Activity Summary
Tuesday 4th April - Day 213
Drive to Las Vegas
Daytime walk down the strip
Gambling, backpacker style (slots, roulette and blackjack)
Wednesday 5th April - Day 214
Morning gym sesh
Blackjack
“O” Cirque du Soleil show
Lava show at the Mirage
Bellagio fountain show
Summary
Las Vegas
Vegas on a budget was interesting for a place that is based on people coming here for the excess lifestyle. Of course this is ignoring Luke’s spend on Cirque for our 9 year anniversary celebration.
It’s a busy place so being out on the streets, day and night, is not overly fun for us as we power walk around and get frustrated. The absolute maze of sidewalks and connecting skywalks also adds to the pain of the pedestrianised US.
Luke finds the casinos good fun, Nicola not so much. However the minimums are faaaaaar too spenny to play on tables so the blackjack machines were our best friend. Roulette and slots suck.
Luke still maintains that the pool parties in the middle of EDC festival is really the highlight of any Vegas experience, while the clubbing sucks unless you are rich AF.
Accommodation
Las Vegas - TI Treasure Island
Number of nights - 2
Price per night per person - £39
It was nice to have a decent hotel room that was very comfortable to spend time in. Massive super king size bed, huge room and fridge for our home beers. Only negative was it didn’t have a microwave so it meant we had to eat out some of the time.
The hotel gym was decent and a nice to have, while if it had been nicer weather we would have certainly made use of the outdoor pool and spa.
Luke enjoyed the casino because of the hotels on the strip, it was one of the cheaper ones. Which was great for our gambling budget.
Diary
Nicola decided that waffles are shite and therefore in protest had our regular cereal, banana and oat milk for breakfast. Luke in the other hand stuffed his face with 8 waffles, plus our own stash of Nutella and a banana where instead of being shouted at this morning by the mean motel lady, was actually complimented and then struck up a rapour. Clearly she got out the right side of the bed today.
It was off to Las Vegas today, the home of seedy gambling, excess and stupidly bright lights that should not get that much electricity in the middle of the dessert. Luke thoroughly enjoyed his Vegas time previously having timed it with EDC festival that meant there were popping pool parties and celebrated Anuj & Terri’s wedding with all that excess allowable.
This time however, we were going to be keeping it as cheap as we could (within reason).
Nicola was vying for some grease and that famous all American diner experience but as Luke had pigged out he was less receptive to the push for a sit down lunch. Begrudgingly, Nicola opted for a Five Guys burger which did settle somewhat of the craving. For $13 she got a burger and probably about 3 UK portions of chips with enough salt to preserve a Swedish person. Nicola ended up scrapping a lot of this off (sorry Tommy) and we have now found out Luke can eat Five Guys peanut fries. Woopie. Luke did manage to return his coffee mug at Target as well. The exciting lives we live.
After spending so long around remote National park roads, it was a bit of a rude awakening to enter the city limits of Vegas. The roads were busy, drivers were aggy and there were the crazies out in force. One in particular with his ass hanging out of his trousers as he just ranted and walked in the middle of the road - it felt like this was possibly the longest we have had to wait for a light to change and not have this dude fuck up our rental car.
After getting aggressively heckled by a bus driver, that ended up pulling in about 50m up the road, we finally pulled into the TI Tresure Island hotel free parking complex and refreshingly could leave the car be for the next 2 days.
It was too early to check in so we had a daytime walk down the strip. The party was not popping on a windy 12 degreee Tuesday afternoon but it was hella busy as the continuation of the school hols continued to throw painfully slow people in our way.
Getting down the strip is not easy. The roads are still massive and therefore a simple pedestrian crossing had clearly been deemed to challenging to build in to the car dependent cities, so in order to walk to each place we had to take a zig zagging approach through hotels, along walkways and down and up numerous escalators (very rare to see a staircase…).
Our walk took us through TI, along the Venetian (the fact that people actually paid to get pulled around in a fake Venice gondola setting is hilarious), through Caesars palace (lovely and gimmicky but the hotel is fucking massive), past all the great knock off Paris landmarks (Eiffel tower, midget Arc d’Triumphe etc.), the Bellagio (great hotel, Luke stayed here last time) and past many many more until reaching the MGM grand.
The casinos are massive and consistently full of punters. A very impressive operation they have going on but bar some being more expensive than others, they kind of are all the same. For the high stakes rollers, which we are not, I imagine each offers something very different.
It was a long walk that was pretty painful to do so we were not going to entertain doing this again going forward. As far as we were concerned we had seen the strip.
We returned to our hotel and after queueing for a pretty long time and managing to resolve an issue made in Luke’s name on the booking.com booking we were able to move our bags up from the car to the room on the 35th floor (second highest - check us out). We must have looked like such plebs to the gamblers as we struggled through with our big travel bags and shopping bags with food, supermarket booze and utensils, all in a bid to cut costs. Not an image conducive to the Vegas luxury trip I imagine most are here for.
Once settled Luke cracked open a couple bottles of beer and Nicola some rather large Malibu cocktail tinnies. With some liquid courage we went downstairs to the casino floor and tried our hand at a bit of gambling.
This was Nicola’s first time in a casino to gamble and she could not have been in worse hands to guide her through this experience with Luke. He himself has never really gambled much apart from showing an interest in blackjack at various points throughout his life (uni, bored online and the last time he was in vegas).
So we both walked around the slots and were absolutely baffled about how they worked. We sat down at a machine, put $5 in and less than a minute later it was gone. We then agreed we would never play a slot again.
We had a look around the live tables for blackjack and roulette. Minimum plays at $15 for blackjack made Luke shriek and run away. Not a chance he would be betting that much a hand.
So we found the next best thing - a $3 minimum play machine that was fast paced and we could sit and play in our own time without pressure. It started off very badly, Luke ended up down $40 at one point before all of sudden he flipped this around and cashed out on $140 ($90 up). This was all pretty stressful for Nicola who couldn’t see the appeal at all.
We did try our hand at roulette but we lost our money pretty quickly on this too. Although Luke was betting on 24 black (Nicola’s bday) and when Nicola wanted to mix it up, low and behold it landed there. Sod’s law really.
At this point we decided to call it quits for the day. Being down quite a bit and to swing it round gave quite a rush but we got scared at this point and needed to calm down. We are hilariously risk averse.
We were pretty tired so we’re very happy to spend the evening in our plush hotel room (which made a nice change) eating our cheap cheese sandwiches for dinner. We are so Vegas baby.
The perks of not having an absolute bender however is that we could get up early and make use of the gym. Decided we needed to make use of the luxury while we had it and given the weather was not quite pool appropriate (for us anyway) this was the next best thing.
It was surprisingly busy at 9am and again there wasn’t a whole lot of choice (especially appropriate lower weights) but we had a good session.
Now once again pumped, we did need to go get some lunch out as our provisions were pretty low. All the restaurants in Vegas are ridiculously inflated so on our scouting the previous day we had made a fall back plan and went to the Venetian food hall. Reasonably priced Chipotle and Subway it was.
We did have a look around the Venetian casino to change up the gambling scenery but the tables were still $15 and the machine minimums were $5 so we ran away to the comfort of our cheaper resort.
Now having calmed down from the gambling hype the day before, Luke decided we should go for round 2 of the blackjack machines. Only this time Nicola got very involved in gambling his money away. It did however help that from $20 we ended up cashing out at $120 (up $100, total $190) so Nicola was pretty relaxed at first, until a bad swing stressed her out too much and handed back the reins.
‘When the fun stops, stop’ according to Nicola. This had Luke in stitches and Nicola only has fun when on an odd defying winning streak.
We went back to the room and cracked open some more drinks (this is the most Nicola has drunk since Thailand) and just chilled really. Having had some time pass, we went back downstairs for a final gambling session before it was time to head out for the evening. We brought down some of our home bought bevs, feeling properly tragic and kinda loving it, and endured our most stressful gambling session. Luke ended up down $50 and that was enough for him.
Then Nicola with a $20 note jumped into the ring and salvaged some dignity for us, recouping $20 but leaving a bitter taste in her mouth. First and probably last time she’ll be gambling.
Overall Luke was up $140 and Nicola $20, where she kindly spent that money on a romantic mcds dinner.
Luke had decided that, for the first time, we would celebrate our anniversary in Las Vegas. We have no idea on the date so the arbitrary 5th April in Las Vegas was a perfect time to do so and had booked (at great cost he may add) to see “O” by Cirque Du Soleil. Nicola knew it was likely this but had no idea what one or what it would involve.
The show was absolutely sensational. The stage was a thing of sheer technical brilliance; a platform of moving components that brought in and out a huge body of water shallow enough to run across and at times deep enough to dive from the rafters of the stage without harm. The artistry from the singing, dancing and acrobatics was outstanding and both of us could not have been more impressed. Sure we had no idea what was going on half the time but it was an absolute joy to watch.
Nicola was transfixed the entire time, citing she didn’t want to applaud because she couldn’t take her eyes off of the stage. She was a mass of emotion at the end saying it was the best thing she has ever seen and it was beautiful. Think Luke did alright on this one.
With the high of the show we walked part of the strip at night and so allowed Nicola to see the jazziness in all its glory.
We stopped by the Mirage for the fire Lava show which was pretty entertaining.
Lastly we went back to the Bellagio to watch the fountain show. Much much better at night.
We had a lovely day and were in our room relatively sober and not poor (excluding the show) by 10.30pm. Luke will add that Vegas clubs are the actual worst; they only cater to rich people on tables and the dance floors are tiny and shit. We had no intention of going and blowing shed loads of cash on something like this.
Our Vegas on a budget baby.
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