Vegas baby!

Firstly I have to say that I had a wonderful few days away just hanging out with my lovely man. It was just so nice not to have places to go or time frames and to just "be" together, away from day to day stresses. But I don't really think that I am a "Vegas" kind of a person.

We got to the airport rather early, so we had a nice time sitting and having something to eat. Our plane was then delayed, changed gates and delayed again (the air steward announced we must sit and wait while the passengers were "de-planing").
So while our plane was supposed to get into Las Vegas at 11pm local time, it arrived 2 hours later, even though the pilot kept reassuring us that he would try and make up some time in the air (fly faster? take a short cut? use an extra engine?).

The hotel room was lovely and luxurious.


With a bath! Which we promptly used in the middle of the night (we've both been hanging out for a hot bath for so long).
So it was probably about 3 am Vegas time by the time we got to bed (6am our time), and neither of us slept very well as we could hear people in the hall on and off through the night.
But in the morning we discovered a wonderful view through the windows of the mountains that surround Vegas. Unfortunately it was very cloudy and we only caught glimpses of the gorgeous colours.

I was so desperate to get out and see those gorgeous desert mountains.
We were staying at the Venetian where Matt's conference is, and it was all very over the top. It was Matt's birthday, so we went down to "Bouchon", one of the many restaurants in the hotel, for a fantastic French breakfast with the best chocolate croissants I have ever tasted. If you've seen the movie Ratatouille, the chef they interview who helped with the movie is the creator of Bouchon. It was lovely. Then we went for a wander around the hotel shops (to work off breakfast) and found this amazing bookstore selling rare and first edition books. We took this for you, dad, a first edition of Slaughter House 5 for $2500.

One of the many restaurants inside the hotel.
And even though it was overcast, we went out to explore the strip-after all it is the desert and it hardly ever rains, right?
Paris hotel....

I loved this wall on the Planet Hollywood hotel

New York hotel...all one building complete with roller coaster.
Excalibur hotel (we walked back through this hotel and it was horrendous)

The Luxor Hotel (this one I really wanted to see as I always remember it from the book Father Christmas goes on Holiday). And while it is impressive from the outside, it is even stranger on the inside as all the rooms are terraced up the inside of the pyramid. There's no natural light in there and it's like a scene from the second Matrix movie where they are living in Zion. Actually made me feel a little ill.
Further up we walked (and by now I had mammoth blisters on the balls of my feet, so it was more like hobbling) and found the Mandalay Bay hotel, which I have to say I loved.

It was so tranquil in here and it smelled like Singapore. It was really lovely.
While looking around in a store which sold signed music paraphernalia (amazing stuff) I did a bit of remote parenting over the phone. The morning of the day that I left, Remi woke up with conjunctivitis. I got him on the drops and left explicit instructions with Oscar. Those two stayed home by themselves for one night (friends took them out for dinner), and even when I left in the afternoon Remi looked like he'd been punched. So I'd woken to a text from Oscar saying that Remi's eyes were worse, so I'd had to call my friend and have her take him to the doctor before they got picked up to go skiing in Vermont. It was horrible to be so far away and not be able to help him, but Remi told me that Oscar was being really nice to him, and it was all sorted out without me.

So Matt and I walked slowly back along the strip, and stopped for lunch overlooking the street (and all the men handing out cards for women-bluyuck!) and Caesar's palace. Within moments of this photo the heavens opened and we had to run inside to finish our lunch.
After the rain had stopped, we walked back to the hotel. This is out the front of our hotel, with the outdoor canal down below...it wasn't open, but the inside one was.

We went out for dinner for Matt's birthday, but we were treated to some very poor service. I found it all very strange...all roads in the hotel lead to the gamboling room, which was dark and noisy (like 1000 kids playing computer games with the volume turned up loud), but all the Venetian shops and restaurants around the indoor canal were in this perpetual twilight-totally screwed with your sense of time. I had no idea what time of day it was (especially with 3 hours time difference). It was like being on a space ship (like in Wall-E). Sometimes we had to go outside just to remind ourselves that it existed. That was actually the nice thing about the hotel room; having the big window.

The following day, via that window, we were able to see the unthinkable...a rainy day in Vegas. It rained all day...hard. The mountains were totally obscured...

Until for about 10 minutes the clouds parted and we were able to see snow on the peaks that wasn't there the day before...

So Saturday we lazed around, wandered around the shops again (not that we could buy anything as they were all designer and jewellery shops-oh and rare books). We sat and ate a few times, had a nap back in the rooms and generally just hung out. My blisters were killing me so I really didn't want to walk a lot, and it was raining outside, so we were kind of at a loss. As I said, Vegas isn't really for me...I'm not into gambolling or drinking all day, or many of the other vices on offer. I wasn't that interested in seeing one of the shows as it all felt so kind of forced and I got so sick of every man and his dog (actually no dogs-another thing that disturbed me was the lack of animals) trying to sell us tickets to everything.

I would have loved to have gone out to see the canyon and the desert, but was glad we didn't pre book anything as the weather would have made it a waste. To be honest I was kind of glad that I wasn't staying longer, although I did love just being there with Matt. But his conference meetings and get togethers started on Sunday, so I would have had a lot of time on my own.

By the time I got back on Sunday (I got to sit next to the only child on the plane) I was exhausted. So tired. We were constantly being woken up by people coming back to their rooms at all hours of the night...even when I went out to get a taxi at 5.30 am the gamboling floor was still packed and people were still staggering back to their rooms. It's taking me so long to recover from lack of sleep. And getting the kids out the door for school is really hard. They had a great time, though.

Trying to get my head around getting organised for going skiing in Vermont this weekend-washing to catch up on and we still have bags all over the floor from the kids coming home from their weekends away. But we will get there. You just may not hear from me for a while.

And my thoughts go out to all the people experiencing unimaginable suffering because of the bushfires in Australia.