Although we were all excited to finally get to Vegas, along with that excitement came the realisation that this was the last stop before we had to go home. For Cherie and I, when we started this holiday, five weeks seemed like a long time. Whenever we felt like we'd done so much, we looked forward and realised that we still had a lot more to do.
Soon after landing, we headed to our hotel, the MGM Signature. Shaun and James had a room each, next door to each other, and Cherie and I were a few doors down. The rooms were amazing! It was nice to have a couple of couches and a table to sort out our stuff, instead of having to use our bed. It was nice to have a separated shower and bath, although not for any particular reason. It was awesome to have a good view of Vegas from the balcony.
It was nearly 10pm by the time we had settled into our rooms and freshened up a bit, so we hung out in James and Shaun's conjoined rooms and enjoyed a few drinks and shared a cigar to ease into the end of the trip.
The Grand Buffet at the MGM Grand was my favorite place to eat. As someone training for strongman competitions, I often need to eat a lot of food and sometimes that puts a bit of a strain on my wallet. This is where buffets comes in. The Grand Buffet breakfast is a bottomless pit of bacon, eggs, hash browns, omelettes (with everything in them), turkey patties, turkey sausages, country gravy, smoked salmon and fruit. It's a strongman's dream breakfast. And all for around $20, plus tip.
With the exception of one morning, where Cherie and I had breakfast together at Avenue 24 (it was good, but nothing to write home about), we ate at the Grand Buffet every morning.
Occasionally, on the way back to the hotel from breakfast, at 9am, we'd stop and buy 32oz daquiris. Just because we were on holiday and we could. And man, they were ridiculously alcoholic. Vegas makes it so easy to get, and stay, drunk all the time.
I'm not much of a shopping buff. I don't do a lot of it at home, and usually only spend a little bit of time shopping for presents for other people when I'm on holiday, but this time around in Vegas, I bought a lot of clothes at the outlet malls.
We spent one day at the North Outlet Malls and another at the South Outlet Malls. The four of us bought a lot of clothes. Everything from singlet tops to shorts to jeans to sunglasses. And all of it at stupidly cheap prices, especially when compared to what I would pay back in Australia. Six pieces of clothing for $90? Unheard of back home. It took most of the day, but we walked into pretty much every store there was. And everyone walked away with a good haul. The only thing I regret not buying was a Nautica watch that I really liked the look of. Since returning home, I haven't been able to find anything similar.
After long days shopping at the malls, it only made sense to separate shopping and whatever we were doing that night with a dip in the pool, a couple of drinks and a cigar. The hard life...
Our nights were pretty simple. At this point, because we'd been travelling for a couple of weeks longer, Cherie and I felt tired much earlier in the night than Shaun or James did, so we didn't go crazy. One night, we went for, what turned out to be, an epic walk down the strip - which is a lot longer than it seems - and stopped off near the Planet Hollywood casino to have dinner and drinks at PBR Grill. Dinner was the usual fare of BBQ and beer, which had very much become the norm for us at this point. The rest of the night was spent at the slot machines, enjoying a few very cheap drinks.
That was one thing I never expected, but had always heard of, in Vegas; cheap drinks. And by cheap, I mean $1-2 for a scotch, and that $1-2 is just the tip for the waitress. So the drink was pretty much free, as long as we kept putting money into machines and onto tables and having fun.
James had the good fortune to be up nearly $400 on craps, before getting greedy and losing all of it again. Shaun won small amounts of money here and there. Cherie won enough money from the slot machines for a couple of packs of cigarettes. Actually, if there was anything I thought was surprising, it was how much Cherie enjoyed the slot machines. We have plenty of them at home, and neither of us can stand them. But when you're in Vegas, all of a sudden they're more appealing, and although I didn't really bet anything more than a couple of bucks, I found myself addicted to watching Cherie and James hit up the slots.
For another night of adventure, James and Shaun managed to pick up some tickets to Brad Garret's Comedy Club and a Marc Savard's Comedy Hypnosis. We were running a little behind for the 7:30pm show at Brad Garret's, and we still needed to fit dinner in. So at 7pm, we walked into Pub 1842 for dinner. 30 minutes to get drinks and dinner in and get to the comedy club? It could happen...
Dinner was pretty easy. I had a roast chicken with a side of brocollini, just for a normal meal that was something like I would have at home. Cherie and Shaun had burgers and James had a ziti pie, which was pasta (the "ziti" part) baked with some sauce and meat. And just because we couldn't decide what to drink, and because we didn't know any of the beers on the menu, Cherie and I ordered a "beer wheel" each, which was a sampler of eight beers of all sorts; porters, lagers, pale ales, dark ales and stouts. The great thing about this is Cherie and I have completely opposite tastes when it comes to beers. Whatever one likes, the other hates, so we swapped samples around pretty easily. But the winner of the lot for me was definitely the Speakeasy Porter.
And we were done just before 7:30, so we walked our asses off towards the entrance of the MGM Grand and scurried down the escalator to Brad Garret's and got there just in time! The first act was just starting, and the guy who seated us said we had shit seats, so he moved us to a VIP table instead! And then, for an hour and a half, we laughed our asses off! None of us had any idea who the comedians were or what kind of jokes to expect, but they ended up being just right for all of us, which was a real surprise, because the four of us have a different sense of humor from each other.
When the show was over, we quickly raced over to Planet Hollywood to see Marc Savard's Comedy Hypnosis show.
Now, being a fairly skeptical man, my logical hat came on when around 30 people from the audience got up on stage and Marc Savard said that throughout the night he would dismiss people as he saw fit if they weren't taking to the hypnosis as well as others. But none the less, I managed to hold myself back from making any comments so I could just enjoy the show. And I did! Even if parts of it may or may not have been faked, or if some of the "audience members" were actually actors, it was still an entertaining show and a great way to spend a couple of hours.
After the show was done, we spent a couple of hours at Planet Hollywood's casino, where petite dancers wearing very little clothing dance on table-tops all night. But the highlight was the DJ. There's nothing better than watching a DJ who looks like he actually enjoys his job. He mixed all kinds of 80s and 90s songs into newer electronic music. It's not every day you hear AC/DC and The Proclaimers in a DJ's set.
The only thing I hated about walking around Planet Hollywood's casino, was being approached by dancers all the time looking to give away free tickets to clubs. It's free, so you must want it right? I mean, what kind of person turns down free stuff?
For our last full day and night in the US, we relaxed. We tried to make the day last as long as possible.
After breakfast, we headed down to Wet Republic. Having never been to Wet Republic before, I had no idea just how big it was. There are multiple, big pool areas. A bar, with the standard selection of frozen cocktails, is never too far away. And there are people everywhere. Cherie, Shaun and I spent a couple of hours relaxing on the banana lounges and floating around the pool, cocktails in hand.
That night we experienced a Cirque du Soleil show; Ka. Cherie and I had seen Ka the last time we were in Vegas, but given how amazing the show was, we were more than happy to see it again with Shaun and James. And the second time around, it was still amazing. James watched the entire show with his mouth wide open.
We spent the rest of the night at the slot machines, and then started to clean up our hotel rooms and pack our bags for checkout the next day. We were all pretty sad that in 24 hours we would all be on a plane heading back home.
For our very last day, we went souvenir shopping, both for ourselves and for our friends and family. In what we decided has become a new tradition for us, we had our last dinner at Ruby's at McCarran International Airport before flying back to LAX.
I still hate LAX.
By coincidence, my brother, Aaron, was also catching the same flight back home to Melbourne, so, after playing a few rounds of Go Fish, we caught up at the super-boring Tom Bradley International terminal. There is nothing to do at that terminal. All you can do is sit and wait for your flight. And because we had arrived at LAX just before 9pm, we had nearly three hours to kill.
In a completely unexpected turn of events, I bumped into a very old friend of mine, Dan, who just happened to be in the US at the same time as us and was also catching the same flight home as us. It was good to catch up with him, and made the time go by a little bit quicker before finally getting back the cold and horribly unpredictable weather that only Melbourne can provide.
And that's the end of our awesome, completely unforgettable, five-week holiday in the US! We made a lot of memories, met a lot of people and had stupid amounts of fun.
It's been nearly six weeks since I arrived home and have continued writing these blog posts since then. It's been great to go over a lot of the details, memories and photos and I'm very happy to have written all of these posts. Even if nobody else ever reads any of it, I'll at least be able to look back and remind myself of some great times.
