Brent and I have finally made it back to Australia. We’d been gone for almost 3 months, so it’s a bit weird to be back. The weather was an awful 38 degrees when we arrived, which didn’t make for a nice train ride (with all our luggage) home to Penrith, but we made it!
We spent 3 nights in Vegas on our way to Sydney this time. If we haven’t told you already, we actually saved $600 on our flights by going through Vegas (as opposed to going straight through Vancouver to Sydney). We decided it might be a good opportunity to see Vegas (especially since Brent had never been there and I hadn’t been since I was 14).
We didn’t have much planned for our 3 days there, but ended up doing a lot of walking around, relaxing by the pool and seeing some free shows.
The highlight was definitely going to see the Cirque du Soleil 'O' at Bellagio. We had never seen a Cirque show before and this one involved synchronized swimming, fire, high diving, contortionists, and acrobats. It was absolutely amazing.
We tried to visit as many hotels as we could while we were there. We were staying at Excalibur (one of the cheaper hotels on the strip), so it was easy to walk around and take advantage of all the other hotels as well.
We tried to visit as many hotels as we could while we were there. We were staying at Excalibur (one of the cheaper hotels on the strip), so it was easy to walk around and take advantage of all the other hotels as well.
We ate at New York, New York, and MGM grand, we ‘gambled’ at Paris, Excalibur, and Bellagio and we walked around the Luxor, Planet Hollywood and Caesar’s Palace.
When I say we ‘gambled’, this mostly involved putting in one-dollar bills to slot machines or pokies. We also went to some complimentary gambling lessons to learn to play roulette, blackjack and craps. Brent played a short round of craps after we learned to play and turned his $10 into $35- so we quickly cashed out and left the table! His $35 probably didn’t seem like much to the guy beside him who was betting hundreds of dollars on each roll, but it was a lot to us! : ) We did surprisingly well on the slot machines too! The last dollar I put in as we were leaving won me an instant $75.00. And, in total, from our few dollars that we put into the slots, we walked away with over $140 in winnings!! Unfortunately, within a few hours of getting home I managed to put Brent's passport in the laundry which will probably cost all our winnings to replace. : ( boooo to me.
Although Vegas is really not ‘our kind of place’, we actually ended up having a great time.
Our layover in Vancouver was much shorter (only about 12 hours), but was pretty fun too. The city was insane. I’ve never seen so many people in one place before. When we arrived, we took the Canada line train into the city to see the flame and try to get our hands on some Olympic tickets.
There were sooooooooo many people everywhere and it took more than an hour waiting in line just to catch a train back to the airport.
When I say we ‘gambled’, this mostly involved putting in one-dollar bills to slot machines or pokies. We also went to some complimentary gambling lessons to learn to play roulette, blackjack and craps. Brent played a short round of craps after we learned to play and turned his $10 into $35- so we quickly cashed out and left the table! His $35 probably didn’t seem like much to the guy beside him who was betting hundreds of dollars on each roll, but it was a lot to us! : ) We did surprisingly well on the slot machines too! The last dollar I put in as we were leaving won me an instant $75.00. And, in total, from our few dollars that we put into the slots, we walked away with over $140 in winnings!! Unfortunately, within a few hours of getting home I managed to put Brent's passport in the laundry which will probably cost all our winnings to replace. : ( boooo to me.
Although Vegas is really not ‘our kind of place’, we actually ended up having a great time.
Our layover in Vancouver was much shorter (only about 12 hours), but was pretty fun too. The city was insane. I’ve never seen so many people in one place before. When we arrived, we took the Canada line train into the city to see the flame and try to get our hands on some Olympic tickets.
There were sooooooooo many people everywhere and it took more than an hour waiting in line just to catch a train back to the airport.
We didn't get our hands on any tickets either- the cheapest ones available from scalpers were about $1000 per ticket for the mens prelims curling. Ha.
It was a long trip back to Sydney this time, but was a fun way to break the trip up and see some sites. Too bad I didn’t have a traveling partner for my first 2.5 years of school in Australia. : (
It was a long trip back to Sydney this time, but was a fun way to break the trip up and see some sites. Too bad I didn’t have a traveling partner for my first 2.5 years of school in Australia. : (
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