We had planned to go to Zion National Park after Bryce, but when we tried to book accommodation for Las Vegas it was nowhere near as cheap as we thought it was going to be because we would be staying there over a weekend. The rates quadruple in a lot of places at the weekend, at least on The Strip which is where we wanted to stay so we could take a bit of a rest from driving. So we decided to sacrifice Zion and head to Las Vegas early, which was a shame but we had been to Antelope Canyon which made up for it.
We stayed at Bally’s Casino, which we’d never heard of but which is right next door to Paris and opposite the Bellagio, so we were in a perfect position to be able to walk to all the major casinos.
Vegas is pretty much a city plopped down in the middle of a desert, and the weather doesn’t let you forget it. Even the wind is hot. We had to keep ducking into casinos and shops to cool down, which wasn’t a problem as most of them are interconnected anyway.
The casinos and hotels are crazy; the smallest of the ones on The Strip have over 2000 rooms, and they really go all out on the décor. Bally’s was probably the least interesting one there, but we could walk through to Paris which was awesome – like Disneyland for adults (without the rides, although New York New York has a rollercoaster). There are shopping malls in almost every hotel (a lot of which have exactly the same shops it must be said), but they’re all different styles to go with the hotel.
We thought it might be a fairly tacky place to be honest, but everything is so polished in the big hotels that it’s actually quite nice. We never made it downtown though, so our experience might be biased.
Katherine had planned a surprise for me the day after we arrived. She had us waiting in the hotel lobby when a limo with “The Little White Wedding Chapel” on the side turned up! It whisked us off to the chapel, where we renewed our vows in a small ceremony. It was amazing and totally unexpected, which surprised Katherine as she thought the game had been given away 😛
After that, Katherine decided she wanted to shoot something. Yeah, I thought it was a strange connection too! We drove to a gun range where you can pick from a load of different guns and just fire away. Katherine asked which gun would be best for a girl and was recommended a Beretta. I chose a Glock 17. Other people there had sprung for the more expensive machine guns, and I think we would have left the place deaf if we hadn’t been wearing ear protectors. Katherine says she’s mildly scared by how good I was, but everyone knows Katherine is the one to fear if she picks up a gun 😉
