Viva Las Vegas

I am now home after a great weekend in Las Vegas with friends. I am happy, sad and exhausted.

I drove to Las Vegas Friday afternoon. I have to say, it was a nice drive through the California and Nevada desert and mountains. It was nice to have the quiet time and be able to sing loudly without anyone telling me to be quiet. I must say that, based on the billboards along the way, the majority of people who drive along I-15 from San Diego to Las Vegas must be obese. I say this because the number of billboards advertising lap band surgery was pretty astounding. I was beginning to get a complex.

It was so so so good to see my friends. I met up with Steve and Tish and Kanayo from Maryland. They are dear friends and it was wonderful to see them, catch up and spend 3 days with them. Friday night we just got dinner, played some slots and talked.

We went to Dick's Last Resort for dinner. This place is hysterical. All the servers are rude and basically curse you out. This would be poor customer service if it weren't for the fact that we as customers can curse back without getting thrown out of the place. What everyone hopes for is that their server will place a paper hat on their head. These hats usually have something rude (albeit false and in jest) about the wearer written by the server. We all got hats except poor Steve. Apparently he wasn't hat-worthy.

Saturday we went to the race expo. The expo was pretty enormous. It's one of the largest race expos in the country. When we got there, it wasn't open yet, so people were lining up to get in. The line had to be at least half a mile long. We were thinking the whole process of getting our packet would take all day. But once they opened the doors to the expo, everything went very smoothly. We all had our packets within 10 minutes. The best part? Seeing the running Elvii. They were very cool. And I did see a few of them running the marathon Sunday night.

After the expo, we walked through the Venetian and had lunch. We had to go to the Mirage to pick up the tickets for the Beatles Cirque de Soliel show we were going to that night. The line for that was a mile long and not moving, so we all took turns going into the gift shop and walking around. The area where the show was so so cool! It was hard for me to not buy everything in the gift shop but I didn't leave empty-handed. Once we had the tickets and were done playing around in the shop, we headed back to our hotel. We stayed at the Luxor which was really such a let down compared to the other hotels. It's old and tired. The other hotels, while they may be the same age or only slightly newer, seem so much more alive and happening. While we stayed at the Luxor primarily out of convenience and proximity to the race start/finish, I would not stay there again.

Anyway, for dinner Saturday night, we went to B.B. King's restaurant, which was kind of lackluster. The food was fine, but nothing that really knocked my socks off.

After dinner we went to the Revolution Bar which is a bar in the Mirage that is essentially a Beatles bar. They only play Beatles music, which is definitely my kinda place! The place is very mod and psychedelic, all very cool. We had a great time there.

After drinks, we saw Beatles Cirque de Soliel, which was absolutely amazing. Whether you love the Beatles or not, this show is just too good to miss. But as a Beatles fan, I was just in absolute heaven. The show itself really touched on all senses. It was really a good show.

Sunday we really didn't do anything. We just hung out, ate and got ready for the race. The race itself was fun. I won't go into tremendous detail as I've written a race recap over at my running blog, so if you're interested you can read that post. But as this was my first race after the babies were born, I didn't really have any expectations. It went better than I thought it would and it feels good to be back among my people!

After the race, we were all pretty tired. We had grand plans of partying and shots and getting crazy. But when the time came, we just wanted to eat and then go to sleep, which is what we did. Everyone had early flights out this morning, so we had to say our goodbyes last night. It was sad for me because I don't know when I'll see them again. These people have been such good friends to me. They've been there for me when others haven't and have been an important part of my life. I miss them and I'm sad that I won't see them for some time. We're hoping to do something like this every year so hopefully I'll see them next year!

As I said in the beginning, I'm pretty exhausted, so I'm sure I'm leaving things out. If I think of anything, I'll be sure to edit this post. So check back in a few days!