On Sunday we slept in since we came back to the hotel at about 5AM. At about noon we headed off to a nearby Factory Outlet, can’t remember which one it was. I was kind of bored since I’m not into brand stuff at all and that’s pretty much all there was :’D But I did buy a Michael Kors wallet that was on sale and literally screamed at me “I am just your style please buy me”.
We shopped until late in the afternoon and then went back to the hotel and got ready for our buffet dinner. The girls had researched all the famous buffets in Vegas and we chose to go to Bacchanal Buffet at Caesar’s Palace since it has been voted as the best one. Caesar’s Palace itself was absolutely beautiful! It was truly a pleasure to hang out at the pool area waiting for our table to be ready.
The buffet was pretty pricey at 55 dollars a head but the dish options were pretty much endless and all very high quality. I am very picky when it comes to food and a lot of the dishes they served didn’t really suit my taste or I didn’t even taste them but the girls loved everything. So I guess if you have regular eating habits this is a good place for pretty much everyone. Also the place had a lot of seafood and I don’t really eat seafood except salmon and prawns so my choices were a little more limited. The buffet was divided into different section and I got almost all of my food from the Chinese and Italian section but everything I ate from those was to die for! ;__; And the desserts, oh my, so much chocolate everywhere.
We stuffed our faces and then took our food babies out for a walk. The night air was nice and we we’re so full we decided to walk back to our hotel and just strolled around the strip, it was great! The Bellagio’s water fountain was pretty incredible to see, I could’ve spent hours just strolling around the strip, there was so much to see and the atmosphere is unlike anything else.
I really loved going to Vegas, I was hesitant about our plans at first but it turned out to be my favourite place out of all the places we went to! Would gladly go again.
The girls got up early in the morning for a run, while I, being the lazy ass that I am, stayed at the appartment and slept in. At noon we picked up some snacks from the nearby Walgreens and hopped in the car for our long awaited road trip to Vegas!
The whole drive took us about 4,5 hours with a half hour stop at a diner by the highway and the drive was very pleasant. I love to be in cars as a passenger and just drive around watching the surroundings. It gets really boring in Finland since I am so used to the sceneries next to the Finnish highways/main roads but of course the Nevada desert scenery is so much different! I didn’t get bored of the surroundings one bit during the whole drive and it was a quite a pleasant trip overall.
The diner we stopped at was such a quaint place which excellent customer service. I bet it’s been modified to suit tourists’ expectations of typical American diners but it was still a lovely place to have a pit stop and the ice cream and shake were great.
We arrived at our hotel late in the afternoon and it was huge. It’s not even one of the biggest hotels in Vegas, but it was big enough to impress me. And it had everything, from casinos to a dozen restaurants to its own theme park. Maybe the theme park was to blame for the amount of families with children that stayed at the same hotel, I would say most of the hotel guests were families and not couples or groups of friends. We didn’t expect it to be a party hotel, but I was still kinda susprised. Anyway, we had a quick rest before hitting some nearby shops for a little shopping. Then we started preparing for our night out! The view from our window would have been so great if it weren’t for the ugly construction of some hotel next to ours, but oh well. During night time we hardly saw it!
Our plan was to head off to Club XS at the Wynn/Encore hotel complex. My friend, who’s from LA suggested a few clubs to us, XS included, and Avicii was playing the night we wanted to go clubbing so XS was our first choice. The hotel was packed with people when we arrived and we had quite a difficult time finding the club, since on the official site it says that the club is part of Wynn but it was actually situated in Encore. So we had to back to Encore to get in.
The line to buy tickets wasn’t even that long, surprisingly enough! A guy approached us, can’t for the life of me remember his name anymore, and told us he wants to sell us his ticket since his wife felt ill and couldn’t come to the club. They’d just found out she was pregnant, what a bad timing for a clubbing weekend in Vegas but he seemed thrilled 😀 Anyway I offered to buy the ticket off him at a discount but I had to enter with him because the tickets were tied together so I got separated from the girls since the presale tickets had a separate entrance. We had an interesting talk with Mr. X while lining up to get inside the club, about sports, education, club policies and drinking habits! Once inside he was reluctant to leave me alone until I find the girls but I assured him I’d be able to find them. But boy was I wrong. After looking around the club’s pool area I realized I’d made a mistake. The club area was HUGE and at this stage, with the clock ticking close to midnight, it was pretty much full. My phone hardly had any service and it took me about half an hour with occassional panicking to find the girls who had entered the club at the complete other direction.
We partied near the DJ booth/stage pretty much the whole night and it was an awesome spot! We were right in the middle of all the action but we hardly got pushed or anything and this happened inside a lot because the club had thousands of people who all wanted to get to the inside area of the club rather than the pool areas. From the occassional drunk ass chicks to sleazy dudes we didn’t get bothered much and could concentrate on dancing and having fun. The only downside to being in the pit area of the inside of the club was having no access to the bar. So we opted out on drinks since we didn’t want to queue back inside but luckily some millionaire dude who had his entourage right next to Avicii’s stage just walked to us and handed my sister a biiiig bottle of champagne. Thanks mate! He also threw a big handful of 100 dollar bills into the audience, what a waste. Life just not fair is it? Anyway we had a great time and I could hardly walk while going back to the hotel, I was so tired. I highly recommend you visit XS if you visit Vegas! The place may not be suitable for you if you don’t like clubbing (duh though), spending atleast 50 bucks (the entrance was 35 and the drinks about 15) or honestly, if you feel awkward in a club full of attractive people who seem vain. :’D But for a true hip Vegas experience, I can’t imagine it can get better than this!
Here’s three small video clips from the night! Didn’t really spend that much time with my phone in my hand so it’s not much 😀
After Venice beach we strolled around the Venice canals. The area was so beautiful and some of the houses were so weird but after a while it got a little boring and repetitive. So we got in the car and drove to Santa Monica where we went to the Pier to get some dinner.
We spotted a Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. restaurant and we were sold. I’ve visited a restaurant of that franchise in New York and I loved it! This time didn’t disappoint either! Shrimps, yumm.
We hurried back to LA after dinner to visit the Griffith Observatory and see the sunset. When the sun started to set it became really cold, I guess March can still be pretty chilly in LA 😀
We then went back to our appartment and wondered what we’d do since we didn’t feel like going to sleep even though we had to leave for Vegas in the morning. We then decided to go to the Sunset strip for drinks and had a great time. Coming back to our car totally ruined our night though. We had parked our car in a residential area and didn’t see a small sign in the beginning of the street saying that from 7PM onwards you needed a resident’s permit to park there. We panicked when we saw our car was gone but then spotted a guy who was cursing and calling someone on his phone. Apparently his car had gotten towed and we called the tow place and they confirmed our car was there too. So we grabbed a taxi with him and tried to laugh about the whole situation along the way but is still sucked cause we knew it was going to be pricey. Atleast we split the tow payments in three unlike the guy with us who had to pay on his own. He was a marine on leave and had gone to LA just to see a concert for an hour, such bad luck 😀
It took almost an hour for us to get our car because we didn’t have our car rental agreement with us but we managed to get it in the end! At maybe 1:30 AM we were able to drive to the appartment and tried to brush the whole thing off joking we had just had the most expensive drinks of our lives! After that we triple checked every single sign when we parked, so I guess we learnt our lesson!
Before I change my mind. Or my mind changes me. 