What Happens in Vegas Stays on Facebook (Or this Blog)

Most of this story is really only understood within the context of how this trip happened in the first place. I guess I will start at the very beginning.
It was a cold December day, and my roommate’s boyfriend, Jono, and I were studying for our psych midterm. Jono happened to check Facebook and see a message from a blog that he followed. The message went something like this:

 We both started to look for deals, somewhat jokingly, but we both knew that if we found something good that it would be hard to turn up. We were looking for deal over reading break, in the summer, or really just anytime. Though, the deal was only valid until New Years Eve. We put in a date that was during final exams but were not really expecting to find any deals that would work out or be cheap enough. Much to our disbelief we found a deal that was $305 total for flight and hotel. With the $300 off that Expedia was offering, that made the total cost of the trip $5! This was crazy. With a burst of excitement we opened out calendars to see what days we could make work. After about an hour of calendar mashing, we settled on a three day trip that would happen between exams. Now it was time to recruit other people for the trip.

We first frantically called Naomi, my roommate, and tried to hurriedly explain what we had found and how we wanted her to come. To both of us Naomi was the deciding factor of whether we would go or not. Unfortunately she could not come because she had exams all that week, and being a much more studious person than both Jono or I she would not allow herself to cut into her study time. What were we going to do? Could i go to Vegas with my roommates boyfriend and no one else?

At this point I booked my ticket, thinking that it would be a piece of cake convincing another friend to come on the trip with me. Especially if the flight and hotel would amass to the very large sum of $5. Jono was not on board and we were not sure if Naomi would even be ok with him going without her.

Now it was my turn to start calling my friend to find someone to come with me. There were several failed attempts to recruit people to come, and I was starting to get desperate. How were people turning down a $5 trip to Vegas? Even if Vegas was not on the top of your destinations list, how do you turn up that cheap of a flight. But it seemed that December was a horrible month because most of my friends were in the middle of their exams, just as I was. Also, many people thought that the deal was a scam of some sort. After I had booked my ticket, I had called my mom out of excitement to tell her the deal I had just scored. She was repeatedly calling trying to find the loophole in the deal. This was also starting to freak me out but at that point there was nothing to be done.

Once Naomi got home from school, she and Jono had a conversation which ended with her being ok with Jono and I going together. He next booked his ticket and hotel. Now I had at least one friend coming with me, but we both agreed that there had to be more people coming so that it wasn’t awkward.

That night, my close friend Jess ended up coming over. I had called her earlier in the day bursting with the news of my awesome flight deal, but she had just thought I was acting crazy. Though when she came over she realized it was a legitimate deal and started to consider the possibility. Twenty minutes later we had another friend coming on the trip with us. Now we needed to find Jono some friends!

Jono started to call up his buddies both in Vancouver and in Calgary, but we kept running into the scheduling conflicts that prevented most of our friends from coming along with us. He asked a couple of his friends from his bible study, and two of them were interested, yet in the end only one of his friends, Johnny, could come.

The next two weeks flew by as we finished up classes and wrote our final exams. Suddenly it was time to leave. It was Sunday, December 12, 2010 when we left Vancouver airport on an afternoon flight to Vegas. Both Jess and I met Johnny for the first time before we got on the Canada Line to get to the airport. He seemed like a cool guy with a little bit of a skater look to him. We started to get to know each other amongst awkward conversation as we checked it, waited for our flight and all sat together on the plane. Two hours later we were in Las Vegas Nevada.

We arrived in the late evening. The Vegas airport is one of a kind with slot machines lining the walkways and filling the middle of the gates. Smokey smelling men in cowboy hats and old ladies with matching bedazzled outfits sat at the slots hoping for one last chance to get lucky. We made our way to the baggage claim and tried to find where our hotel shuttle would pick us up. We got our baggage just in time and made a mad dash for the last shuttle from the airport to our hotel/casino. The Suncoast was a lovely establishment with desert all around us. Unfortunately this meant that we were in the middle of nowhere, and about a half an hour drive from the Vegas strip. To top it all off, the last shuttle left the strip for our hotel at 10:30pm and it was about a $40 cab ride home. Given that we hadn’t arrived until around 8ish, we decided to lay low and explore the hotel that night.

We first checked into our hotel rooms. Jess was staying in my room given that her flight and hotel combo was technically at a different hotel. We then wandered down to the casino level to try to find some food for the starving men. The only place that was reasonably priced was TGIF’s so we popped in for a beer and some wings. We were not sure if Jess would be able to order a beer, only being 20 and all, so we cautiously ordered our rounds, and sadly discovered they were very stringent? about IDing their customers. Jess and I split some wings, and she mastered the fine art of eating wings with one hand in order for the other one to be free in order to drink your beer. Our waiter was your typical Vegas remnant, in his thirties with bleached tips. He looked like he belonged in a boy band circa 1999. Upon asking him what he recommended we do whilst in town, he told us to a strip club and a massive sex shop. This didn’t seem like the weekend we had planned to partake in, so we quickly finished up our food and left.

Our next stop was the hotel gift shop to buy a couple six packs to take up to the room. Apparently this was the cheapest way to buy drinks in any of the casinos, and boy were we surprised. We found that we could buy a six pack for about $5 which would cost $12-15 at home. We proceeded up to our hotel room for beer and Dutch Blitz, an addictive Mennonite card game. After a few rounds of Dutch Blitz and a spilt beer, we decided it was time to check out the hotels bowling alley. We took the rest of our beer and made our way to the bowling alley. After a few wrong turns, we found ourselves at a full sized, fifty lane alley. We rented our shoes and played a few round until we found ourselves too tired to keep playing. We decided to call it quits for the day, and head back to our rooms to grab some shut eye in order to get up at a reasonable hour the next morning.

We woke up around 9 the next morning in order to get on the early shuttle. We started our day out on the strip, at the Tropicana and walked to Mandalay Bay, which is the beginning of the strip. We wandered around the beautiful and large hotel trying to find the shark aquarium. After about twenty minutes of wandering, we found it but also found out that it was crazy expensive to enter. We decided to ditch that effort, and as we tried to make our way out of the hotel we got distracted by this cool projection, that rippled like water whenever someone went in front of it. 

 By this point it was around 11am and we were getting really hungry. We stopped at the giant pyramids of the Luxor hotel to see what it would be like inside. By this point I was already kind of over the casino thing, as I began to realize that they were all the same. What became interesting was the impressive architecture and themes that each of the hotels had. We ate breakfast at the Luxor fast food court, much to our displeasure, then set off for the rest of our day happy and full of greasy McDonalds. We set off towards the MGM Grand to check out the lions that we knew were housed somewhere within the ginormous casino. They were really cute. There were two adult lions and two baby lions who must have been super young and were still nursing. We spent a solid half an hour there with the lion cubs and then went on our way.   

Our next stop would be the M&M’s store and a gaudy souvenir store followed by the discount ticket booth to see if Jess and i could score some cheap tickets for Cirque du Soliel that night. We managed to find some good tickets, but they were unfortunately at the later show than what Johnny and Jono were going to. We also got tipped off about discount buffet tickets that we could use at several of the buffets on the strip. We decided that the buffet was our next major stop in order to make it there by lunch so that our meal would be half the already halved price. 

 
 We continued to wander up the strip stoping into what I can only remember as a blur of casinos and hotels. We stopped at a corner store to buy some Mike’s Hard Lemonades then went to the Bellagio to watch the fountain show. We then went up to Treasure Island to book our seats for the show. We decided to eat at this point (somewhere around 3pm) and headed to the buffet. I have never been to such an exquisite buffet. We feasted on crab legs, salmon and more goodies than my stomach could keep in. After stuffing our faces, we teetered out of the buffet in a mild food coma. I would have given anything to sit down and take a nap.

Sometime soon after Jess and I split from the boys to have some time with our respective friends with a plan to meet up later that evening after the show. All we know to this day is that the guys wanted to go gamble a little, but their adventures still remain a mystery. Jess and I headed out first back to the corner store to grab some more drinks which we proceeded to pour into a starbucks cup to avoid Jess getting in trouble. We then investigated the Ross discount clothing store, where I bought a pair of skate shoes for $6 and another pair of dress shoes. We also stopped at Urban Outfitters where Jess bought some shoes as well, and I found the most amazing pint glasses I have ever seen. They had moustache’s on them so that when you took a sip it looked like you had a moustache! We then proceeded to wander around Vegas until we had to head up to treasure island for our Cirque show. On our way back up we stopped in at Paris Paris, to use the washroom. Much to Jess’ delight, she saw her third Eiffel Tower, in three different cities. Paris paris was probably one of the most interesting casinos I saw because their theme did not just decorate the outside of the hotel, but it continued into every part of the hotel/casino. 

Next it was time for Cirque du Soliel. We went to see Mystere. We knew nothing about the show before we went, just that it was Cirque and would be crazy and amazing. We sat down in our seats and suddenly heard these babies crying. It took us a while to realize that it was coming from these two baby carriages set up on the stage. This continued for another twenty minutes and we got to listen in to some conversations going on around us. My favourite was a women who was sitting in the row in front of us who was having a conversation with a man sitting near her. First let me note that she was wearing leopard print and was middle aged in a terrifying way. The man was talking about his very confusing heritage and cultural identity, and the next thing we knew she was growling at him in a seductive way and even making a claw action with her hand. This was too much for Jess and I to handle and we burst into laughter at the real life cougar we had just witnessed. There was also a Cirque cast member who was entertaining the audience as we waited for the show to begin. he was messing with people as they were coming in doing stuff like trying to steal some guys date, or just switching tickets on people a wreaking havoc upon the audience. It was pretty funny but I was happy that I was far back enough to not be messed with.

After the show we left the theatre and stood just outside the doors where we were supposed to meet the boys. We got out there and they were not there. We waited around, and they still didn’t show up. Now we were starting to get worried. Where were they? Twenty minutes later Jess started to wander around the casino to see if they had mixed up where we were meeting them or had lost track of time. I stayed at the original meeting place because I had such bad blisters on my feet from walking all day long. We still couldn’t find them. After what seemed like an eternity of waiting, Jess and I decided that we should head down to the Bellagio fountains which was our predetermined “Oh crap we are lost” spot. By this point it was well after midnight. We sat for another twenty minutes there with no luck finding the boys, so I sent Jess off with my Ipod Touch to try and find internet to send a message to them in some way. The Bellagio did not have affordable internet ($1/minute!!) and she came back. We felt like we were stuck and did not know what to do. Before Jess went off again in search of mor internet we decided to pray that we would find the guys. Literally five minutes later, as soon as Jess walked awat, I see two guys walking down the somewhat empty streets. At first I wasn’t sure if it was tehm, because I had convinced myself that any two people that passed were them only to be disappointed, yet by an act of God we had found each other. With much celebration we eagerly told each other our end of the story.

Apparently the guys had been at the theatre fifteen minutes before we got out. They didn’t see anyone, and our show had run a little long, so when they asked someone they stupidly told them that the show was over and everyone was gone. They had waited probably until just before we came out, and went to the Bellagio to see if we were there. While we were up at Treasure Island, they were sitting at the foundtains. When we decided to go to the Bellagio they went back to check Treasure Island, just in case. Now we were both confused and worried about each other. The boys luckily decided to check one last time at the foundations before they took a cab back to the hotel to check there. That is when we found them

After our quick recaps, we decided that it was still too early to go home, though all of us were emotionally tired after the previous chaos. After putting on Jono’s, already worn and kinda gross socks, we decided to ditch our original goal of staying up all night, and instead headed up the strip to The Sahara for $1 shots and $1 beers. The bar was sketchy as none other, but it lived up to the promise of cheap beer and shots (and they let you keep the shot glass) and even some gross $1 hot dogs. We hung out there for a while then decided that it was definitely time to head back to the hotel. We arrived back at the Suncoast around 3:30 am, and separated to our respective rooms for the evening.

The next morning seemed really early when we got on the first shuttle to the strip. Instead of exploring the strip for a second day, we took the bus up to the historic Old Vegas, with the original classic casinos. It was an interesting looking area, but didn’t hold much fascination in my eyes. We did, however, find a cheap buffet for brunch that would serve as our only real meal for the day. After Old Vegas, we took the bus to the outlet malls for a quick pitstop to do some Christmas shopping. There is not much to say about this part. It was a maze of stores and sales and really unimportant. After about an hour at the outlets, we jumped back on the bus loaded up with our “killer deals” to occupy the last couple hours of our trip. 

 
I don’t even really know what we did in this time frame, as it seems like a blur. We spent some time in the Bellagio where Jono and Johhny gambled a little at the roulette table, and some other game that we did not understand in any way. Jess and I watched for a while and then went off on our own. We played a dollar in the penny slots, just to say we had gambled, and then decided to leave to go get photos of the famous “Welcome to Vegas” sign, which had been Jess’ only request the entire trip. That took the majority of our time, given that it was actually kind of far from the strip.

Once we had all met up again we had about 45 minutes until the shuttle was to come to take us to the airport. We decided to attempt to go to In n Out for burgers before the flight. This proved to be a much more difficult task then it should have been given that it was just on the other side of the freeway. The only problem was that we couldn’t figure out how to get to the other side. We eventually gave up as we were running out of time and went to meet our shuttle. 

Once back at the airport we waited for our flight, at some burger king with wahtever money we had left over. Jono and I raided the duty free shop and took advantage of the amazing prices on liquor down in the states. We boarded our plane and two hours later, Naomi was picking us up at the airport and we were back home safe and sound ready for school the next day (or in Jono’s case ready for his last final exam)

Overall it was a really great trip. I made a new friend and became a lot closer with some other friends. Though I never did study for my last final exam it was a trip well worth taking. Would I go back to Vegas again? HELL NO! but it was fun for the two days I was there.