April 24, 2011
Way back when, when we were in Vegas :-P
We got up Sunday morning and hailed a cab to take us a little ways off the strip to a Methodist church I had looked up before hand.
Since it was Easter Sunday we wanted to go to church and thought it'd be fun to experience a Vegas church. I had actually searched for churches ahead of time... but came across some very interesting Churches, Church of Scientology, little wedding chapel churches, etc.... I began to think maybe I should stick with what I knew, so I searched for Methodist churches. At least I knew what we'd be getting ourselves into then, and now some alien cult!
We took our seats in the back, actually the only open seats, right next to the big pipe organ!
We began to look around and Kyle whispered to me "I think we are the youngest ones here... by 40 years!" lol
It was a pretty decent service, lots of signing (nothing knew for Methodists) and even some interpretive dance thrown in there.
After church we called the cab company and waited outside for them to pick us up.
It was actually kinda fun taking the trek out into the 'real' Las Vegas... much different than the strip. And SOOO FLAT!
This church was located north west of the strip. Our hotel was pretty much the very south of the strip, so instead of taking a cab back to our resort, we decided to take it straight east to downtown Vegas and explorer the old time Casino's on Fremont street. It was shorter for us to take the cab there and also helped us to mark another thing off our list of things to see.
We had the cabbie drop us off at the Golden Nugget.
We played a little roulette & blackjack inside. I liked playing there because I doubled my money :-) I can't take pictures of the tables so you get to look at slots!
We made our way to THE GOLDEN NUGGET! thanks to our cabbie who told us about it.
We had a shrimp cocktail lunch at some dinky little casino lunch place then walked along Fremont Street.
At night there is a cool laser show we heard about that plays there on the ceiling above Fremont St. Our timeline of events didn't put us there at night, so we didn't get to see it... but that's okay at least we got to see some of the old time casinos.
To get back to the strip we decided to take the bus. Since our hotel was on the VERY south end of the strip and we were way on the north end, we took it as an opportunity to do some more sight seeing.
It was actually really nice, we got to see ALL the resorts... and even some of the flat land between the strip and downtown Vegas.
Palm trees! Lots of palm trees! I love them!!
And even a once in a life time experience of seeing the WORLD'S largest gift shop!
hahaha
Of course I took pictures of everything, but often times pictures from a moving bus don't turn out so well... so I'll just give you a little overview.
Trump Hotel
Treasure Island
The Mirage
Some shopping at Caesar's Palace
The Bellagio
and New York, New York
Sorry you don't get to see any of the hotels/casinos that were on the OTHER side of the street, lol can you tell what side of the bus we were sitting on.
I think after the bus ride, we took a little time at the pool. Then decided to walk to the two hotel's that were south of us, The Luxor & Mandalay Bay. Seeing more palm trees!
The Luxor
We made our way through the Luxor & over into Mandalay Bay. There were signs for a shark tank, and we were actually excited so we followed the signs... and followed... and followed... only to find it to be an actual aquarium you have to pay for :-/ so we walked back to a buffet because I was really wanting crab legs! It was go to a sea food restaurant and get 1 lb of crab legs for $35 OR go next door to the $50 buffet and have all the crab legs I want :-)
For dessert we had lots, but among that were these cute little tiramisu cups! YUM YUM!
After dinner we took the free monorail from Manadalay Bay to Excalibur. Then we walked over to NYNY, getting to see the sunset over the mountains on our way.
We did some video roulette and just hung out for a bit.
This was in NYNY... a Jelly Bean Lady Liberty!
I had to get a picture of these people... playing a fake game of horse races!
Little plastic horses run around the track in the middle while they place their bets on the video screen in front of them.
We pretty much finished the night in NYNY, had a drink at this Americana Bar across from Times Square. The ceiling was so cool!
It reminded me of this project my brother's did in elementary... I can't remember if it was Josh or Brad, but they had to make the state of Mississippi, and it was a 3D model. I remember that thing hanging in their room for years. A while later I made my own version of Tennessee!
It was a late night and again lots of walking. We hit the sack and went right to sleep!