Vegas IV

 more vegas..

Caesar's palace by day, if you enter the door on the left, the chances are you wont exit there if you wanted to! the main entry/valet is to the right, itll make some small country airport drop offs look small.

Inside the Luxor hotel, its a massive shiney black pyramid, those lines in the ceiling are the hotel room hallways, very trippy, casino and shops are all below

 

 

The strip by day, this road is always very busy, day or night

The sphinx out front of the luxor, you can see a bit of the pyramid to the right

The final night we decided to check out the original las vegas, where it all started, where the mob had a hand to play. Its called downtown and probably 10ks from the actual strip. This is considered the center of vegas, this is fremont street, a mall type place with hotels casinos bars music and entertainment. the hotels/casinos here are old and alot of them have kept the original buildings and turned it into more of a classic casino town. Its a very very busy place with $2 beers and old school slots

 

The roof has a very long led light show every 1 or so called the fremon experience. they turn off the casino lights and play a trippy video light show with a loud music soundtrack

 

No hi tech casino fronts here, just old school light bulbs and neons, heaps of them

I swear ive seen these places in plenty of music videos etc... kanye west drive slow is one..

Late night snack, coney island chilli dogs in vegas. and to wash it down my 1lt fat tuesday frozen cocktail with extra shot of vodka, they definately put booze in their drinks over here ;) $16 for this puppy with the extra booze, and they taste pretty good too.  Then theres the 3lt plastic guitar full of booze, keep you going all night..

 

We decided to check out the wynn hotel on the way home, if its good enough for prince harry its good enough for me, sort of.. very nice looking place, inside and out..

Wynn botanical garden, semi indoors, decoraded for chinese new year, every casino seemed to decorate for chinese new year, i wonder why?

Tired after a long day. We probably walked a good 6km minimum each day in vegas. My new hat was lost in inside the xray machine at the vegas airport, yes, INSIDE THE MACHINE. needless to say i wasnt impressed. lazy pricks wouldnt stick their head in it to look. Overall vegas was one of those places you need to check out but i certainly wont be going back in a hurry

 

Bye bye vegas and hello New york city, Manhattan island from the sky and the famous central park in the center. the weather looks so nice and inviting!

 

until next time..

 

Vegas III

We planned to check out the grand canyon as its only a few hundred ks from vegas in the state of arizona. We initially planned to drive it but that would take a full day plus we'd only see the one view of the extensive canyon. So we decided to take a helicopter tour from the vegas international aiport - which is right behind our hotel- and check it out..

 

 

includes VIP pickup from hotel..

 

 

Take off, the front seats were extra obviously, and everyone was asking for it. They decide who sits where depending on your weight, guess we ate just enough burgers to score the front seats! and it was worth every extra cent too. microphones certainly make you feel like top gun but no one knew how to use it. Id have to say helicopters feel alot smoother than your average plane ride, you barely know your taking off

Mad view from my seat, cruising over the vegas suburbs

The impressive hoover dam. Lots of lives lost on its construction. cool bit of engineering

 

the section of the canyon we visited was about 250km? from vegas, cruising at 230km/hr we go there fairly quick, plently of hilly dessert

 

Arriving at the canyon, the river below is the mighty colorado, the canyon itself is formed from millions of years of water errosion. Its pretty cool having the ground disappear from under you into a huge drop, we cruised along the bottom of the canyon for a while

 

 

A touristy spot at the top. The part protruding out is a walkway made of thick glass that hangs way out over the edge. Its basically what we would have been able to drive to from vegas..

 

 

And this is what we get with the helicopter... simply awesome

that river looks like a stones throw down, but its very very far down

 

 

We landed near this little picnic area owned by the helicopter your company. The canyon land is owned by the traditional indians. aparently each person that steps foot in here earns them $60!

The top to bottom heigh of this section of the canyon is 900m+!

 

Plenty of these guys around looking for a peice of our lunch, thats a slice of tomato in hes mouth! dunno what it is tho

helicopter pilots make great photographers

We arrived here 1st and were alone for a good 20mins. then, the rest of the company fleet arrived, 7 other helicopters in fact! thats $60x42 for only this area and one of many flights of the day..

Youd think that being down the bottom of the canyon would be peaceful and alone, but no, every 2-4minutes a helicopter would fly over us heading along the canyon, thats no exaggeration! sometimes even 2 or 3 together, doing turns and flying all around teh place, its amazing they dont crash into each other. This tour stuff is big business, and thats just one tiny tip of the canyon

 

Not for those who are afraid of heights

Cruising back to vegas, the pilot liked to cruise real low to the mountain tops. the strip in the distance, all 7 or so km of it

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vegas II

More Vegas!
Ill stick the night time photos of the hotels as thats when they really stand out
dont forgot to click for bigger pics...

The venetian Hotel casino, venice themed, very elaborate and large in size

The famous venetian gondolas and 'day time' effects on the ceilings, pretty cool really. plenty of fancy shops around

 

 

Caesars Palace hotel casino on the right and the mirage on the left, casesars consists of about 5 or 6 towers and several buildings inbetween them all

 

 

Inside Caesars. plenty of sculptures and water fountains around this place

 

The bellagio hotel, one of the classier hotels in my opinion, the 'lake' is home to the famous water fountain show

 

The water fountain show from across the road. every hour on the hour the show kicks off to a syncronised sountrack that blasts out from speakers and subwoofers around the bellagio lake, and a thousand or so people gather around to watch it. pretty cool to watch

Walking down the strip. getting around here is quiet a pain, even if you want to walk, the walkway is always zig zagging across the road, over bridges and through lots of shops and casino areas.. you cant go anywhere without being tempted to spend some $! btw this is a very very quiet time of the night, as the weekend came it got more and more busy, think weekend vegas trips

The also famous mirage hotel volcano show, also a huge crowd drawer. They use plenty of flames and water jets to create a volcano eruption, very cool and hot

 

Another view from down the strip

another view of the mirage fountain show

 

Inside the new york new york hotel, the restaurant/food court area, all themed with new york style buildings, streets and dining options.. pretty cool

Our hotel, not the prettiest. We stayed just on the left section of the 'david', at night the whole thing glows green, not good if your blockout shades are open. They are currently revamping the exterior and building something major inside so its not too flash at the moment. You can see the connecting bridge over the road that connects to new york new york. The hotels make it easy to get from one to the other. You can drink and smoke anywhere, inside the hotel or on the street, the smoking bit is nasty since your clothes smell from even walking through a casino, but taking your drink from hotel to hotel is pretty cool tho.

Ok some time for food, vegas is also the place to stuff your face with anything you can think of

We hit Caesar's $16m revamped buffet for dinner, and let me just say, you want to leave your belt at home for this one. you couldnt taste everything here without getting stuffed, the place is HUGE. each decent hotel has its own buffet, but this one stands out. If you show up during peak hour you can wait a good 30mins, and theres an easy 100 tables inside. Everything you can think of they have it, somethings are made fresh, all for $48, non alco drinks included. This is the american section, i didnt even get to try anything here

Desserts. Probably the size of the entire sizzler buffet.

My seafood platter, giant crab legs, oysters and prawns are very average in this country! qld mud crabs, yamba prawns and coffin bay oysters are king!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Viva Las Vegas!

Ok, with most holidays half the fun is getting there, so, we or I decided that the mazda 6 wasnt cutting the mustard so after a lot of stuffing and a detour to san fran international airport, we managed to swap our mazda for something a bit more suitable, the all american ford mustang GT, 5liter V8, plenty of horsepowers under the hood, and while fuel is 93cents a liter why not a v8..
Covered about 300km on the 1st leg to vegas, stopped in at a small place called fresno for the night, pretty standard freeway action, busy as hell, 2 or 3 lanes 115km speed limit, everyones doing 125km, at one point I was holding up the police at 125km, guess I wasnt breaking the law enough for him to pull me over.. 2nd leg was about 650km, plenty of scenery, LOTS of desert, but very cool, again busy as road, everyone was in a hurry to get to vegas and loose some money! Vegas really is an 'oasis' in the desert cause theres nothing near it for hundreds of k's.. enjoy

Cool huh?! for $50 extra a day, why not.. .good luck finding a deal like that in oz! and yes it does haul ass for a yank tank. Plenty of desert and mountain landscape to check out on the way

 

 

Dinner in Fresno @ a place called the Dog house grill... their famous Tri Tip Sandwich, 2 thumbs up, dont let the excess meat fool you, its soft and juicy all the way, bread is spot on, whoa!! awesome, this place was huge and pretty cool, EVERYONE was eating this sandwich..

 

from desert to the 'oasis'. Rolling into vegas and these MASSIVE hotels are mind blowing

 

 

Lobby/check in of our hotel, MGM grand, The service desks are HUGE, this place is like the brisbane airport check in, crazy. Other than that, the MGM was an average place to stay, way too big, smelt like cheap deoderant, and always busy. The gym was split in 2, weights and cardio, cardio is free and weights is $15 a day! internet pc is $1 a minute! hence no blog, but I guess free wifi makes up for it hahah

 

View from out room, not too bad, but we are looking at the southern end of the strip, where it all starts, the real action is behind us. dont let the view fool you tho, cause in most hotels, if you even remove a drink from the mini bar to read the label, the instant you grab it, your room is charged! talk about tight!

In this pic the gold hotel is mandalay bay, the castle thing is excalibur and the luxor (pyramid shaped hotel) is hidden heind that big white one. Over here majority of hotels have casinos downstairs and plenty of restaurants, shopping centers, entertainment, bars, clubs and of course wedding chapels, all in the one hotel. Every hotel basically makes it so you can spend a week or 2 indoors and never have to venture outside because you wont get bored..

Inside the MGM shopping district, very nice indeed. MGM is probably mid rang shopping, alot of very high end shops, a la beckham's budget

MGM wedding chapel, most that we saw are on this scale, very nice indeed, I think the cheesy vegas weddings dont really happen on the strip anymore. We saw a few brides and grooms around the city so people do get married in vegas

 One of Wolfgang Pucks restarants, huge steamed mussels, awesome! I think it was only $15 too. Celebrity chefs go nuts over here, Gordan Ramsy has 4 restaurants on the strip..

 

View from MGM end of the strip. To the left of the hotel New York New York, each of those little buildings are actually one large building, made to look like the New York skyline, its much bigger than in the pic, it comes with huge rollercoaster too. The strip is extrememly busy. It stretches for 6 or 7kms so walking is tiring, the bus is slow and the monorail is off the way, so basically getting around vegas is shit, maybe thats how they want it.. so you stay in your hotel and gamble?!

Paris hotel, complete with Effiel Tower and Arc triumph (?) which are both HUGE but not as big as the real deal. some hotels have themes, but surprisinly they didnt seem as cheesy as I expected. They really go to great lengths to make their hotels stand out. Even if your not a gambler, theres still plenty to see and do, just checking out each hotel will take you a week because of teh sheer size of everything, the strip is a city within a city. 

Some hotel casino entrance, casinos are big here, I'd say melb star casino is the going average size for the big hotels. Oh and you need to pass though the casino to get to your hotel room, $$!

Gordan ramsy's restaurant BurGR, thast all they do, and they do it well, so well i ate there twice, simple but good.