Las Vegas

Daniel here; I’ll try to tackle this trip in some kind of chronological order. A few weeks ago our friends Guthrie and Laura invited us to go to Vegas with them. I hadn’t been to Vegas in years and Shandi claimed to have never visited The Strip.

Our friends were planning to attend a show and just hang out for the weekend. After getting plans made we were off on Saturday morning, Guthrie and Laura had left the day before us, and had spent one day there already. Shandi and I made our way on the plane, buddy passes in hand, without any sort of trouble. After a quick flight to Las Vegas we landed and got in contact with our friends. We took a short shuttle trip and met up with them at the MGM Grand where they made reservations a few weeks prior. The lobby of this hotel was definitely grand, and a giant gold lion offered our first Vegas photo op.
(Apologies for the poor image quality, perhaps our camera didn’t know how to compute all of the red and gold, or maybe the kind patron taking the picture didn’t understand me when I said “the green light means it’s in focus”.)
Regardless, we met Laura and Guthrie, made our way to our room. We decided a brunch buffet was a good idea, so we stood in a line that looked like we were at Disneyland. We got our table and had our choice of any food you could possibly imagine, some of it better than other.

After lunch we made our way to the strip to get some pictures (albeit in the rain) and to visit some of the shops. We visited the M&M factory, the Coca-Cola store, and a million others. We visited some shops in Caesar’s Palace. It was nice to be indoors with the rain coming down outside. Although, a few of these malls had the ceiling painted to look like a blue sky, given the lighting and other effects, at first glance, you felt like you were outside. We shopped until we couldn’t walk anymore. We went from stores with moderately priced items to shops with $1,000 women’s shoes; thank goodness Shandi doesn’t much care for fancy shoes.
Ok, enough on that, now on to the main event, the real reason for making the trip – cirque du soleil– KA’!

Wait, before KA, we decided to check out this Mexican restaurant in our hotel called Diego’s. Basically, it was the best Mexican food I’ve ever had. A lady with a cart went around to each table and made fresh guacamole, it was the best I’ve ever had. After dinner it was off to the show.
Unfortunately, there were a bunch of guys dressed like Capt. Jack Sparrow running around yelling at people taking pictures, we didn’t get many, but go here to see a little clip of the show.

http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/CirqueDuSoleil/en/showstickets/ka/home/intro.htm


I have been thinking hard about how to explain this show; it was unlike anything I have ever seen. Quite honestly, I didn’t know people were capable of creating something like this. The cast was a group of incredible athletes; I couldn’t believe my eyes at some of the stunts they pulled off. But perhaps the most impressive part was the production and the stage of the whole thing. This show is cause for me to believe I don’t get out nearly enough; I am behind on the times. I won’t continue trying to explain this show, but if you get the chance to attend, I highly recommend it.

Ok, this is getting a bit longwinded—the grand finale, Sunday morning we went for a quick swim in the heated pool, just before the only real good weather of the trip, receded to gray skies, again.
For our last activity we went over to New York-New York to ride the roller coaster. It was pretty rockin, we got some killer pictures-- I especially like the one of me. 

After the roller coaster we went back to our hotel to check out and head home. As luck would have it, we actually got on an earlier flight and were home ahead of schedule. Of course, Laura and Guthrie being the awesome people they are allowed Shandi and me to sit next to each other, while they sat in undesirable middle seats of the plane. Thank you Laura and Guthrie, you guys were so much fun to hang out with. We always have a great time with you guys. The room, the show, all of it was awesome!!