Driving! Vegas! Nothingness! Los Angeles!

Alright, Vegas time.

We got in to Katie & Jack's house on Monday night.  Dinner & movie and we were in bed by midnight.  About 3 am though, the whole house was awoken by the loudest booming crazy thunder I have ever heard.  And the lightning that was making the thunder was CLOSE.  You'd see the flash and before the flash was even over the thunder would be booming so loudly that your bed was shaking.  And it was constant.  The lightning was super crazy bright too, and it was a really really strange way to be woken up in the middle of the night.  And I loved it!  It was a lot of fun to listen to it for a while, and thank God I was able to fall back to sleep.

So Tuesday morning found us waking up in Vegas.  (Yes, that's what you get for waking up in Vegas.) But we were at Katie's house, she had already headed off to work, and we were getting our breakfast and coffee and showers before we headed down to the strip.  Brie had never been, so we intended to go down there and walk around, see the casinos, maybe catch an exhibit or a show.

We got a late start (big surprise), and on the way to the strip, we found an In-N-Out Burger.  So of course, we stopped for lunch, and it was as awesome as ever.  I opted for the double double and a mountain of animal style fries.  So delicious.  So too much food.  And THEN we finally got on to the freeway to go to the strip.  It was under construction (another big surprise), and I attempted to follow the directions Katie had given me, but I ended up going west on the street instead of east and had to do this roundabout turn around thing.  Thank God I've been driving for the last 6 weeks.  I'm getting good at it.

bellagio

Finally, we had arrived at the Bellagio Hotel and found a parking space.  We had arrived!  And we promptly got lost.  Those casinos are designed to be enormous, elaborate mazes.  It's really quite clever, until you realize that you can't get out.  And when you do manage to find a way out, you're nowhere near the strip!  You're behind the casino, or on the side of it, or something!  Needless to say, we did a lot of walking.  In the casinos, around them, on the strip, wherever.  We had parked at the Bellagio, but we wanted to go to the Titanic Exhibit which was at the Luxor, south of the Bellagio.

@ the new york, new york

We started walking towards the Luxor, passing the New York, New York Casino (my favorite), and Excalibur among others.  We eventually made it to the Luxor, found the box office, purchased our tickets and went into the exhibit.  And it was totally worth it.  The Titanic Exhibit at the Luxor is a collection of anecdotes and artifacts from the actual Titanic, including one massive piece of the actual ship that was taken out of the water and preserved about 15 years ago.  It's the largest piece of the Titanic that they have been able to take up out of the water and put on display.

The entire experience was sobering.  The exhibit is impeccable.  It's neatly laid out, with short explanations of all the artifacts they've recovered.  Dishes from the dining halls, leather bags, combs, brushes, a razor, bits of the ship, money, papers, itineraries, and a whole lot more.  On the walls of each room of the exhibit, there were stories of the people on the ship, some were incredibly tragic about people who were coming to America for a better life and hadn't even intended to be on the Titanic.

Each room was different too.  Some had recreations of the various cabins, some far more lavish than others.  They said that in today's money, the nicest cabin on the Titanic would have cost upwards of $100,000, and the cheapest cabin which you would share with 3 other strangers was a $900 ticket.  It really was the most lavish boat at the time.  The most interested thing about the exhibit's layout was the sounds.  In each room the sounds were different.  The exhibit was laid out to tell you the story of the hope and expectation the Titanic brought to this new industrial world and then it slowly progressed to the shocking realization that it was going to be a massive loss of life in which almost nothing could be done.  So the first rooms had music, happy music.  The next rooms had the sounds of the engines and the lapping of water.  Then it got eerily quite.  See, what I didn't know was that the Titanic crashed on an eerily calm and dark night.  The iceberg wasn't seen until it was too late because there was no moon to shine light on it, and no waves to crash up against it tell the lookouts that it was even there.

Then we actually got to see "The Big Piece" (as it is aptly named).  It's a massive hunk of metal, 6 inches thick.  Brie and I were amazed that something that thick and massive could be ripped apart by ice.  When all was said and done, about 700 people were saved, and more like 1500 were lost.  Scary, but fascinating.

After the exhibit we headed back onto the strip.  I decided that we should walk down to the sign at the south end of the strip that says "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas", so we walked.  But it was way farther than I thought it was.  Quite a bit later, we were there, standing in a line to take pictures at this sign.  It cracked me up that there was a big line to take pictures at this sign.  Awesome.

Pictures taken, we started to head back towards the casinos.  Brie's foot was hurting bad though, so we got into Mandalay Bay and took the tram.  But before we took the tram, I got the silly idea to gamble a bit.  You can't go to Vegas and not gamble at least a little bit.  So I sit down at the first slot machine that catches my eye, and I stick $5 in.  Within minutes, I'm up to $10.  Super, I'm winning!  So I cash out, and we walk past a video roulette machine.  I've never played roulette before, but a couple days ago, my friend Hannah told me to bet on Black 24 (if there was one).  So I stick my $10 ticket into this machine, and just for kicks, I bet $2 on Black 24.  And I win.  What!?  I'm up to $45!  So naturally, I cash out.  But I'm stupid, and managed to stick my $45 ticket into the Wheel of Fortune slots and lose half of it.  But I managed to stay $15 ahead.  I'm leaving Vegas a winner.  Hooray!

black 24!

After that, we took the trams back through the various casinos to the Bellagio where we were going to meet Katie who had gotten off of work.  We met up with her and decided that for dinner, we were going to go to Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville.  So we drove across the street, from the Bellagio to the Flamingo, and we had to fight our way through the loads and loads of tourists. Katie commented that she never understood the phrase, "If it's tourist season, why can't we shoot them?" until she moved to Vegas.  I'm inclined to agree with her.  So we get to the Flamingo and we start looking for parking and the sign takes us to this sketchtastic parking structure that looked like something out of a bad horror film.  We parked our car and had a rough time finding the even sketchier elevators, and we all agreed that we'd be moving the car again after dinner.

katie & brie @ margaritaville

Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville is a restaurant that I have passed several times in this trip.  I've always been a bit curious but until Vegas, I had never eaten there.  And I was pleasantly surprised!  Theme restaurants are always a bit of fun, just because they're one of the things you can do on vacations that you can't do in your real life without feeling a bit silly.  In Margaritaville, there's pirates and ship captains walking around on stilts, and there's all the country songs about margaritas and it's 5 o'clock somewhere playing on the tv's.  It's fabulous.  And expensive.  But hey!  It's vacation!  So we splurged; I got a pomegranate margarita and it was delicious.

After dinner, we had decided to go see a Cirque du Soleil show.  I had originally wanted to see "O", which is the Cirque show at the Bellagio.  It's supposed to be quite spectacular and feature tons of water acrobatics.  But it didn't show on Monday nights, and it was crazy expensive, so we opted for "Mystere" instead.  And it was awesome.  We bought the cheapest tickets we could, and when we walked in, since the show hadn't been sold out, they gave us better seats!  We were sitting about 10 rows from the front!  Now if you've never seen a Cirque du Soleil show, let me tell you a little bit about it.  It's some of the most mind blowing performance I have ever seen.  The skill level of the performers is incredible.  It's stuff they've trained their entire lives for, and Cirque puts a theatrical twist on something you would see at, say, the olympics.  It's acrobats, and trapeze artists, and strong men, and gymnasts, and dancers, and clowns, and everything in between.  And with "Mystere" they put it all in this magical world, so the costumes are exquisite, and the performative quality of the show is just mind blowing.  As a theatre kid, I sat there with my mouth slightly open & hardly breathing for the 2 hours that ensued.  The only complaint I had were the 3 drunk guys who were sitting behind us talking the entire time.  Nothing kills theatre like a bad audience.  So 3 drunk guys, what I have to say to you is inappropriate for this blog.  That is all.

All in all, Cirque was awesome.  But it was getting late & Katie had to work in the morning.  Brie and I decided that before we got to our car, we'd watch the Bellagio fountains.  So Katie dropped us off, from the road, in front of the Bellagio & we got to watch the absolutely gorgeous fountains set to "Luck Be A Lady" (how fitting!).  And then it was time to go home.  We got back to Katie's house and we were both out like lights that night.

bellagio fountains

vegas is pretty at night

The next day would be off to California, a lovely 300 mile drive to the west. And it was a rather boring drive. There's not a whole lot of scenery between Las Vegas and Los Angeles.  But the drive was short, which was awesome.  We made pretty good time, about 4 hours, and traffic wasn't bad even a little bit when we got to LA.  But that's because the interstates have like 7 lanes!  It was overwhelming for this small town girl, but AWESOME at the same time.  Oodles and oodles of traffic and no backups.  And California drivers are way more awesome than New York drivers.  They speed around and weave in and out but they don't slow down so the traffic doesn't back up.  I could totally get used to driving here.  My aggressive Albuquerque driving is downright conservative for California.

newport beach, ca

So Brie's cousins live in Newport Beach.  Where Arrested Development was filmed!  Seriously, the locations for filming AD are across the street from the house!  I was all excited.  And they live in this super cute beach house.  We're approximately 30 seconds walking distance from the beach.  So when we got in, we said our hellos and almost immediately we were walking along the beach.  While the sand in Florida was this gorgeous white, the water in Florida was all seaweed-y.  Here, the sand's a normal brown color but the water is clear clear clear.  Brie's cousin has a little 2 year old named Noah.  And he's adorable.  At the beach he insisted that we build a sand castle, so having never properly built a sand castle in my life, I set out to try.  And semi successfully too!  He seemed amused at least.  Then again, it's pretty hard to not please a 2 year old.

After the beach we decided to ride bikes (another thing I haven't done in years) along the boardwalk.  You get a lovely view of the beach on one side and a lovely view of these awesome beach houses on the other side.  I was envious of both.  And riding bikes is so much fun!  Everyone rides bikes here.  I suppose it makes sense, but I was all excited.  Now I want a bike.  (I've got an enormous list of things I want to do and get when I come home... getting a bike & riding it is one of them.)  On our bike ride we got dinner as well.  Delicious burgers from this shady little place called TK Burger.  Apparently this place has a little cult following, and after tasting the burger, I can totally see why.

It had been an extremely pleasant day.  I couldn't really believe that in the last few weeks I had driven all the way from Boston to Los Angeles.  I must be crazy, but it was 100% worth the hours upon hours that I have spent in my car.  And I've decided that I like the west cost a lot more than I like the east coast.  That, of course, could change, but I live in the desert so I don't reckon it'll matter even if it does change.

That night, we (fittingly) watched Arrested Development and I gained an even deeper appreciation for one of the best shows that's ever been on television.  And then it was bedtime.

And that's all for today.  I'll tell you about the rest next time.  But *SPOILER ALERT*, Sigourney Weaver gives me a dollar. True story.

TALLY
miles driven: 7,100
time spent in my car: 114 hours
cities visited: 33
cities slept in: 17
states driven in/through: 27