strip. We crossed the street to New York New York. Mike stopped to gamble. He won just a little bit. Yay! We kept wandering and ended up at Aria in City Center. We saw some cool art on the way, and a ton of awesome decor at Aria itself. I took lots of photos. I put my $20 (all I allotted for gambling cuz that's how I roll) into a machine while Mike was playing and ended up winning $55! Mike then won $200 or something like that! Hooray! That was the best we did all week though...

Next, we got a bus pass and took it all the way to old Vegas, their downtown, to Fremont Street. There were some CRAZY weird people around there. It was interesting anyway. We didn't play much but we did go find a restaurant that was really good. We shared a few different things and enjoyed chatting with our waiter. Then we went back to Fremont Street and did the Slotzilla zipline. It was cool but also pretty terrifying. You fly down through the lights on your stomach. Cool though. After that, Mike got a call from Roy. Their cousin Jenny told him that we were in Vegas after he had flown in on an overnight trip with Southwest. We met him at the Hofbrauhaus German restaurant back closer to our resort. I was very tired and we got into a big of an argument on the way (it's SOOOO much walking and everything looks way closer than it is there) but it was fun to see Roy, get some dessert and hang out before the end of the first day.

Our second day was SUPPOSED to be more relaxing. Turns out it was a little chilly that morning and windy so it was not a pool day as I had hoped. So instead we headed south to Mandalay Bay to see their aquarium. It was pretty cool. They had a polar exhibit which wasn't all that special but something to see and then the aquarium was neat. I got some good photos and Mike touched a sting ray and horseshoe crab ;) We went down to the Las Vegas sign and then back up to Luxor. Mike gave away some money and then we wandered through a shopping area and had lunch at a really awesome Irish pub. Yummmmm... back to our resort, I believe we both took naps. It's tiring in Vegas!

That night was also the night of the Backstreet Boys concert at Planet Hollywood. We had dinner at Wolfgang Puck's at MGM first. Mike wasn't impressed but I thought it was pretty good. Everything is so expensive, you expect it to be pretty much awesome though. Afterwards, we went to PH and found our seats at the Axis theater. We were SOOOOO close! Better have been for as much as it cost me... anyway, the show was great. All their best hits and a few unexpected songs. I need to look up the two new ones they sang. One particularly was good but of course I can't remember the name of it. Anyway, Brian waved at me (I was waving both arms all frantic-like and I was the only one waving in his sight line, and he waved back the same way I was so I know he saw me... this is like the third time we got him to do that... of course it was just me this time!) and all of them were up in the audience for a bit of one song and I TOTALLY got to touch Howie's hand as he ran by. Woooo! Mike was such a good sport putting up with all that. He rolled with it nicely and we had fun. There was beer so yeah ;)

^River pool at MGM.

^That Statue of Liberty is made entirely of Twizzlers.

^Aria, so pretty!

^My only lucky streak.

^So much to see.

^Dinner at Carson Kitchen.

^The Slotzilla zipline.

^Day 2, crepes at Aria.

^Polar exhibit at Mandalay Bay.

^Pretty sweet lion fish. 

^Oooooh.

^Almost think we should have stayed at this resort!

^Luxor was cool, but too dark for my taste.

^At Wolfgang Puck's.

^Oh Boys, I'll follow you anywhere (except your cruise, I don't want to get seasick)

^I have a good husband ;)