Las Vegas

  Las Vegas, Nevada, United States
Thursday, July 17, 2008

17 July, Las Vegas

Sunny 35°C/95°F in the morning to a little cloudy in the afternoon.

Really slept late, untill nine o'clock! We woke up on the day of our weddinganniversary and at 10.00 we line up for the breakfast buffet in PH. This buffet has been chosen last year as the best buffet of Las Vegas and it deserved that! There's a lot of choice and everything is very tasteful. Like already on so many occasions, I also have a discount coupon for this buffet and so we ate for $10 pp a lot of really good food. 

Star Trek Experience

After breakfast we went direction to Bally's to take the monorail, this time to the north. We get off at Las Vegas Hilton. As soon as you enter the hotel from the direction of the monorail, you know that you are at the Star Trek Experience. Everything on this location of the casino/hotel is dominated by Star Trek, also the gambling machines of this part of the casino. Again, for Star Trek we had discount coupons and these were good for a 20% discount on our tickets to access the museum, the 4D show Borg Encounter and the Klingon Ride. With 2 persons we paid $ 83 total incl. tax (without discount it was more than $100). It is quiet an amount, but really worth it! The people of the Hilton do more than just take you to your seat, they really make a little show of it. When you leave the 4D or the ride, of course you must enter a shop with all kinds of merchandise before you can leave the casino and Frans had his photo taken to let himself transform into an alien, they made a great print of it too ! 

After our Star Trek experience we went back to the monorail and get off at Harah's. From Harah's we walked through the Venetian and Treasure Island to the Fashion show Mall. It is a cruel sun and 35°C/95°F, so very warm, no wind. As we arrive at Fashion show Mall we start with an icecoffee, of course WCM at Starbucks.

In the Fashion show Mall are shops of the well-known chains such as Macy's, Neimann-Markus and also a lot of small shops but it does not have the charm of Union Square in San Francisco or the bargains of Premium Outlet stores in Las Vegas, so we walked through it without buying and we wouldn't visit it again if we were in Las Vegas.

We thought it was too warm to walk back to the monorail at Harah's so we took the 'Deuce' to our hotel. The Deuce is a kind of shuttle bus that costs $2 pp one way, it has stops in front of most of the hotels. Also for this you can take day tickets which is cheaper if you would use the this transport for several trips, but because we already have a day ticket for the monorail, this was just a one-time experience.

We freshen up in our hotel and went to the other side of the boulevard, to Tropicana. We made a trip this morning to the future with Star Trek, now we return to the past: April 1912. In Tropicana is an exhibition about the Titanic. For $ 30 pp we go back in time by visiting this impressive artifact exhibition. Not only are there real original object with their associated stories about the passengers but also a number of re-creations as the Grand Staircase and the wreck of the Titanic like it is still lying on the bottom of the North Atlantic. It places the objects in a particular mood.

After this remarkable experience we walk to the monorail at MGM but unfortunately we arrived 3 minutes too late. Our 24-uurs ticket has passed, so we took a walk on the boulevard back.
Because the breakfast buffet at PH was very good, we showed again a discount coupon and had dinner here. We were not disappointed, not at all! We were surprises by the variety of many different kitchens, American, asian, Italian and more and the quality is very good! 

View from our room

packing

After dinner we reached a difficult point of the vacation; to pack our luggage together for the journey home! I was so glad that we had taken along an extra empty back pack and that we bought the extra trolley,we collected a lot of stuff during this holiday! I asked Frans to let me do the packing alone. Our room has view on the Bellagio fountains, so he finds it no problem and the next 1 ½ - 2 hours he nicely viewed shows from his lazy armchair. This was also the time that I needed to pack up everything! We have never had so much stuff before :D

gambling....

After packing we went down to the casino, became A-member of the players club of Planet Hollywood and armed with a new pass we throw $ 20 in a slot machine. Planet Hollywood complete this with $10 more, but unfortunately it didn't lead to profit. At this moment we had lost 1 $ in this complete holiday, not a bad result considering that we had gambled in the major gambling city of the world!

Again we have had a great day. In our room we looked at the last fountain show of the day at Bellagio, which was also our last show of this vacation and at midnight we turned out the lights. We had about 3 ½ hour to sleep!

Driven with the car today: 0 mile, but walked for miles!!