Tuesday, 12 February 2013

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.
 
 
 
 

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