Viva Las Vegas part 2

My 'dear' friend Boo likened our holidays to those of the Griswalds! Huh!

Actually I can't complain about the observation darling, some moments really are like that with us - throughout life not just hols LOL.

Ok so we rolled into Vegas and made our way, slowly, down the strip. WOW!! If there really is one place everyone should go at least once, Vegas is it. It is huge, and surreal. We were awestruck. You drive nearly 300 miles with nothing but desert and then this!


So we have not prebooked a hotel. We thought it would be fairly simple, roll up at the door, ask the cost, book in or go to next place. But the next place is like, a quarter of a mile away the hotels are sooooo huge. After our fourth sweep along the strip, with no visible parking places, and time rapidly aproaching sun set, we were beginning to get a bit panicked. Well I was panicked every day I didnt have a bed, but even laid back Martin was starting to show sighns of agitation. Finally we stopped the car in a grocery store carpark trying to ignore the 'tow away' notices. We hadnt gone far when we saw the entrance to a free car park, so back Mart trotted to move the car. I in the meantime discovered the car park belonged to a casino (no surprise really) and was accosted by 2 blokes trying to entice me with free goodies to go have a flutter!

Err no, what I want is an internet cafe! That threw them, they knew were wii fi was available but I had opted to leave the lappy at home, after reading about the problems some folk have bringing them back into the country. Since I had only had mine a week and Wayne had bought it for me I had little proof that I had obtained it outside the USA so at home it stayed.

Very worried by now we both started a fast trot along the strip as I was sure I had seen an internet cafe notice as we had trawled along earlier. Yes, there! In we piled. There were the computers, result! We would soon be booked into a hotel with a snug safe bed for the night. NO!!!!! Not to be, they had no internet access the portugese lady at the counter told us.

Back on the street, and very scared, we continued searching. This side of the road looked very dodgy with large black youths handing out call girl cards to passers by. The next shop with advertised internet access also looked a bit rough and ready, but in we went. $8 for 30 mins - ok I had never logged on, searched, found and put in our credit card details so fast in my life. No bargin hunting, wasnt time, first google hit and I was there. Of course then I needed to find my email and print out the confirmation. Yes printers sort of working - ok so you needed a magnifying glass to read the text on the email but the hotel would just have to give me access to see it again on line if they were that fussed.

You could see the streams of relief coming off us as we walked back to get the car, we had booked and paid for 3 nights at the Luxor for a really good deal. Possible by shopping around I might have got a better deal but by that point we really didnt care.

The funniest thing though was Martin's face, when 15 minutes later (having managed to avoid velet parking) we booked in and the woman had all our details in front of her not needing to even see our confirmation. He kept telling me how great technology was, all the way up the inclinator to our room on the 30th floor.