Days 3 and 4

Wednesday, June 15, 2011
We woke up when we felt like it, which seemed to fall around 9am. We had the gorgeous golden view of the Mandalay out of our windows and snuggled, happy to be in such an exciting place together. I decided we should check out the buffet for breakfast, because I've always heard how amazing they are in Vegas. We thought we'd just get breakfast at the MORE Buffet in the Luxor, but when we saw the prices, we changed our mind. Breakfast for one adult was $15 or you could pay $30 for an all day pass. Come as often as you want and eat as much as you want. Trying to be as thrifty as possible (I AM unemployed now, after all...) we opted for this. Mick enjoyed being able to get eggs and bacon AND sausage like you get back in England, not this crappy eggs and bacon OR sausage garbage we do here. He was not, however, happy with my photographing him during a meal. Here he is exclaiming "WHY?" as I snapped a picture.

Next, we drove over to Ceasar's Palace. Mick was adamant about spending some time here, because it's where the Wolf Pack stayed in The Hangover. He was very impressed by the shopping area and the fountains, and especially the fancy benches in the shopping area. Ignore the closed eyes, he hates having his picture taken.

 

 After Caesar's we walked across the strip to The Venetian, which is my favorite hotel on the strip. We wanted to go on one of the gondola rides, but the lines were long and we figured we'll just wait until we go to Italy and do a real one. We even visited Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum.

Then we went back to the hotel, hit the buffet again for lunch and went back to the room to rest up a bit and shower. We decided to hit some of the hotel gift shops where we got keychains, hats, shirts, and I picked out a Cleopatra cartouche necklace which I'm very excited about. Then we crossed through Excalibur and went to New York New York where we played games in the arcade. It didn't take me long to find the one quarter game machine that was glitching and would spit out, literally, hundreds of tickets for even putting your money in the machine. We collected 2,000 tickets and got a light up LED sign that displays Route 66. We were stoked, but I couldn't help feeling like we were doing something wrong! After collecting our winnings, we trekked back to Luxor and put our things in our room and hit the buffet yet again. I wanted to drive up and down the strip to show Mick how cool it really is, and I wanted to show him the old end too, which I didn't want to walk because its a) too far and b) kinda seedy. We checked out the Paris, which is definitely a hotel I want to stay at next time we go to Vegas! Again, exhausted, we returned to the Luxor where I passed out earlier than I'd planned to.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Today didn't start off too nice. I woke up freaking out around 4am after a terrible dream in which Mick was deported for no reason, and they refused to let me into England. I woke up and reached for him, woke him up and told him about it. We fell back to sleep but I was really itchy all night and knew my hives were trying to come back. I could tell the night before when we were at Caesar's so I bought some Benadryl, which doesn't normally help. Anyways, even in half sleep I could tell I was breaking out. I woke up and headed to the bathroom for a shower and looked in the mirror. The entire left side of my face was swollen. I had half a fat lip and my eye was swollen about 1/3 shut. I immediately began freaking out and took off my pajamas only to find the worst hives I've had in the past few weeks. Everywhere. Hips, sides, chest, legs, back, butt. Mick called the front desk to see if anywhere in the hotel sold Zyrtec (the only thing that helps me) but no such luck. We drove down to CVS on the strip to buy a bottle for me. I took one and immediately the swelling went down and the hives went away. We had breakfast sandwiches in the deli at the hotel, packed our stuff up, and headed to my sister's in Southern California. The trip was long and sweaty because my air conditioning seems to be dying.

After a nice hot bath upon our arrival at my sister's, I began to feel a little better. 

And that was our sort of unofficial anniversary trip! It was a lot of fun, but I'm so happy to be in nicer weather!