Transfer Day

Dinner with Kevin & Chris was delicious; we went to a rather smart steakhouse and had some very tasty beef. The only complaint was that the desserts were too big; seriously, they were obscenely large even with two people sharing!

On Saturday morning, after overnighting with K&C, we headed back to the parents’ for some brief packing and then on to the airport. The flight to Las Vegas was cramped and too warm but otherwise uneventful. On arrival we could see our hotel (The Luxor) as we disembarked from the plane but, to pick up our hire car, we had to go and find the Car Rental Centre (a courtesy bus ride away) and then find out which of the rental companies was the agent for Auto-Europe (the company Opodo named, without further instructions, as our car provider.)

Eventually in possession of a maroon retro-design Chevrolet we navigated a congested Las Vegas Boulevard to the hotel, only to find we had further major navigation to do to find the check-in through the casino!

The hotel is a pyramid, but it’s only a shell. The hotel rooms are contained in the shell – meaning the lifts move diagonally; a very strange feeling the first time you use them. In the void within the pyramid is a lower floor containing the casino, restaurants and bars and an upper floor containing the other attractions (more retail, a wedding chapel, a museum and a theatre.) There’s also a further level below the ground floor whose only public area seems to be a large buffet restaurant.

We ate and then set out to explore The Strip (Las Vegas Boulevard.) We didn’t really get very far, just completing a circuit between the four casinos near our intersection; the Excalibur, the Tropicana, New York – New York and the MGM Grand. It took a while, even with the overhead walkways connecting the buildings, especially as I kept wanting to take pictures of everything. We were pretty tired though and got a relatively early night, not long after 9pm local time.