Vegas Vacation

Kristen and I had a BLAST in Vegas the past 4 days!  So much so that I am incredibly sad to be home. I think the worst part is knowing that my summer vacation is almost over, that trip was sort of the end of it.  School starts in 26 days, and I should be starting soon to get my stuff together. I'm going to hold out on that as long as possible though.

Anyway, back to Vegas.  I've decided that there are WAY too many pictures and details to tell, so this entry will be an overview of the trip and then once I get pictures edited I'll post some more Vegas themed entries with more pictures.

Kristen and I flew into Vegas Saturday afternoon.  We took a cab to MGM where we were staying, got checked in, and spent a little time laying around, making plans, and just resting after our day of travel. We then freshened up and headed downstairs for dinner at Wolfgang Puck.  We had a peach martini that I basically fell in love with, and the food was delicious! After dinner we went back up to the room to get ready to go out, and then took the monorail over to The Venetian to go to Tao.  Let me just tell you how INSANE this club was! I'm not even sure the word insane is a strong enough adjective, but I can't think of another better one that fits. This place was PACKED and had this insanely high energy level the whole time.  We had some drinks, did some dancing, met some EXTREME creepers, bailed on them, met some more ridiculous creepers, bailed on them, and then continued in the same pattern most of the night.  I'm not even kidding, these boys were ridiculous! We wanted NOTHING to do with them and spent quite a bit of time trying to find a place to dance where they would not follow us. haha it was actually quite amusing!

Once we tired out from all the dancing and our feet were in some sort of extreme pain from the heels, we moved up to the rooftop level of the club that was a little more laid back.  We took a seat on this ledge and did some people watching, then decided to call it a night.  Back at our hotel we stopped by the Studio Cafe for some late night food. There were these two people in the table across from us that were cracking us up. They were obviously very drunk (that would be the majority of people in Vegas all the time haha), were just about to fall asleep in their booth, and were not speaking to each other at all! After our late night snack, we passed out until the next morning.

Sunday we got up and headed down to the pool.  MGM has this 21 and up pool called Wet Republic, and we had randomly gotten our name put on the guest list the day before, so we headed that way. We ended up playing volleyball with a group of boys and thoroughly embarrassed ourselves.  We are not cut out for pool volleyball! It was a lot of fun though! After a decent amount of sun, we picked up some lunch and went back to the room to eat and shower off. We then took the monorail back over to The Venetian to pick up our tickets for the Blue Man Group show that night. Back at the hotel we played a few slot machines (Kris won, I lost but then got my money back) and got ready for the show.  Blue Man Group was fantastic! I really loved it! We had pretty good seats too, so that definitely helped.  Wish you were allowed to take pictures inside, but you can't. So sadly, no pictures of that.  After the show we had dinner at Grand Lux (even in Vegas it's still my favorite restaurant haha) and then made our way back to our hotel. 

We had been planning on going to Tabu that night in MGM so we were all dressed for that but had a little time to kill before going in.  We decided to try and find this horse race game that Audrey had told Kristen about.  We found it, got some quarters, sat down to play a bit, and never ended up leaving. Is it sad that we skipped out on clubbing to play an old horse race game?  Maybe, but I sure don't care, it was a blast! We made friends with the people around the table (who had already been there for 3+ hours) so it was a fun social game to play. The idea of this game is you put in a quarter and bet on which two horses you think will come in first and second place. The game tells you the odds of that combo winning and you bet accordingly. If you win, you get as many quarters as the odds said (for example if it tells you that the odds of horses 1 and 2 coming in first is 2, then you get two quarters back if they win). Well, the guys at this table who had been there all day had figured out that the 200 odds was hitting about once every 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Within 30 minutes of us getting there, the 200 hit and Kris and I both won $50. We were so excited we decided we HAD to stay until the next time it hit.  We spent the next 2 hours betting on horses and chatting with the men at this table.  It was so fun!  After about an hour and a half we started to watch for the 200. Each time it came up we would bet a little more. Finally it hit and all 7 people at the table had bet 5 quarters (that's $250!). There was cheering, screaming, high fives, etc we drew in quite a crowd!! It was so crazy that the machine pretty much broke. All the horses kept going round and round in circles without stopping and no one could bet after that. We were cracking up!  Security had to be called over to use a key to get our quarters to come out because we had won so much at once.  We got 500 quarters and then they paid us the rest in cash. We were THRILLED to cash in all those quarters! Basically, we put in $3 and walked away with almost $300, how awesome!!  Kristen and I were on such a high after winning (the whole experience of winning with a group of people you'd made friends with really added to the excitement) that we accidently got off on the wrong floor, walked ALL the way down the hall to our room (which was the second to last one on the hall), I put the key up to the door, and then we realized it wasn't our room. We just about died laughing!

The next day we woke up talking about the night before and how fun it was! We were on such a high!  We spent Monday walking the strip for 6+ hours. It was HOT as heck, but we got to see everything we wanted to see. We randomly came across Serendipity (I had no idea they had one in Vegas!) so we stopped there in the middle of our venture to cool off with some frozen hot chocolate, YUM!

We took a TON of pictures and by the end of the day we were exhausted. For dinner we walked over to New York New York and ate at this great little Italian place. The food was yummy! Then for dessert we walked to this little cafe bakery thing there and had the best desserts EVER! There was a whole case of some of the most beautiful desserts I have ever seen, so of course I took pictures of them all haha. More close up pictures to come later! :)

We wandered back to MGM and used our free $25 slot play we got when we booked the hotel.  I let Kristen do the playing since she has better luck than me and we split the winnings.  We made $17 each so we wandered down to the horse game and used that money to play. All our friends were back!  Everyone that came up to the table was talking about how we had won big last night. Apparently we are known as the "table veterans" hahaha! I honestly think that after us winning big last night they went in the games computer and changed up the odds of winning because on Sunday night the same groups of numbers would come up each round, and on Monday they were all totally random! Plus, EVERY time that the 200 came up in the 2 hours we were there it was either for horses 2 and 5 or 1 and 4.  That was suspicious to us, and in the 3+ hours of combined time our friends spent at the table, it never hit.  We played for a bit and then decided to walk away before we spent any money other than that free money we had just won.

When we got up to leave 2 of our casino friends decided to leave as well. The 4 of us went over to an open bar in New York New York and had a drink and chatted. It was a lot of fun! Is it weird that we have "casino friends"?!?  After we had been there for awhile this EXTREMELY drunk couple came up to the bar. They were probably 2 of the most drunk people I had ever seen! They were falling all over each other, and quite honestly the guy was so out of it he couldn't focus, hold his eyes open, or keep his head up. The bartender told us they had gotten married that night.  Great way to spend your wedding night right?!? yikes! We could not stop laughing at how ridiculous they were! Seriously, it was like a comedy show and we were not the only ones at this bar watching and laughing.  After awhile security was called and they were wheeled away one at a time in a wheelchair. My goodness! It was definitely entertaining!

Tuesday we woke up and had to head to the airport. I was SO sad to leave, it had been such a fun 4 days!  We had enough time to do everything we wanted though, and were walking away with $300 so I definitely can't complain about that!  My flight home took me to San Antonio, where I had to switch planes.  The first leg of the trip I was so exhausted I passed out. I NEVER sleep on planes, they terrify me! I was vaguely aware of a lot of turbulence on our descent as my head kept getting smacked against the window, but I was so tired I couldn't even keep my eyes open and just kept going back to sleep!  In San Antonio I had just enough time to talk to Missy for a few minutes and then we were boarding. I got on the plane, sat down, looked up, and saw Shaun's sister walking toward me So random! I waved her down and we ended up sitting together on the flight from San Antonio to Houston. Seriously, what are the odds?!? It was nice to have someone to chat with though :) Last night after I got home I passed out and slept in very late today! What an incredibly fun vacation!!

Like I said earlier, I am working on editing some pictures right now and then I'll post some more entries with those later so be on the lookout. :)