What happens in Vegas...

Should stay in Vegas, but here goes anyway:

I swear they must put something in the air or the water that makes people want to consume more alcohol in one weekend than they would in a whole year.

We arrived at our hotel on Friday afternoon around 1pm. We checked in and went to our room to drop off the luggage and then headed out to go exploring. We made our way down a couple of hotels to the Luxor where they had a few exhibits that I wanted to see; Bodies and the Titanic Artifact exhibits. The ticket office had a package dealt hat saved you about $25 if you purchased three exhibit/experiences so we opted for a CSI Experience at the MGM as our third one.

The first exhibit we went through was Bodies. It was interesting and creepy at the same time as everything in there were actual body parts and actual human bodies. Even now I’m not exactly sure how I feel about the whole thing. If you are looking at it from a purely scientific view it is interesting to see what things actually look like. To see a smokers lung compared to a healthy lung, and a brain that had suffered a stroke compared to a healthy brain...It’s just very different seeing it in person up close rather than in a text book or in pictures. But the second you realize where these came from it was disturbing.

In my opinion the Titanic exhibit was the best, at least it was my favorite of the three things we did. There were some really interesting and fascinating articles in there. It is beyond me how things like delicate china plates, saucers and cups could have survived, some of it without even a scratch, such a horrific and dramatic event. There were pieces of jewelry that was as sparkly as it would have been the day before the sinking. They said that the pieces were displayed in the condition that they were recovered, they were preserved not restored and the reason they stayed in such great condition is that most of the pieces had been stored in leather bags or cases, the leather had repelled the microorganisms in the sea water which would have normally destroyed the articles. The “crown jewel” of the exhibit was the giant piece of the Titanic’s hull that was on display. According to the story boards on the wall, the piece took several years and two separate attempts to be recovered from its resting place on the ocean floor. It was amazing to really think about what that piece had actually been through and to see it there right in front of you.

Later that afternoon after we had finished our exploring and educational segment of the trip, we headed back to our hotel, the New York New York (this is where the drinking and acting like and idiot comes in). The place was fairly crowded due to “March Madness” basketball that was going on so it took a while but eventually we found a nice spot at one of the many bars. We played video black jack for a while getting the free drinks that come along with the gambling. After we had enough (or rather too much) of that we headed to the slots. I found a lucky machine that made me $107 off of the $1 I initially put in! I had never really been successful at the slots before so I was not only buzzed but also pretty pumped by this point. It was then that we decided to head up to the Coyote Ugly bar (the same chain as the one the movie was based on). Somehow before I knew it some chick in skimpy clothes had grabbed my hand and hauled me up onto the bar!!!! I tried to hide behind another dancing girl while up there when the bouncer took my hand and moved me up to the front of the bar where I somehow managed do “dance” for an entire song. Hubby was “kind enough” to take video on his phone, luckily it was dark and you cant see me (thank goodness). Any one that knows me knows that this was something that is completely out of character. I hate being in front of people, once I was dragged up in front of a bunch of people to do a karaoke song and nearly blacked out from being soo nvervous. I guess it was all of that “liquid courage” that I had consumed Friday that allowed me to actually dance on a bar in front of about 100 people (hopefully at least most were as drunk as I, so I didn’t look too bad up there). After one final drink we got some pizza and headed for the room to pass out around 11:30pm

Saturday morning despite my prior night’s activities I felt pretty good and even woke up at a reasonable time. We were dressed and out of the room before 8:30am. After breakfast we headed out for a walk up the strip to check out some of the hotels. We ended up nearly all the way at the other end at the Mirage where we went to the Dolphin and Secret Garden exhibit. There were some bottle nose dolphins swimming around, I love watching them they are so playful. The Secret Garden part consisted of the White Tigers (made famous by the magicians Siegfried and Roy), a couple of adults and two adorable 8 month old cubs. There were also a few lions, leopards and for some reason Alpacas. I though them to be an odd combination in conjunction with the big cats but there were quite a few people watching them.

After finishing up there we caught the monorail back down to our end of the strip. We ate some lunch at the Rain Forrest Café in MGM and did the CSI Experience thing we had tickets for. Luckily we got a discount on these because it was pretty lame. I definitely wouldn’t recommend that one. You got to choose from three different “crime scenes” and then you had to observe the scene and look for clues, perform some cheesy lab experiments and complete some fake report thing at the end. Though it said it was suitable for ages 12 and up I think it was more suitable for kindergarten through 12.

Saturday evening we hit our video black jack bar for a few more drinks (I didn’t plan on drinking anywhere near as much as the previous night- so much for the best laid plans) and then returned to my favorite slot machine. To my utter delight I put in $11 and cashed out with over $300! I was excited the night before to win $100 but to win $300! I was beside myself. After several more drinks and once my machine seemed to stop paying out we headed outside to check out the Earth Hour Black out on the strip. It was neat to see everything all dark, the bartender said the only other time that had been done was when Sammy Davis Jr passed away.

After the black out we hit the Roller Coaster at the hotel, those are always fun especially when you have a few drinks in you. And after the roller coaster we had a really yummy dinner at an Italian Restaurant in the hotel. Before we headed to bed Ren wanted to give my lucky machine one last try and lo and behold he won another $100! By this point we had won back pretty much all of the cash we had taken and lost over the weekend! We were only out the money for the room, food and exhibits we had done. For some reason Vegas is so much more fun when you can come home with money! Money in hand we went up to the room and passed out around 11pm for the second night.

Sunday morning wasn’t as great as Saturday. (Note to self: you can suck it up and get through the next day after one night but you can not after two nights of drinking and staying up late). The drive home wasn’t too bad, I was just exhausted and very dehydrated. Once home I sucked down several bottles of water, took a hot shower and took a nap for about an hour before I felt human again. Still, overall we had a blast but I am definitely happy to be home! I missed my dogs and my bed!

By the way, to my relief Bella did great with my friend who was house sitting. It was probably really good for her to be away from me and have to work with and for someone else for a few days. My friend said Bella was a little shy and confused at first but eventually settled down and was very well behaved for the weekend.

Whew! Looks like we all survived!