Viva Las Vegas!!

I finally have time to sit down and write about our trip to Las Vegas. It feels like so much longer than just a week since we got back. We decided to do something more than just go out to eat for our 10th anniversary and Nathan found a good deal on tickets to Las Vegas, so we decided to go. Jo was out of school from Wednesday through Friday last week, so we decided to go then. We had some awesome family that was willing to watch our kids for that long. Thanks Jolee and Trevor, Tara and Jake, and Gabby and Yani!!!!

We left Wednesday and after dropping the girls off at Jolee and Trevor's we headed down to Salt Lake to catch a plane to Las Vegas. I haven't flown since my mission and was a little nervous, but all ended well. The first thing I see when we get to the baggage claim is a Chinese Elvis. That was when I knew we weren't in Idaho anymore. I'm sad that I didn't get a picture of him. It was one of many Elvises that we saw on our trip. We got a rental car and decided to upgrade a little. We ended up with this fun thing.

We had reservations at the Stratosphere. We decided to leave our bags in the car and find our room before carting our stuff all over the casino. As soon as we walked in the door, we were accosted by some people asking if we wanted a bunch of free tickets. We told them we would think about it and come back. We ate dinner and took our bags to our room. We talked and decided that we had time to go to a presentation if it made it cheaper to have fun. We ended up getting free tickets to a show, free dinner, free gambling, and free tickets to go up to the observation deck at the top of the Stratosphere. We also got tickets for another show extremely discounted. All we had to do was go to a two hour presentation at Tahiti Village the next morning.

Here we are in front of the Tahiti Village Welcome Center.

So, the next morning, we got up and went to Tahiti Village, a time share. Nathan and I have actually walked out of time share presentations before, but they were smart here. They picked us up in a "Tahiti Village Bus" that started the propaganda from the drive over, also it made it so you couldn't leave. But they did make the presentation interesting. They did have some very valid points and they had a comedian that was pretty funny. They took us on a tour of the condos and they were nice, but not for us. I'm pretty sure they knew from the beginning that we weren't buying. They did what they were supposed to, but didn't push very hard. All in all it was very worth everything we got out of it. Here's Nathan posing in Tahiti Village with our "boarding pass" to get back on the bus.

Us in Tahiti Village. Very nice, just not for us.

Here's a picture of the front entrance to Tahiti Village. If you look closely, you can see the bus in the background. We actually got done quite early (due to them not pressuring us as much and the fact that we started talking about how we raise and kill our own chickens to our tour guide and she decided that we were done), so we were going to have to wait for a long time for our bus. After waiting for about 20 minutes, a different bus came by and we asked if she was going to end up at the Stratosphere. She said she eventually would get there, so we hopped aboard. It turns out that it was a bus for the owners of the condos in Tahiti Village and it goes all over the strip. We got a great tour of the strip and the bus driver was WAY better than any tour guide. She had an accent that we never could figure out, but she knew everything. We would mention one place we were thinking about going and she would launch in to a 10 minute lecture on everything else we could do around that area. We could have stayed in Las Vegas for two weeks and still not been able to do all the things she talked about. She was hilarious. She was the best part of the whole Tahiti Village tour.

When we got back, we decided to find out where to get tickets for the show that night. On the tickets, it said "the Aladdin," so we decided to walk down the strip to see if we could find the Aladdin. We clocked it later and we ended up walking 3 1/2 miles down the strip. It was a long walk, but we were able to see a lot of cool things. We walked through this outdoor mall. It was weird to see everything you see in a mall, except a ceiling.

They even had escalators, outside.

We heard a ton of helicopters while we were in Las Vegas. It seemed like a lot of them were just giving tours of the strip. This was one we saw on our walk. It would go up close to buildings, almost like an inspection and then fly off to the next one.

We also saw gondolas at the Venetian. Man, they had everything!!

I never knew that there really was a place called Margaritaville. Every time I saw it, I got that song by Jimmy Buffet in my head.
One of the places that the bus driver told us that we had to go was the Bellagio. When we walked inside, the first thing we see is this display of blown glass flowers on the ceiling. It was beautiful.
We also saw a wedding. This was one of about 15 that we saw while down there. Fortunately, I had my camera this time.
We were told to see the conservatory in the Bellagio. The bus driver said that they change the flowers monthly here. It was awesome.
This was a cool bridge. Apparently Nathan was getting sick of me asking him to pose for pictures.

Neat tree that kept moving whenever anyone walked by.

A Venus flytrap at the Bellagio.

One of the cool statue/fountains outside the Bellagio.

The famous fountains at Bellagio that are set to go with music. They were really good. We liked the show at the half hour better than the one at the hour.
Here we are after one of the fountain shows. We asked someone to take our picture and everyone was walking by. He saw a chance and took it while we weren't ready. Oh well.

We went to see Steve Wyrick that night. He is a magician and seemed to do tricks that you don't always see. For his opener, he had a bunch of girls dancing around (it IS Las Vegas), then there was a big explosion and there was a helicopter on stage that he stepped out of. He used a lot of his life in his show to explain why he did certain tricks. It was a good show. We also had a stroke of luck that night. When we got the tickets, they asked us if we wanted to upgrade for $10. We said no, but still ended up in the "good" section. On the very back row, but still in the section. Then, not even two seconds before the show started, someone came and asked if we would move. They led us down to the very front. Second row. They were awesome seats!! At one point, he disappeared from stage and ended up in the seat behind me. It was a great show!!After the magic show, it was almost time for "the Sirens of TI" outside of Treasure Island, so we decided to stop and watch it. I honestly don't think it was worth what it took to watch it. Everyone was crammed in together and we had to wait for 20 minutes for it to start. We could hardly see anything and the choreography wasn't that great. Of course it was free, so I don't have a whole lot of room to complain. We decided that we were done walking and we weren't really into the night life of Las Vegas, so we took a "deuce bus" back to the Stratosphere.

This is a picture we took of the "deuce bus" at the end of our trip.

I'm out of time for now. I'll have to write about the rest of the trip later.