Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas…
The journey from LA to Vegas was uneventful and one of the shortest of the trip at only three hours. We arrived to a sunny Vegas mid-afternoon and checked into our hotel for the next four nights – Excalibur.
Positioned near the end of the strip and adjoining the Luxor hotel, Excalibur is modelled on a King Arthur themed castle. As with all the Vegas hotels the outside of the hotel looked vast and impressive and the inside was equally huge with it own restaurants, casino’s, bars, nightclubs, spa, shopping mall and huge arena for shows.
After the most drawn-out checking in at the hotel we dropped off our bags and soon headed out for a walk on the strip to take a look at the incredible hotels surrounding ours. New York, New York was right over the road via our drawbridge and MGM Grand was opposite. It soon got dark and on came the lights giving us the first glimpse of the Vegas seen in pictures.
After passing many of the big hotels we neared the middle of the strip and stopped to watch the fountains at the Bellagio.
We found a nice Mexican restaurant for dinner before returning to the Excalibur and the casino! Liam was soon into the swing of things on the tables and Matt joined him (briefly) for a game of blackjack. Matt doesn’t like gambling although when last in Vegas he was too young to gamble so decided that he needed to gamble something to complete the trip to Vegas. Matt soon retired having very quickly lost 20 dollars!
Our first full day in Vegas was spent wandering in and out of the many hotels, casinos and shopping centres including the incredible Venetian shopping centre.
We had purchased a pass which gave us access to three attractions from a selection of the most popular. We had chose the New York, New York roller coaster, Shark Reef Aquarium and the Bodies exhibition. The roller coaster was first up and on the initial ascent gave some great views of the strip before the stomach lurch!
The sheer scale of everything in Vegas is what makes the place so interesting and many miles can be clocked up without even leaving your hotel. We had purchased an all day buffet and returned to the hotel early evening to take full advantage.
Vegas is well know for its shows and has heaps of different shows running each night. Most of the hotels feature at least one theatre and the MGM grand is well know for having plenty. One of the longest standing shows is the Paris Crazy Horse Cabaret at the MGM grand. We booked some good seats for the evening showing on a table at the front of the theatre. Matt had been before and recommended the show which also turned out to be one of the most reasonable on offer!
The weather was sunny the first day but we awoke to an overcast day the following morning. We decided to hold-off on the stratosphere until the weather cleared and so headed off to the Luxor and Mandalay Bay hotels to the Aquarium and Bodies exhibition. Both of the attractions were impressive, but the bodies exhibition was certainly the most interesting and disturbing. Bodies is an exhibition of real bodies, preserved in different forms to show everything including skeletal structure, muscle groups, heart, lungs etc. The real “healthy lungs” and “smokers lungs” comparison was interesting and the large bin for cigarettes was filling fast!
We finished the day with a night out taking in the Coyote Ugly Bar, an Irish Pub and Nightclub – all within our hotel!
The best way to get an overview of Vegas and the surrounding areas is a trip up the Stratosphere. At 1,149 feet high it gives an impressive view.
The following morning it was time to leave Vegas and head to the Grand Canyon via the Hoover Dam. The Hoover Dam is only 35 miles outside Vegas which was lucky as the hire car seemed to be experiencing some problems with its gearbox and loosing power.
We reached the dam and after some searching found the road leading directly to it – amazingly the signs were non-existent as the road is still fairly recent.
The views from the top of the dam looking down the dam and across lake Meade are impressive and we stopped at another vantage point on the drive out which overlooks a larger part of the lake.
We decided that it would be best to return to Vegas and the hire centre at the airport to exchange the car before heading off on the long drive to the Grand Canyon. We managed to exchange the car for a nice Ford Explorer and were soon heading back down the road past the Hoover Dam and towards the town of Tusayan, our base for exploring the Grand Canyon.
The weather soon closed in and the although the road was easy going, the dark and rain made for hard concentrating. When we reached the town before Tusayan it was snowing and the temperature had dropped considerably. We reached Tusayan fine and the roads had been cleared of any snow which there was.
Tusayan is a small town serving the southern rim of the Grand Canyon. A collection of Hotels and restaurants it is convenient and only a few miles drive to the southern rim. When Matt was last here he devoured a 24 ounce steak at the steakhouse and had been looking forward to round two. Unfortunately as the area is now out-of-season we were informed on check-in that many of the restaurants (including the steakhouse) had closed for the season. To add to the disappointment the hotel we chose for dinner served us with some poor food, on plastic plates and with plastic disposable cups for drinks!
Aside from the food the area was nice and the following morning was overcast but dry with some warnings of possible snow. We set off into the park and soon reached the tourist information centre and first viewing point of the Grand Canyon.
As you can see by the way we were dressed it was chilly but we were thankful that it wasn’t raining and although overcast (and not great for pictures) the views were still spectacular.
We drove along the south rim road and stopped off at most of the viewing points along the way. We reached the end and turned around just as the weather cleared for a brief spell before returning to overcast.
The day flew by and we were soon tucking into dinner at an other drab restaurant with virtually no customers, terrible service and a guy with a guitar playing monotone in the corner.
The two weeks had been flying by and we were on our way back to Vegas already for the final night before Liam left for the UK. On the way back to Vegas we stopped again at the Hoover Dam as it was a lovely day. Matt had previously visited the Dam with his Dad and had seen the construction of the bypass road which would take traffic over the gorge without crossing the top of the dam. The bridge is now complete and has a walkway alongside with a good views of the whole of the dam which wasn’t possible before.
We had booked ourselves two rooms at the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino for the last night in Vegas. Checking in at the hotel was the first of two very nice surprises over the next couple of days.
The hotel was starting to get busy for the Christmas period and as we had Liam’s room booked for only one night and we also had a room booked for one night before upgrading to a slightly better room – we were both given upgrades for the one night to a suite room.
Planet Hollywood, as with most Vegas hotels has heaps of different room types and so a suite didn’t mean much – initially. The assistant told us that although we were on the same floor that we were at opposite ends and Liam should take the south elevator whilst we took the North – an indication of the sheer scale of these hotels.
We set off towards our respective rooms and were soon wondering along the corridor counting off numbers. We soon reached the end of the corridor a little confused until we spotted a plaque to the right and two huge double doors in front of us – this is when we got excited!
The suite which we had been upgraded to was a “Panorama Suite” with 1400sq ft of space and huge windows overlooking the strip with full view of the Paris and Bellagio hotels. At $600 a night this was quite an upgrade from our $60 booking!
As you can see from the pictures below the room was vast with lounge areas, dining room, full wet bar, guest toilet and huge bath overlooking the view.
To finish the evening in style we booked in at the famous chain Bennihana, a Japanese Habatchi restaurant with performing chefs at each table. Incredible steak and seafood was cooked at the table with some cool tricks from the chef and a nice way to finish the two weeks we had spent with Liam in the USA.
The second nice surprise was when we returned the hire vehicle. We had swapped the vehicle due to the gearbox issues and therefore had been told to visit the main customer service desk when we returned to seek some compensation for the hassle.
We returned the car and the assistant printed us a receipt from his hand-held device which showed $166.00 and listed four days rental. Looking at the receipt it looked like they had confused the swap of the car and charged us an additional rental for the time we had the new vehicle on top of our initial rental. Reaching the desk we began on the course that they had tried to charge us extra and we had already had issues with collecting the car from their incompetent team in LA. The man here looked over our initial rental agreement and voucher from the broker which showed a total rental of around $850.00. After a few taps and some strange looks the customer service assistant gave us a view of his screen and explained that their must have been an error when we collected the car initially or when we swapped it as we had only been charged $166.00!!
The man handed us back our documents and did offer for him to look into why we had been charged too little but we said it was fine and he said “have a nice day then”. A nice little saving on the car hire and the $166.00 even included a tank of fuel!
So we had arrived at the airport – At this point its time to read the next blog……….
Cooke & Craddock 