We arrived at the Las Vegas Airport on July 2^nd at around 10am. The aircraft made a slightly harder-than-normal landing which seems to be the norm for Southwest Airlines these days. We waited for our bags to arrive at the carousel for half an hour. Once we had our luggage, we were ready to go.

Because it was so early in the day, we couldn't go to the hotel immediately---checkin wasn't until 3pm. So, we headed over to the strip to eat at Le Village buffet at the Paris.

Paris Las Vegas

Paris was amazing. Because we were unable to go directly to our hotel, we had to ask a bellman if he would hold our luggage for us while we ate. He did so--even though we weren't guests at the hotel (although we were going to be spending money there anyway)

The line for the buffet was around an hour long, and it seemed to move slower and slower the closer we got to the end. The cost of the buffet was $25, and sure enough, it was worth it.

One of the trademarks of this all-you-can-eat buffet for "Champagne Sunday Brunch" was that waiters would come by and fill your champagne glasses if they weren't full. This was not added to the bill, this was all covered by the $25 fee, so you could drink as much as you wanted. That's probably why there was such a long line. Sophia and I were a little tipsy after leaving, which was fine because neither of us had to drive.

The food served was delicious, I highly recommend it.

The actual building which are the hotel in Paris are absolutely beautiful--likely the most beautiful buildings on the strip, in my humble opinion.

The Orleans

Our hotel was the Orleans, which is off the strip, so to get there we took a (complementry) shuttle from the Gold Coast. We checked in, took a nap, and then headed out. Little did we know, trouble awaited us upon our return...

Bellagio

The Bellagio was beautiful. One of my favorite parts about the trip was the waterdances that came on every half hour or so. The jets were so powerful that when it spews water at certain times of the dance, it's like a loud clap of thunder. They had a section inside next to the lobby set aside for display. They had hobby trains, a ton of foliage, and water that 'bends' light.

Caesars Palace

This hotel looked massive on the outside because there were three buildings to it. Inside was just as grand with the Greek theme of gods and goddesses everywhere. We browsed around the shops and saw one of the biggest indoor salt-water fishtanks in my life. Sophia's ex-supervisor/co-worker is now general manager at the Spagos in there and so we thought it was a good idea to have dinner and visit him at the same time. The man definitely hooked us up. He ordered a "house special" pizza that was not on the menu for us. He was very much a gentleman.

Mirage

Not much to write about here. The former home of Siegfried and Roy is pretty uninteresting without them. We were planning on going to the nightclub Jet but they weren't open that night. Sophia had issues with uncomfortable shoes anyways so we decided to spend the night barhopping.

Bar Hopping

Well technically it wasn't bar-hopping per se because we only went to two bars. The drinks at these bars were subpar, I've had better ones at my local TGIF's.

Time to sleep... Or not.

We were exhausted by the time we got back to the hotel. Sophia was limping from the pain from her shoes. We walked/limped down the long corrider to our room, slid in the key and...the the key didn't work! We did it several times with both cardkeys and there wasn't even a red light. Argh! I ran downstairs to inform the front desk. They told me that they'll send an engineer upstairs to fix it. Eventually he did by replacing the batteries but there were more jumping through hoops to get to that point. There were a hint of ants in the room but not serious enough to call front desk about. We finally clapsed in drunken exhausted bliss on our bed.

July 3^rd

Aladdin

Venetian

Blue Man Group

Spectacular

The Phantom of the Opera

Breathtaking

More adventure at the Orleans

Ants! ARGH! New room. On one of the special floors. Ten bucks off. Room service.

July 4^th

Really sleepy.