Las Vegas - Part 2 ***Long post ahead***

I've been more than a little lax in my blogging as of late, and haven't gotten around to writing the second part about our Las Vegas trip. My bad. We really didn't take *a lot* of pictures, but I'll share some of the better ones. I decided to make this post REALLY long, because if I split it up who knows when I'd get around to getting it done.

When last I left off, I mentioned how we were given another room (our third) which was quite the improvement...if I do say so myself.















After all the crap that we went through on our first day, we decided to take it easy for the rest of the evening and just did a little bit of touring up and down the strip.



The next morning (Tuesday), we went to the Hoover Dam. I had been there before, but Josh hadn't. We wanted to go to the Grand Canyon during this trip, but we didn't end up doing it. We were told by the tour organizer that the road to the Southern Rim of the Grand Canyon was snow covered and closed, and since the weather was so craptacular, we decided to just go to the Hoover Dam instead. Oh well.

We saw the new bridge that was being constructed, that will eventually bypass the Hoover Dam. For those of you that have been there, you know that there's only a two lane road (one lane in each direction) that goes over the Hoover Dam. The problem with that, of course, is that it leads to HUGE traffic jams for those that live in the area. We were told that it's not uncommon for there to be a five to six hour traffic nightmare every afternoon. Imagine going through that on your way home? Ugh.

While we were standing on the Hoover Dam (keep in mind that the road surface is the top of the dam), we looked out at Lake Mead. If you look closely at the picture, you'll notice the difference in the colour of the rock. The brown represents the actual colour of the rock. The white represents where the level of the lake used to be. Pretty neat, huh?







Anyways, after that we headed back to Vegas and went out for dinner at the hotel. We decided to keep things kind of low key that evening because we were going to a (free) comedy show. It was one of the comps that the hotel manager gave us...and man am I glad that it was free because it stunk. Seriously, smelly.It was hosted by J.J. Walker. For those of you who remember the show Good Times, that's who I'm referring to. He is SUCH a hack. I'm sorry but anyone who introduces himself and then says "Good evening, ladies and germs", shouldn't be doing comedy anymore. Seriously. His jokes were dated, and he just wasn't funny. At the end of the show he was signing t-shirts with the Dyn-o-mite logo on it. Just sad.

Wednesday was spent walking around the strip, which is what we did for a majority of our time there. Since Josh had never been to Vegas, I wanted to show him all the hotels, as well as seeing the new hotels myself. For most of the time, we didn't take the camera with us. So sad, too bad. ;)

Wednesday evening we went to the Bellagio hotel. If you ever get a chance to go to the buffet there, I *highly* recommend it. They have every kind of food imaginable. Seriously. After dinner we watched the fountain in front of the hotel. Four times an hour, in the evenings, there's a 'show' set to music.

Thursday was spent walking around the strip some more and we went to the Fashion Show Mall. We didn't buy anything, but we walked our feet off. I have to say I was more than a little disappointed with the shopping on this trip. Sure, there were things to buy if you wanted to shop at the boutiques, but I didn't feel like spending that kind of money. ;)

Thursday night, being New Year's Eve, we went to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse for dinner. Oh my, the steak was *amazing*. As the restaurant was a little ways away from our hotel, we took a cab there. The ride to the restaurant was uneventful, but on the ride back to the hotel we had the.best.cab.driver.ever. He was hilarious. He was telling jokes and had us in stitches, talking about how he was born in Cameroon and so on. He asked us if we had kids (gotta love when people get nosey), and we told him no. Josh did say, however, that we have a cat. He told us that we needed to have kids. He told us that he has seven kids; five biological and two adopted. At that point I did something I never do, I told a stranger about little one. He wished us well and told us that he had adopted his best friend's daughters (his friend was killed in a car accident).

Once we got back to the hotel, we went upstairs and changed...and then it was off to celebrate New Year's Eve with 400,000 of our closest friends. Yup, we brought in the new year on the strip. It was beyond awesome. Everyone on the strip was drunk, actually that's an understatement. They were FUBAR'ed. Actually when I went into one of the hotels, there was a gaggle of girls who were sitting on the floor of the bathroom in their mini skirts, texting the others in the next stall, playing paddycake with the floor and singing songs. If that isn't FUBAR, then I don't know what is.

There was a Bud Light truck in front of one of the hotels that was selling 67oz beer bottles (the equivalent of a six pack) for $14. There was a HOOGE lineup for those.



All in all, it was an awesome trip and I can't wait to go back...hopefully later this year. :)