Viva Las Vegas

 Everyone's heard of Sin City and it seemed like everyone but me had been there.  So in June of 2015, my husband and I finally made it to Las Vegas, Nevada!  This trip was a part of a two week adventure between Vegas and Salt Lake City, UT.  I'll review Salt Lake in a separate post. 

I was pretty amped up about Vegas.  I had the fantasy of winning a million dollars and meeting up with famous celebrities who would join us for a dinner prepared by Emeril.  That's not quite how it went.  I'm not saying it was a bad experience because it wasn't.  We had a ton of fun!

Our first night in Vegas was kind of a blur.  We arrived so late and we were absolutely worn out.  Once we finally got our rental car and found the hotel (what would have been about 6:00 AM Indiana time), we literally took off our clothes and fell asleep in 5 seconds. 

We stayed at The D in the old part of Las Vegas.  When we finally woke up, we had a good breakfast at one of the restaurants in the casino.  We walked around to a couple of the nearby casinos and took in the atmosphere.  As far as I can tell, The D was really nice.  The room was suuuuper cheap.  I would recommend this hotel due to its convenient downtown location.

After our first day, we left Vegas and returned about 10 days later.  This time we stayed on the Las Vegas Strip at The Luxor.  This was whole different experience.  

The Luxor is massive, and it connects to Excalibur and Mandalay Bay without ever having to go outside.  There is an indoor mall and several dining choices.  My favorite thing about The Luxor, you ask?  THE SMELL!  It smells so good in there.  They obviously put a type of air freshener in their air purification system, and it's awesome.  People can smoke in all of the casinos, but you can't really smell it at The Luxor, which is nice.  We lost all of our allotted gambling money, but we still had a fun time.  The room prices are very inexpensive, so it didn't hurt so bad to lose a little money to Roulette. 

To summarize, we had fun.  Will we be heading back soon? Probably not.  It was a place that we were excited to discover but... well, we saw it.  It's checked off the ol' bucket list.

Words of the Wise(ish)

*Take a pre-determined amount of money for gambling and don't spend any more.  Remember, if you can't afford to lose, you can't afford to play!

*Alcohol is free if you're playing.  Don't go sit at one of the many bars and drink because you'll have to pay for your drinks.  The cocktail servers will eventually come around and bring you whatever alcoholic or non-alcoholic drinks you want.  But don't forget to tip!

*Don't go in June.  Or probably in the summer in general.  It's so freaking hot.  I mean, I can't even describe the heat.  Yes it's a dry heat, but 115 degrees is still misery.  We didn't get to explore much outside of the hotel just because it was too hot to function.

*Let your hair down!  It's Vegas, baby!