Las Vegas definitely has an effect on a person!
It makes a lot of practical sense, though. We were checking out of our hotel in a few hours, then flying with only carry-ons that night, so OBVIOUSLY we needed to eat up the rest of our groceries.
That means peanut butter sandwiches, potato chips, and whiskey for breakfast!
If nothing else, it gives one an opportunity for one last toast with Our Lord and Savior, The Sphere:
I really miss that giant eyeball!
Later, after everyone was up and about and packed, with all the bread and potato chips and most of the peanut butter and the last shot of whiskey in the bottle consumed, we headed down to the always ridiculously crowded lobby to check out and store our backpacks--
--and just like that, we were having our last Las Vegas adventures!
You KNOW how we feel about doughnuts, so this shockingly expensive but super fancy doughnut shop was on our must-see list:
A nine-dollar blueberry yuzu doughnut is still shockingly expensive when split three ways, but not, like, *as* shockingly expensive:
And to be fair, it was big enough that we had to eat it with forks!
The last item on my personal to-do list was this Hobbit-themed slot machine that we'd passed several times, but never when we had time to stop so I could play it. I hadn't actually planned to do any gambling on this trip, but a Hobbit-themed slot machine isn't gambling--it's paying a dollar to watch ten seconds of Hobbit-themed animation!
Alas, it turned out that the minimum pay for playing the game was not one, but FIVE dollars. I could justify wasting one dollar for ten seconds of novelty animation, but good lord not FIVE dollars! If I have five dollars to waste on novelty nonsense, I'll spend it on the Halloween Oreos that were going to start appearing on store shelves in just a couple of months (and Reader, I DID).
Honestly, it was just as fun to take photos of it for free.
You know what was also fun and free?
Using up the rest of the kid's free drink tickets!
And so some of us holding a drink in each hand, we ventured out towards our last day on the Las Vegas Strip:
You'll be pleased to know that although we were heading south, towards the more crowded part of the Strip, it was still only early afternoon, and so the crowds and buskers and solicitors and scammers were just an obnoxious background drone rather than foreground chaos. The guys dressed up as Buddhist monks trying to sell prayer beads, and the women dressed up as Showgirls of old trying to scam tourists into $50 photos were around, but the break dancers, the buskers with their own sound systems, and the people in giant cartoon character costumes were not.
It was downright idyllic!
The last item on the kid's must-do list was the Flamingo:
Because: flamingos!
We'd missed the zookeeper's talk while we were still daydrinking back at the Venetian, but fortunately one of the keepers was bopping around setting food out around the habitat, and she was happy to come over and chat and answer questions. It turns out that as well as the flamingos, they have ducks, but they ALSO have invader ducks that come in from the wild to eat up all the resident ducks' food, and quite a lot of her job is separating the two.
It makes sense, I guess. I mean, it IS a nice habitat, and the neighbors are lovely:
Such as sharing a french fry flight and a margarita flight from a restaurant with an entirely flights-based menu (it's a family joke that I love myself a flight--it means you don't have to make a decision!) while watching a free (incredibly underwhelming--but free!) light and projection show inside Planet Hollywood:
The only noteworthy things inside the MGM Grand were the buffet prices and getting to see a person sleeping at a slot machine--
It was actually quite pleasant to spend the day simply wandering down the Strip. It was super hot outside, but SUPER air-conditioned inside, and so honestly popping into and then out of casinos and shopping malls felt refreshing every time and kept us from 1) dying of heatstroke or 2) freezing to death.
Before the trip, I'd marked up my Google Map with absolutely every single thing that I thought might be of interest, from free shows to weird restaurants to giant statues to themed bars, so that even though we were technically "wandering," we knew what we might want to check out along the way:
Such as sharing a french fry flight and a margarita flight from a restaurant with an entirely flights-based menu (it's a family joke that I love myself a flight--it means you don't have to make a decision!) while watching a free (incredibly underwhelming--but free!) light and projection show inside Planet Hollywood:
The only noteworthy things inside the MGM Grand were the buffet prices and getting to see a person sleeping at a slot machine--
--but I think the outside facade is lovely:
The New York New York facade is a little too corny for my taste, but it does look nice silhouetted by the sun:
My personal favorite facade and interior was Excalibur, but by that time I'd been walking for over two miles, powered entirely by alcohol and French fries, so I was fading and didn't take any photos.
But by then our final destination was in sight, and finally, we made it!
Welcome to The Luxor! My Ancient Egypt Special Interest was still at its height, so I was STOKED to check out all the Egypt theming:
I was additionally stoked to sit down in the air-conditioned food court and drink a beverage that was not alcohol, ahem.
After a good rest and a wander around the Luxor, we tried out the free tram that got us a little ways back north--
--but otherwise it was just a long evening slog, albeit made more interesting by the fact that there was a Lady Gaga concert that night, so there was a LOT of fabulous fashion to check out as we slogged.
When the kid suggested Las Vegas as the destination for her 21st birthday trip, I thought it was such a funny choice for her. She's not a party kid or a drinker or gambler, and honestly I tacked on that side trip to the Grand Canyon just to make sure she'd have something she genuinely enjoyed, because I thought for sure that she'd find Las Vegas disappointing.
But Dude! Las Vegas was so fun! I was genuinely shocked by how much we all enjoyed the trip, other than the acrophobia parts, of course. I would happily go back anytime to that exact same Venetian hotel room overlooking the Sphere, to again spend my early mornings reading and watching the sunrise, my late mornings to mid afternoons reading and swimming in the resort pool, my late afternoons wandering the Strip and finding something weird to do, my (early!!!) evenings watching a show, and my late evenings back in my hotel room watching TV and eating take-out in my pajamas.
I guess now I've got one more option for how to spend my 50th birthday next year!
Here's our entire trip!
P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!
