As some of you know, Brittany and I went to Las Vegas this last weekend for a small vacation/birthday celebration. Since I don’t want to recount the events a million times, I’m writing them here for everyone to read.

We left on Thursday evening. After arriving at the parking spot (long term airport parking), we head to the airport via a brand new shuttle bus. The driver must have been determined to break it in right, because I don’t think he ever went below 40mph, except for the toll booth. If you’ve never been to DFW airport, those flyover ramps are SCARY AS HELL in a mini-bus at that kind of speed. Anyway … Get to the plane and we (thankfully) had a nice quiet flight in an exit row and no screaming kids (it was a 9:30 departure).

Get off the plane in Vegas and head to the hotel. The cab driver fucked me and took me out on the highway, resulting in a $25 fare for what should have been about $9. I hope you are robbed at gunpoint for taking advantage of people that don’t know any better, prick.

Get to the Mirage and check in. The room is ok, but not so much for the price. It’s basically like a holiday inn on the strip. Since we arrived at roughly 2:00 central time, we were exhausted when we got there. It was only 11:00 Vegas time though, so we wanted to get something to eat before crashing. Now … You would think that in a city like Vegas everything would be open REALLY late. Well, you would think wrong. There was one restaurant open in the entire hotel at 11:30 when we decided to eat (though the Mc Donalds across the street was open if I recall correctly), so we went there and got $15 cheese burgers, which really should have kicked ass, but didn’t.

Ok, so now it’s Friday morning at about 7:30AM and I’m woken up by a couple of asshats in the hallway talking very loudly on the other side of my PAPER THIN room door. I scream some obscenities and they move along, but I can’t go back to sleep, so I get up and start the day (slowly). A shower and clean clothes reveals that I have forgotten to pack both boxers and socks, so the first trip is out to the shopping mall next to the Mirage.

Now I will say that that mall was pretty cool. They have lots of statues that move and put on shows and stuff like that, and some of the stores were really nifty, but mostly it’s just like a normal shopping mall. EXCEPT … They have bars about every 10 stores. Liquor is expensive at the bars in Vegas, but they all serve to you in plastic cups, and you can walk down the street with a cocktail, which is great.

Anyway … Back to the room to drop off stuff and then out to Oshea’s casino for a $5 minimum blackjack table. Brittany had never gambled before. so we wanted to start out slow and the Mirage was running $15 – $25 minimums the whole time we were there since we picked a BAD weekend to be there (more about that later). We sat down at a $10 table since the $5 tables were full, and played for 30 minutes or so until they swapped the dealer that we liked for one that we didn’t like so much. We were up about $50 though, so we cashed out and went back to the hotel to meet some of her family for the evening.

After meeting with her cousins, aunt and grandmother, her cousins took us to “Blush” at the Wynn. Blush is a typical trendy night/dance club. Now … This is REALLY not my thing. I’m much more comfortable in a pub type setting with darts, golden tee and pool tables, but I told myself I would suffer through it since they were trying to be nice and show us a good time. Her cousins knew people at the club, so we got to bypass all the “normal” people in the line and go right in and enjoy a free round of drinks. That was kinda cool.

After that we head to “The Spearmint Rhino” (a strip club), but the line there was ridiculously long, and it was cold outside, so we went to a little hole in the wall bar. With the exception of the HORRIBLE pool table that literally rolled all the balls to one rail, and the fact that they didn’t serve any alcohol (beer and wine only) that place was pretty cool. Very laid back and ‘pubish’, if that were an actual word. After that they took us back to the Mirage and we called it a night.

Ok, so Saturday. We get up and head to brunch with Brittany’s grandmother and her friend at a restaurant that I can’t recall the name of. It was in the Paris hotel. The food was pretty good I thought (I had a steak ‘sammich’), but the ladies didn’t think much of it.

After that we went to the Luxor (the Egyptian themed hotel that looks like a pyramid) and wandered around there for a while, and through the mall that connects it to another hotel that I forget the name of. We took some pics of the Luxor’s sphinx. I’ll try to get those up later.

After that, we parted ways from her grandmother and her friend and headed to Circus Circus. Now let me tell you about Circus Circus and why I wanted to go. If you’ve ever seen “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”, the “Carrousel Bar” is the place where Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro go for drinks and “my attorney” asks the cigarette girl if she gets paid to fuck the polar bear. Anyway … I wanted a picture of us at that bar, so naturally it was FUCKING CLOSED.

So, ok, fine. The Circus Circus casino has $5 blackjack, so we go down to play for a while and get some free drinks. After tripping over people’s kids to get to the casino, we find a table that we want to try. Play 2 hands from a dealer that is quite literally throwing cards at us, and decide to find another. Find that one, order cocktails and have cards thrown at us by an older Asian lady that can’t count to 21. If you ever have to correct your dealer on when she had to pay you, get up and leave … The watered down cocktail isn’t worth it, and you’ll just leave it at the cashier’s cage anyway (which we did).

Out of the ghetto end of the strip and back to the Mirage/O’Sheas. We get there (and have to get out of the cab in the middle of the street) and it’s SOOOOO full that we can barely walk through the place. The $5 tables are full, as is pretty much everything else. We finally decide to say fuck it and just go to the liquor store. From there it’s back to the hotel room to get drunk for a couple hours before meeting up with her grandmother again.

At 6:00 we meet up with her grandmother again and have a martini (my first ever actually) and head out to dinner at somewhere in the Bellagio. It was quite good, if much too expensive.

From there we went to Cirque du Soleil’s “O”. This was BY FAR the high point of the trip. It’s like a 2 hour Tool video or something. Lots of water and people on high wires and strange symbolism that can’t be fully appreciated without seeing it yourself. VERY COOL. After that it was back to the hotel for sleep.

Sunday morning:

Leave for the Airport at about 10:00 (11:30 flight). We get there and holy shit. NEVER try to leave Las Vegas on Sunday morning. There was a line of probably 100 people trying to check baggage with U.S. Airways. We bypassed all that though. First Class FTW!

The jet that we were taking back was close to an hour and a half late leaving the ground, but through some manipulation of space and time that I don’t quite understand, they still got us back to DFW on time, and feed us 6 or 8 more drinks on the flight.

All in all, it was fun to get away from home for a couple days and meet some of her family, but the whole Vegas experience sucked hard (with the exception of the Cirque show). It’s probably a fault of the weekend we picked to go. This last weekend Vegas was all hyped up for the following events:

* StupidBowl Sunday
* UFC fight
* Chinese New Years
* Pre-Mardi Gras weekend

There were WAAAAAY too many people pretty much everywhere for me (personally) to have much fun, and everything we tried to do was closed.

“Let’s go to the buffet at the Flamingo.”
“Well, fuck. It’s closed.”

“Let’s go to the Fear and Loathing bar”
“Well fuck me, it’s closed.”

I’m not bitter, but I can’t imagine why I would ever go back.

… End of Line …