vegas, baby!

August 14, 2009 at 2:10 pm (Uncategorized)

nick and i had a fun weekend in vegas. he drove down from provo to be a groomsman in his friend’s wedding. he spent saturday the 9th doing wedding stuff, visiting with lots of friends, and having a great time. i drove up to vegas saturday morning, met my friends laura and marissa at the outlet mall, shopped with them for a bit, then checked into my hotel. since i was alone for the day i kept myself busy by taking a drive down the strip and going to a movie at the hotel. i stayed at south point hotel/casino. they have 16 theaters there. i saw 500 days of summer. i really liked it.

south point hotel, casino, and spa

this is the lovely room we stayed in

i met nick sunday morning at church in north las vegas. we stayed for sacrament meeting and then came back to our hotel. we sat and talked for about 2 hours. i loved it! it was great to have him all to myself. then we had lunch and a nap. i slept for 4 hours and nick slept for 5 1/2. i guess we were both very tired. when nick woke up i told him to call his dad. it wouldn’t be fair to have doug miss out on nick’s sunday phone call. so they talked for a bit and then we had dinner. after a very late dinner we watched an episode of burn notice on nick’s computer and then we went to sleep.

i woke up early monday morning since i’d had such a great sunday nap. while nick was still sleeping i went down to the pool and had a nice swim for about an hour. other than one young girl in the pool, i had the whole thing to myself! it was great. i was sure that nick would be awake when i got back, but he wasn’t. so, i showered and dressed and waited for him to wake up. he finally got up at 9:30. it didn’t take him long to get dressed, so we were out the door by 10:00. we stopped for breakfast at ihop, where aparently everyone else went for breakfast, too. it was busy, but we were served pretty quickly. then, off to the strip. our first stop was the venetian to buy tickets to phantom. we procurred perfect seats right underneath the chandelier. it was our lucky day!

since we were there, we decided to take a look around. we saw the gondola ride and went to check it out. we decided not to ride since we had walked the length of the ride and nick was disappointed that they weren’t singing to the riders. actually one man was, but we figured they must have paid him extra for that. the people didn’t look too happy about it, though.

we also sat and watched a man that looked like a statue. he stood perfectly still most of the time, but if someone posed with him, he would move a bit to pose with them.

this picture is my attempt at being artsy:

i took a few pictures of nick for proof that he was there. every picture i took of him over the weekend, he made a silly face in.

check out the dude with the big beard in the background. wow!

after the venetian we went and parked near the top at the belagio. we took a quick tour through the lovely gardens there. i loved it. i especially enjoyed the very large flowers.

we headed on to new york, new york to ride the roller coaster. it was awesome! no waiting in line and we rode very close to the front. i screamed like crazy! my throat was so sore for about 2 days. when it was time to get off, i told nick “don’t walk too fast!” he looked back and saw me staggering a bit. i get really whacked out on roller coasters, but i love it. he was concerned and asked me if i was ok. i told him yes, i just needed a minute to readjust.  he held on to me until i was back to normal. what a guy!

here is a picture of most of the coaster from across the street:

if you like roller coasters, i highly recommend this one.

it was about 110 degrees in vegas on monday. we stopped and bought 2 large bottles of water for our walk. they are doing major construction on the strip, so they have these makeshift walkways to take you around the construction. fortunately, though, they are covered. it sure made a big difference to walk in the shade!

our next stop was m & m world. we saw every conceivable m & m novelty item there could ever be and we watched the very goofy movie starring red and yellow titled “i lost my m in vegas”. it was shown in 3-d and the glasses they give you are terrible. but, it was a fun diversion nonetheless. and, who doesn’t love red and yellow?

so many m & m's!

me and yellow-he does love the ladies!

we continued on to the miracle mile shops. we went to an amazing store that sold memorabilia from movies and music. the least expensive thing in the store was a t-shirt for $20, i think. most everything else was very impressive, autographed things like record albums, guitars, and movie posters. most items were in the $1500-$3000 range, but the best stuff was as much as $45000. i think we oggled over practically every item in the store. (actually, i’m not sure where this store was, but it was either here or the venetian.) it was so amazing.

we both ended up with a souvenir of sorts. we went into the fossil store and both got new wallets. that was fun.

then we went back to our car and drove around looking for the hard rock cafe. we made a few wrong turns, but eventually found it and had dinner. soon it will actually be on the strip, but right now it is a few streets away. we had a nice dinner, and drove back to the belagio, this time we parked at the top. we had planned to do the ocean’s 11 thing and find the spot where they all stood and watched the fountains at the end of the movie while claire de lune played. we found it. i took a picture of nick there, but unfortunately the fountains weren’t going at the time.

we stayed for an hour and saw 4 shows. the first one was to “my heart will go on”, the second was to “luck be a lady” by frank sinatra, the next was another sinatra “fly me to the moon”. the last was by far the best. it was “your song” by elton john. i took a bit of video of the first two, but decided to just enjoy the last two, so no video. i have some good pictures though.

well, i can’t seem to figure out how to post a video, so i’ll just post the pictures.

i think this was my favorite thing all day. it was so incredible. but, we had tickets to phantom, so we had to leave. we dashed through the throngs of people and got back to the venetian in time for our show. nick hadn’t seen the live version and he loved it. (i saw it about 25 years ago in l.a. with doug.) we especially enjoyed watching the chandelier drop right above us. it is an amazing show. i highly recommend it.

phantom was a perfect ending to our big, fun day. unfortunately nick had an early flight tuesday morning, so we went back to our hotel and crashed.

i was sad for our fun weekend to end, but soooo grateful to spend those couple of days with nick. and, for us, nothing we did had to stay in vegas!