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The Return from Vegas…

So Paris Hilton is engaged to Paris Latsis. Meaning, she’ll be Paris Latsis… just like her husband. Ugh. I’m sure read or heard that a million times already.

Anyhow, we’re back from Vegas. It’s roughly an eight-hour trip from San Francisco to Las Vegas‚Äîdriving. We left at around 6AM on Wednesday morning, which happened to be my birthday for the trip up… er, over. The trip is as close to BORING as boring comes. It was probably worth the $400 we saved by not using an airline, but still… driving through the desert isn’t that stimulating. We took three hour shifts driving and stopped a few times for breakfast and to get the blood flowing back to our legs.

Once we hit the actual strip area, everything came to life. For those that haven’t been, the Strip is the main‚Äîonly‚Äîdrag in town. There’s not much outside of the main area. The Strip consists of a bunch of hotels, mostly themed, along with a few odds and ends scattered throughout. Our hotel, the Aladdin, was right in the center of the Strip, across from the Belagio and next door to Paris. We were within walking distance of all of the major hotels.

The Aladdin is a really nice, affordable hotel. It’s being rethemed and renamed the Planet Hollywood Hotel in 2006, so hopefully they keep the pricing structure. Our room cost $79 a night and we stayed three days/two nights, which is really the longest you’ll probably want to stay in Vegas unless you’re a gambler or plan on seeing a lot of shows.

Our arrival at around 3PM, brought us to the parking structure, which is no where near the hotel lobby. This meant grabbing all of our bags and carrying them through the shopping area to the hotel lobby. It’s a bit of a trek and probably worth paying the couple bucks for valet parking. From the shopping area, we hit the casino entrance where walk through again to hit the lobby. The casino entrance is also where the timeshare folks hang out disguised as hotel information clerks. They’re sitting at a desk that says Guest Services above it. So we walk in and immediately are grabbed by these people wanting to help us find our way… oh, and also sign us up for a timeshare talk. For two hours of our time, they’d give us tickets to a show, a free buffet and a three-day trip to Mexico. We were tired and just wanted to get to our room so we signed up. Probably not the best idea, but in the end we probably made out with about $500 worth of stuff.

At the check-in station, I asked the guy about the view from our room and he immediately upgraded us to a room with a view of the Strip and the Bellagio fountains. The room was really nice with marble bathrooms, granite countertops and a computer on a desk, where you could surf the net for $10/day.

We changed into shorts and light shirts, since the temperature was ranging between 103 to 108 outside and began checking out our hotel, casino and shopping area. Throughout the trip we mostly stayed in the shopping areas to stay cool, occasionally daring to go outside so we could get to a different hotel. If you like spending money or shopping at expensive stores like Chanel, Dior, Gucci, etc… this is the place for you. We also had a great birthday dinner in Paris at a restaurant called Mon Ami Gabi, situtated under the Eifel Tower. I had some filet mignon that melted in my mouth. Great stuff.

The next day we had our 9AM appointment with the timeshare people. Let’s just call it an experience. Ugh. Overall, we knew what we were getting into and made out better than we started… but you have to put up with quite a bit of abuse to get there. Don’t do it if you can’t stand up for yourself or can be talked into things easily. We didn’t have that problem. It’s all one on one. The guy was the slick car salesman type. All talk. He was our best friend up until he realized we weren’t going to sign up for ANYTHING. Then he turned on us. Fun. At the end of two hours we were more than happy to get the hell out of there. We EARNED our free buffet (worth about $65), our free tickets to see Lance Burton (worth about $130) and our free trip to Mexico.

Afterwards we headed straight for the buffet where we ate away our sorrows. The buffet was excellent. Stations included American, Mexican, Asian, Middle Eastern, along with a dessert and salad station. I think we had three plates of food each, just to hit all of the stations. There’s no limit… you just keep eating until you POP.

Later that night we saw Lance Burton’s magic show and that was also excellent. I don’t recommend sitting in the balcony because you’ll miss parts of the show, but other than that, it was really a fun show to go see.

There’s a lot more I could go on about, but for now, let’s just say it was fun to get away… and also nice to get back to our home afterwards.

Tags: vegas, aladin, hotel, gambling, vacation

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