Sunset on the Strip and Other Adventures

That would be a good name for a book on our last night in Vegas. 🙂 You can just tell this is going to be a doozy, right?

As I previously mentioned, we took it pretty easy the Saturday we spent in Vegas. We were tired from 2 days of constant walking, sight-seeing and desert heat. We spent a good amount of time reading and napping in the room. Mike attempted to enjoy the pool but it was pretty much a mass of humanity and he couldn’t find an empty chair beside the pool. After a nice sweltering walk around the outside of the pool, he came back to the room. haha

We had 2 priorities for Saturday evening:
BUT A T-SHIRT: I wanted to go back to the Venetian to buy a t-shirt for Ian that I had seen on Thursday when we were there.
TAKE SOME PICTURES: Specifically, I wanted to go to the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign.

After getting some really detailed instructions from the concierge at the hotel (“go down to Mandalay Bay and you’ll see it past the hotel”), we went over to the Venetian and quickly bought Ian’s shirt. Since it was so hot and I had about 8 blisters on my feet, we walked down to Harrah’s to take the monorail to the MGM Grand. From there, we would walk to the sign.

We got off the monorail and had about a 25 minute walk to get to the outside of the hotel. The MGM Grand is roughly the size of Connecticut. Good grief!!!

Mike taking time for a photo break outside the MGM Grand…and me trying to nonchalantly photograph the outdoor/uncovered escalators that are all over Vegas 🙂

Mike and the MGM lion

Mike, me and 6 of my chins posing with the lion

The view from across the street

Next, we crossed Las Vegas Blvd and went over to the New York New York.

New York New York (as seen from the MGM Grand)

New York New York (as seen from the MGM Grand)

Lady Liberty

The next step was to walk over to the Excalibur and take the monorail down to Mandalay Bay. Well, that was the plan. What we really did was walk to the Excalibur. Then walk to Luxor. Then realize we can’t get the monorail to Mandalay Bay from the Luxor. Then argue about whether we should just walk to Mandalay Bay and be done with it or go back to the Excalibur to take the correct monorail train. Then finally agree to take the monorail to the Excalibur. Then walk all over the Excalibur (again) in our attempt to find the correct monorail station. Then take the monorail to Mandalay Bay.

Did I mention that I had a lot of blisters, was tired and hot?!?! (Oh, the fun doesn’t end there….keep reading. lol)

Excalibur (as seen from the MGM Grand)

By the time we got there, the sun was setting over the mountains

New York New York (as seen from the Excalibur)

Excalibur entrance all lit up

The light on the Luxor…captured during our walk to the Luxor from the Excalibur

The light while we desperately tried to find the train to take us to Mandalay Bay. Or, you know, a train station. Anything will do at this point in our journey.

Chilling with THE GREAT SPHINX while waiting for a train to take us further away from our ultimate destination 🙂

There weren’t a ton of pictures taken after this point. We were both pretty cranky. 🙂

We FINALLY get to Mandalay Bay. Finally get out of the hotel. Finally get back down to Las Vegas Blvd and look for the sign.

But where is it?

We decided to walk a bit and see if we can see if it we get a little bit further down the road.

We finally saw it.

It’s only 0.6 miles from Mandalay Bay.

ONLY!!!

Yeah, so we walked down there.

I wouldn’t recommend walking down there to ANYONE. It was pitch black dark. We were the only ones on the street besides some shady looking characters. There were a few times that I was afraid we were going to get mugged. The fear of being robbed pretty much shook us out of our crankiness. Nothing like the threat of imminent danger to bring you together! 😉

Here she is in all her glory….

Gotta love the burn marks, right? I have to say, I was a little irritated. Like, hello, I just walked all that way and the sign has burn marks?!?!?! What the frick?!?! lol

A really, really crappy self-portrait of us with the sign:

By the way, it was impossible to get pictures of the sign without other people in them. There were tons of people waiting to take pictures. Smart people that drove to the sign. 😉

Remember when I said the airport was RIGHT NEXT TO the Strip? Here is a picture I took while standing at the sign (waiting for my turn to take some pictures):

Planes parked on the airport grounds!

The other side of the sign (see the planes?)

Can you see the girl in the wedding dress waiting to have pictures taken?

The loooooooooong walk back…

By the way, the median was covered in green AstroTurf/outdoor carpet stuff. Not grass. 🙂

So, after taking 3 minutes of pictures, we did the 0.6 mile trek back to Mandalay Bay. Took the monorail to Excalibur. Walked back to MGM Grand. Walking 342 miles in MGM Grand to the monorail. Took the monorail back to Harrah’s. Walked back to the Mirage.

We walked into the Mirage about 5 hours after we left it. At this point, its close to 11pm and we haven’t had dinner yet. We’re stumbling into the hotel and Mike looks at me and says “where do you want to eat?”. I look at him and say “I don’t care as long as it has water and seats”. I was soooooo hot and tired that I literally didn’t care at all what we ate. All I wanted to do was drink something and get off my poor aching feet.

We decided to check out California Pizza Kitchen and when we walked up, there was a wait to be seated (NOOOOOOO!!!!). We just kind of stood there for a half second in exhaustion and frustration when an employee walked up to us and asked us if we wanted to eat at the bar rather than wait. We jumped at the chance (figuratively, remember our aching feet?) and ate a damn good meal. I mean, they had SEATS and DRINKS!!!!! What more could a girl ask for? 😉

….and that concludes the story of Mike and Amanda’s Great Las Vegas Trip of 2009!