Las Vegas (Part 1)

Arriving LA, I was thankful that the line at the immigration booths were not too long.  In fact it took us less time than we did the year before when I was lead into an interrogation room and questioned... no that's the movie Salt but seriously, my passport was pulled out and brought to the back room.  Apparently they just wanted to make sure that I was who I said I was, and not some Evelyn Salt haha! But this year, smooth sailing through the immigration and we were out of there in half an hour.

In the beginning when we were planning for this trip, we thought of hopping on a flight to Las Vegas from LAX but last minute we changed the plan and opt for driving instead.  This way, we would have the car and since this trip was my first to Nevada, Captain thought it would be a great idea for me to indulge in some scenery along the way. First, trying to get out of LA during rush hour was insane! Our navigating system aka GPS we called Posh B***h kept on re-routing us! We were everywhere and had it not been for Posh, we would not know about the little Korean Town (I really do not remember the name anymore) and rows of cute little houses with well maintained garden.  Things like this only happens when you got lost, ironically.

So, the plan was to split the journey into 2 parts with a short over-night in Barstow. I (yes, me) did a quick booking over Booking.com for us in this cute (based on the pictures on the internet, of course) little hotel just next to the highway and boy, were we into some surprise when we got there! It was far, I mean ions away from cute! It was dodgy with capital D! Captain was pissed but we were tired from the flight and driving, we took the key and head to the room.  The room was ok-ish and thankfully, clean but I didn't sleep at all because I kept having this thing at the back of my mind that any moment somebody's going to kick the door open like in some movie (try No Country For Old Men) and rob us or worst! Captain slept 5 hours straight and I was sorry for him due to my stupidity.  Lesson learnt, do not trust internet pictures! 

We checked out at 5 am (in order to be in Vegas by 9 am) and had a quick breakfast in a diner near by before continuing our adventure into Vegas.  The view of the sun rising over Vegas from far was breathtaking! Not everyday I get to see the scene like this.  As the light touched the ground, I could see the cacti, lots of them! What's missing was some cowboys on horses or Gil Grissom and his team digging the ground like in  CSI!

Arriving into Vegas I could already feel the energy of the city, it was 9 in the morning and the city  was ready for the weekend. The casinos were already filled or still filled hence the title the city that never sleeps. We head straight to collect our pre-booked tickets to the shows we were going to watch over the weekend before heading to our friends' house (John and family) in Henderson.  Yes, we were the house guests of our darling friends that weekend and it was good to catch up.  

Come back soon for part 2 of my weekend in Vegas and our journey back to LA!