Viva Las Vegas! Part 2

So after a long Sunday with hours of traveling, a forced adjustment to a 3 hour time different, a day full of walking and a late night, we let ourselves sleep in a little bit on Monday. By the time we rolled out of bed and threw on some clothes, it was time for brunch! We decided to try one of Vegas' well known, over the top buffets and I am SO glad we went! Seriously, my favorite meal of the trip. Food anywhere in Vegas is not cheap by any means (averaging $20 a meal) so we usually filled up and made it on just 2 meals a day. Since it was brunch, we had breakfast and lunch options and definitely got the most bang for our buck--and our waiter was AWESOME! I think he brought me at least 6 refills of diet coke without a complain or a grumble.

On our way back up to the room to freshen up for the day, we stopped to take pictures at the MGM's Lions Den. That's right, we had lions in our hotel! They had a habitat right next to the casino and were always attended by at least 2 men.

As we were playing paparazzi to the lions, we found this little Vegas gem. He was on mine and Alexa's flight home too...wearing this same exact get up. Talk about intenese stylin'. 

That afternoon was spent with more sightseeing, but this time with a little bit more direction. Our first stop was the Venetian. This was one of my favorite hotel/casinos because they really stuck to the theme! As soon as we walked in, there were Christmas carolers and we were handed a cup of hot apple cider. It was easy to forget it was Christmas out in the neon desert, but I like that the Venetian had a touch of the holiday spirit!

We decided to be the ultimate tourist and went on the gondola ride! They sing to you as you're riding and we even had our own personal photographer (Dan) since they couldn't fit more than 4 passengers in the boats at a time. Well worth the money just to say that we did it.

After walking through some of the stores, we took a taxi to see the Luxor and Excalibur...neither were all that exciting. Although, I do wish that we had known the Luxor has one of the world's only diagonal elevator so we could have riden it! There's always next time, right? We stopped to take some pictures in front of MGM (Fun fact: the MGM is colored green, not after money, but after one of their highest producing movies; The Wizard of Oz's Emerald City. Fun fact #2: MGM is in the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest all brass statue, the lion!)

That night, we booked a champagne tour through Vegas on a party bus. Our bus driver had a family emergency so he was in a bit of a funk and the other passengers outside of our group were a bit on the awkward side, but the back of the bus didn't let that stop us from having fun! We did find out a few fun facts (that I've mentioned throughout the 2 blog posts) and stopped on Freemont Street. The "strip" is actually Paradise, Nevada and just a few miles over is the original Las Vegas. It's a smaller strip of hotels and casinos with the most recent one having been built in the 60s. (I think...) The big attraction is the covered street that does a light show that coordinates to music once every hour!

We of course had to stop when Santa was monitoring the tree...he said a few creepy things, but then Dan showed up and that stopped.

Okay, a little out of order, but before we were on Freemont Street, we also stopped at the "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign which was cool to have the photo opp!

And we stopped by the show "Pawn Stars" pawn shop, but it was closed for filming...but at least here's the sign to prove that we were there!

Okay, now back to Freemont. Inside the Golden Nugget, the last of the casinos on Freemont Street to be built, was the world's largest golden nugget (fitting) and even an ATM machine for gold. Just reiterating that Vegas is not the real world. 

Our last stop of the night was to see the fountains at the Bellagio, but since all of us had seen them before, we got to spend some extra time touring the chocolate fountain and Christmas display that had thousands of flowers! Oh, and the glass artist who I forgot his name...but Jessica Schwartz and I saw his display in Nashville over a year ago--so it was neat to see what he had done in Vegas outside of a museum setting.

And of course we had to squeeze some time in for the slots...no luck on Monday night, but me and Alexa got lucky come Tuesday...more on that next post! (Yes, I tricked you. I said there would be 2 posts, but I decided 3 shorter posts instead of 2 with one short and one really long post would be better!)

Okay, I admit it. This picture was from earlier in the day when we first say down at the slots, but we did gamble a bit more Monday night and this was the best I could do to prove it!