Las Vegas Trip

Dale and I received an opportunity to fly to Vegas and have a little 4 day holiday. I called and got us a great day at the Venetian Hotel. Military Discount is great sometimes. We then stayed in a free hotel. Quite a difference, however sitting for an hour presentation is worth a free vacation. We flew down early in the morning. We got our rental car and drove to the venetian hotel. It had been over 14 years since either one of us had been to Vegas. I will say this... a lot has changed. We parked in what we thought was the Venetian hotel parking lot. Well, we were in a different hotel all together and ended up walking about 1/2 to just our hotel. We were both exhausted by this time and very overwhelmed with the beauty of the hotels. I knew that it would be OK once we got into our room. WOW! Our room was a 450.00 room that I paid 79.00 for. Once again thanks to that military discount.

These are some pictures of our beautiful room at the Venetian, including one of Dale chillin' in the robe provided. I understand why they are so expensive because everything is marble, you have your own pair of slippers and robe(as you can tell from the robe I was wearing while shooting these pictures. LOL!!! In the bathroom we had a big tub, which was wonderful and a dressing table. In the dressing table drawer were all the fun things you could use. Of course I had to take them all, toothbrush, floss, wonderful lotion, etc. I wished we could have stayed there for more than one night.

We slept in the morning, the bed and pillows were like sleeping on feathers. We didn't want to wake up. We had an early checkout (probably because of the big, huge discount we received). We got up and went to the hotel restaurant and had a wonderful buffet.

I have always wanted to take a gondola ride through the hotel so we walked around and the following are a couple pictures of what we saw while riding the gondola. It was great to be sung to, even though it was a fake accent, just for one moment I could see what it would be like to be in Venice. The hotel was beautiful. The one picture below is Dale 3 floors up on the phone, I was sitting at a base of a beautiful waterfall.

We stored our luggage at the hotel because we had a huge walk in front of us to our car. We got to the parking garage and due to us being so tired the previous day, neither one of us could remember which parking level we parked on. Oh boy! It took us nearly 2 hours trying to find our car. Finally we found the honking noise (we were grateful that the rental car had an alarm) and new it was our car. The only thing was, we could not figure out where the honking was coming from. People were yelling for someone to turn the horn off. We walked around like it wasn't us and I have never prayed so hard to find a stupid car in my life. We found the car, both of us blaming each other and drove our grumpy self's to get our luggage. We decided to make a new start and made a plan to do a voice memo when parking so we would never forget where we parked. LOL!! We drove to our off the beaten path hotel excited to start our next adventure. We pulled up to our hotel and thought that we were in the ghetto...yikes!! I was ready to get on a plane and fly home. Well, we braved the walk from the parking garage to the hotel. We for sure could remember where we parked the car, there were only 2 levels. LOL!! We checked in and walked into our room. Below you will find, our new room. We definatley were not at the Venitian! It was free and we didn't care.

We decided that we would venture to the strip, we found out if we walked a 1/2 block we could catch the monorail and it would take us the whole way down. We decided it would be better than driving in all that mess. We went to the M&M and Coke store, we walked down the strip just looking at all the changes. I took the picture below because I have always wanted to go to the Statue of Liberty and I finally saw a model of it. Not the same, however it was good enough.

One thing I was really dissappointed with is how dirty the city streets are, the longer I was there the more horrible feelings I recieved. The people flicking cards in your face, the cards of the strip joints on the ground. I just realized that I won't care if I never go there again. Our hotel we were staying at had a karoke night and we decided we would drink our orange juice and coke and listen to the people singing. I believe that was what broke the haystack. One night there was a scream and we looked over toward the scream and what we saw was not what I ever want to see again. I wont go into details, however the security guard promptly threw them both (guy/girl) out and told them not to come back. It was disgusting and I told Dale I was done with Vegas, no longer have a desire to come back again. He agreed! Although all different things happened, Dale and I had a good time together. We enjoyed ourselfs and made the best of it. We went to Nellis Airforce Base and shopped there and just talked. We were glad to come back home from a crazy vacation.