Las Vegas
Viva Las Vegas, well at least that’s what I thought…
Having never been to Vegas before after all my travels through the States I thought it was time to give it a go. I left for Vegas with Vanessa in the we hours of the morning after a heavy night of drinking and celebrating her last day of work. We did not get any sleep that night since we went straight from partying to packing and straight into a cab to the airport for our flight leaving at 6am. Toronto Pearson Airport was the slowest I have seen it, with lines to clear security taking us over an hour. Once we were through security we were the “idiots” the plane was waiting for.
Our flight stopped in Detroit so we didn’t manage any sleep on the first leg, but did manage to sober up just enough to get on the next flight after some photos in the very psychedelic tunnel. Our next leg was to LA, where we had to wait around for an hour before we could catch the final leg to Vegas. Unfortunately our flight was delayed and we were stuck on the plane for an extra hour with no explanation what so ever. Thanks Delta.
Once we finally made it to Vegas around lunchtime we were all set to go, well almost. We checked into the Hard Rock Cafe Hotel (a little off the strip and noisy) and proceed to walk over to “The Strip”. Being the middle of winter I guess Vegas was pretty quiet, there was not a whole lot going on, but I think this suited us for the first day as we were both very tired. We had a walk around some of the casinos and went to get some food in the mall only to find out that my credit card had been halted. Vanessa had forgotten her cards in the packing haste from earlier that day, luckily I had some cash on me. From there is was back to the Hotel to call my bank to figure out the problem.
Once this was all resolved, an hour or two later, we decided to grab some dinner locally in the Hotel. We ended up at a little Tequila/Mexican restaurant and knocked back a few margaritas before heading back up for a quick nap before we headed out. Well that was the plan anyway. Our “small” nap ended up taking up most of the night and we slept all the way through until 10am the next day.
Our second day in Vegas was nice and relaxing. We spent the day checking out more casinos and booked tickets to see Pen and Teller at the Rio that night. We had dinner at some crazy ocean themed restaurant with people walking around on stilts and making balloon creatures for us. From there we headed over to the Rio to see Pen and Teller. Pen and Teller have been at the Rio for a while now, I have no idea if they do the same thing year after year or not, but either way it was a really good show. There was not many people in the crowd due to it being low season, but none the less the show was great and I would recommend it to anyone who is visiting Vegas. We got our pictures with Pen & Teller and an autographed book as well. From there we headed out for some massive Ice-cream Sundays. Yum yum.
The following day we checked out of the Hard Rock Cafe Hotel and hired a car to head over to The Grand Canyon.
Pictures for Vegas are at the bottom of the page
The Grand Canyon
The Grand Canyon is certainly called Grand for a reason. This is one of the most awe inspiring sights I have ever seen in my entire life and I will certainly be back.
The trip from Vegas to The Grand Canyon was pretty straight forward in the rental car. We stopped at the Hover Dam, which you should really do if you are going over it anyway, and continued on to Flagstaff where we spent the night. Flagstaff is a tiny little town but perfect to stay in to see the Canyon.
We were up earlyish the next day (12pm) and headed over to the canyon. There is a fee to enter the national park to see the canyon and the drive took us about an hour and a half. Once we were there I could not believe my eyes, the canyon is amazing, and like most of these kind of sites a picture will never do it justice. We parked the car and began our hike down the Angel Trail. The trails were covered in snow, which I think was pretty cool, so the decent was fairly slow. We managed to walk for about an hour or so before we decided to head back so we could catch the sunrise over the canyon. We made our way over to Pima Point to watch the sunset which was absolutely magnificent. I’m sure it doesn’t matter where you are on the canyon for the sunset, but I think we chose a great spot.
That was our one day at The Grand Canyon, we did not get a whole lot done, and I would recommend if you are going to see the canyon that you get up early and make the most of the entire day. There is lots to explore once you are there.
From the canyon we made our way back to Vegas and were back around 11pm.
Vegas Part 2
We decided early on that we were going to try a few different hotels while we were there. So we checked into Treasure Island (nothing special) for the night. Once we got settled in and showered for our night out we had a few drinks and were all set to go when Vanessa noticed a rash on her arm. This was a little worrying, so we did some tests and found out she had an allergic reaction to the soap in the hotel. We notified the staff and then had to sit downstairs and fill out forms for security and legality reasons. After all this its was well after 1am and we still didn’t find out the ingredient that was in the soap which caused it all. Given the low season, Vegas closes down around 1am so we had to call it a night.
Our last full day in Vegas, or so we thought. We had planned to get as much done as possible this day. We checked out of Treasure Island and drove the car down to the Las Vegas sign at the south of the strip and got some very nice Jumping Photos. We dropped our bags off at our new hotel, New York New York and proceeded to drop the car off at the rental place.
We arrived back on the strip and set of to the Venetian Casio to have a look at “Little Italy”. While we were there we went to play the Ghost Buster slot machine and put both my bag and Vanessa’s handbag on the ground while she took a photo of me. When we went to leave the slot machine only 2 minutes later we noticed one of the bags was gone! We combed the area and its’ surrounds to no avail. Needless to say this caused some distress. We reported it stolen to the security and filed a report. Our passports, cash and most importantly Vanessa’s diabetic medication were all in the bag.
We were told by security to visit the police station and file a report, so we quickly got a cab down to the police station. When we got there we were told to fill in some paper work, but given it was 4.40pm they would not file the report until tomorrow when we would have to return. This just made things worse. We asked where the hospital was so Vanessa could get some medication in the meantime.
We spent 4+ hours in the hospital only to come out of there with a prescription on paper. So it was back to the strip to try to collect the prescription. Well, when we got to the pharmacy at 9pm poor Vanessa had been without insulin for over 6 hours and was suffering. But this wasn’t the worst part. The pharmacist told us it was going to cost $450 to fill the prescription. We did not have a problem with that due to the severity of the circumstances, but we did not have access to $450 at the time. We eventually got some good news though and were told that we could visit another pharmacy and get a smaller dosage for a cheaper price. We caught a cab to the other pharmacy and managed to finally get Vanessa’s insulin. It was now after 10pm. Along with the insulin we also thought it would be a great idea to get a well deserved bottle of Rum.
Once we finally got to check into New York New York (New York New York is a horrible hotel), it was straight to the phone to try and sort out passports to get back into Canada. When we called both of our embassies were not open, so we called Detla and also the TSA (Transportation Security Administration), who told us that Vanessa would not actually need a replacement passport to enter into Canada, a copy of her birth certificate would do. After hearing this good news went out to celebrate what we could!
We did try to make a night out of it and ventured downstairs to play on some of the machines. After drinking a whole bottle or Rum and then some shots with dinner and after a few more beers, we came to the conclusion that it would be easier for me to get back into Canada if I was Canadian as Vanessa was told she would not actually need a replacement passport for her return into Canada. We found a little church somewhere down the south end of the strip and got married for $50.
We had to be up the next day at 4.30am to call the Canadian embassy to clarify what we had been told. So with less than 3 hours sleep we were feeling a little worse for wear. As it turns out we actually had to go to Los Angeles and visit our consulates respectively. This made our marriage completely useless so I phoned delta and re-booked our flights for 6 days later at a very expensive price of $200 each after calling my bank to set up an overdraft for emergency funds.
By the time we had figured everything out it was to late to head to LA and begin the passport process as it was Friday. So we stayed in Vegas for another night and booked ourselves into the Westin, after a small nap. The Westin was probably the nicest place we stayed in during our stay.
We had a small night out and made sure we went out to finally see some of the things Vegas has to offer. We went and saw the MGM lions, visited Caeser’s Palace and watched the “moving statues”, as well as finally watching the famous Bellagio water feature. Without Vanessa’s ID, which was taken as well, we were very limited in what we could do.
Our Vegas leg finally came to an end and we boarded a cheap bus to head to LA to sort out all our passport details. On a side note, we will be getting the marriage annulled very soon.
