Vegas Baby, Vegas

I know I'm a bit behind, so let me catch y'all up. Vegas was fun. I have quite literally never been anywhere like it and don't think I ever will. It's so hard to explain how massive it is, how tacky it is and how funny it is. I stayed downtown in the nasty area of the city, running the gauntlet of poor people to get to the bus down the strip. As a city, it's pretty seedy and dirty, you know how they have those newspaper boxes where you get the free papers from? Well in Vegas they are all full of magazines full of advertisements for prostitutes, I wasn't prepared for that!

Anyways, what did I do? I met up with Gary and Rachel from New Zealand (as planned) and we spent the first night walking down the strip. It took us 3 hours to get to the last casino, The Luxor, which is a giant pyramid and is damned impressive. Other than that I didn't do too much. We spent the 2nd day doing the same, wandering around the casinos and seeing some of the shows, like the fountains at the Bellagio. This was cool, I gambled a bit on the roulette tables and fed the Star Wars Pokie machine and won a few bucks, nothing major though. It got to about 2am and we headed back because we decided to hire a car and head to the Grand Canyon on Monday.

I got 2 hours sleep, woke up and picked up this car and we set off. It took us 7 hours to get to the Canyon, crossing over to Arizona. On the way we crossed Hoover Dam, which was cool, big and full of traffic. I also had a little run in with the law who stopped me doing 88 in a 65 and gave me a $180 ticket ("Yes officer, I'll be sure to pay this before I leave the country... honest"), oops. We got to the south rim of the Grand Canyon around 5pm (because of the time difference, Arizona don't think they need Daylight Saving) and we spent about 2 hours driving to various viewpoints. It's an amazing sight, 10 miles across, 5000ft to the Colorado River and covered in snow. Unfortunately the weather was cloudy when we got there so it could have been a lot better, but still, it was worth the 13 hour round-trip.

We got back to Vegas about 11.30pm and I realised that there was no point in going to bed because I had a flight the next morning at 7.30am, so I needed to be at the airport at 5.30am. So we headed back down to the strip, saw some more of the lavish, over the top casinos like The Venetian which has canals indoors and then went to gamble. I lost money on the texas Hold-em table (should have quite whilst ahead), but made $5 overall on roulette. We then headed to Slots of Fun to play on the $1 blackjack to pass time before my flight. I started with $10 and was breaking even when I decided to get going. I put my whole $10 on the last hand and got 21. Unfortunately so did the dealer (so I lost nothing gained nothing). I said I came to lose it so I played on with my $10 stake. Well, someone liked me because I got Blackjack and walked away with $25. Grinning, full of coffee and all pleased with myself I headed home to drive back to the airport and drop the car off. I checked my details to see what my flight number was and then saw that the flight left at 6am. I drove like a madman in the pouring rain to drop the car off and try and make it. I got to the check-in desk at 6.25am and expected them to say "tough tits" because I had an online cheap-o fare. What actually happened is the guy put me on standby and I got on the next flight. I arrived at Dallas yesterday morning after having a total of about 4 hours sleep in the last 3 days where my good friend Elliot picked me up and is now looking after me.