Today was our designated day to spend at the Mandalay beach and pool area. It’s rather an awesome collection of pools, including a wave pool, a lazy river, and a number of lagoons. We had VIP access which allowed us entry 15 minutes before everyone else (in theory, in practice it was more like 7 minutes) – time enough to grab a good pair of loungers and get comfy!

We got a nice spot at the front of the beach by the wave pool. I was somewhat amused to discover that the “beach” is entirely covered in loungers! Still it is nicer to put feet into sand when you stand up bare foot rather than concrete I guess! First up we had to apply our P20 (it was only 7:45am and we had been in a bit of a rush to get out the room, down 60 floors, and to the beach!) and then go and buy hats as we’d both left ours in the car! :( But that was easy enough and we were soon in the wave pool, splashing about :)

The waves don’t come very frequently, and there seem to be a whole bunch of rules which aren’t explained except by the lifeguards blowing whistles and shouting at people :( It was a little odd! But once we knew how to behave it was all okay ;) The waves were fun and we splashed about a lot :)

Then we went over to the lazy river and had fun floating round in the current :) Chris soon decided he wanted a tube to float around in so we went and bought a nice bright orange ring which I decorated with my standard kitty picture to make it ours :)

We tried out one of the lagoons but the water seemed very cold, even after a bit of splashing… so we jumped out of that and into the nearby spa which was all warm and bubbly :) At this point we realised we had only eaten snack foods and were hungry, so went and bought some chicken tenders and fries to eat by the pool :)

Once food was eaten we lay back in the sun for a bit and went “Mmmmmm, warm!” Then I realised we were too warm and turning pink and there was a quick retreat back to the safety of the hotel!

The major problem with Mandalay Bay’s pool area would be the total lack of shade. 4 hours in direct sunlight is crazy behaviour, no matter how magical my sunscreen! So we both have slightly pink shoulders (mine moreso!) It seems mad not to provide shade, or free drinking water, when they clearly want us out there! I realise they like to charge for umbrellas and cabanas, but they were crazy prices and really shade is rather important :(

Still, we had an awesome room to return to :) Happily got in the express elevators and returned to our huge suite to test out the jacuzzi :D Then the shower :) Then lazed around in the provided bathrobes and slippers for a while not doing a lot ;)

After discovering my camera was putting a nasty dark splodge on blue skies, even after cleaning the lens, I was encouraged to look at getting a new camera. A few hours later (after some research and shopping around) I seem to have a new Nikon Coolpix S6100 in my possession :) It’s a little larger than my super compact Fuji, but it has so many fab features that I shall forgive it a slight increase in size ;) It has a touchscreen which is the most exciting new thing :) I’m still learning how to use it, so photos are feeling a bit clumsy, but I’ll get there :D

After camera shopping we headed over to Rio for some food in the little chinese there…

Then it was time to see Penn & Teller :D I used to watch them on TV when I was little, and it was amazing to see them live! The show was great :) One thing I had seen before, but the rest was new :)
I have a new tshirt, and we got our ticket signed and photos with both of them! :D

I was very impressed that they both hung around signing things and having photos taken until everyone had left. There was no rush, they were happy to chat, it was great :)

Today was the trip back to Vegas. We got up very early and packed and inevitably ended up leaving slightly later than intended. We headed over to LACMA stopping by an IHOP down the road for some breakfast…

We then spent 2 hours wandering around the Tim Burton exhibition at LACMA. It must be odd to be important enough for people to think your childhood scribblings worth displaying! There was lots of cool things to see – drawings showing early inspirations for characters, little excerpts of stories and films. Then there was a gift shop which was hard to drag me away from as I kind of wanted everything but it was all very expensive! I did get a new tshirt and a pack of cards :)

Obviously there was no photography allowed in the exhibition so I can’t show you any of that :(

Then there was the long drive back to Las Vegas… done without stopping quite quickly as we had dinner reservations! I was taking random photos along the drive of silly roadsigns…

Plus the views along the way…

We stood waiting in the queue to check in, and then when we finally got there he said he had to go and get our reservation and vanished away for *ages*! Although once we heard which floor we were on and then saw the room we stopped complaining… floor 60 in a suite!! :D It’s awesome! :D

Not only do we have a bar and lounge again, here we have two bathrooms, bathrobes and slippers and a fridge :) Woo yeah! We are also crazily high up and have truly awesome views over Vegas. I took a couple of photos last night before dinner..

Chris had booked us a romantic dinner at Mix, which is the posh restaurant at the top of the other half of Mandalay Bay called THE hotel (odd!) It was a bit of a dash over there… but then we had a cool ride up in the outside lift :) Felt a little out of place with the size of the wine list, but chose tasty sounding food which was really nummy! I had gnocchi to start followed by lamb with quinoa, Chris had a charcuterie sampler followed by pistachio encrusted halibut. Then we shared profiteroles :)

The ceiling at Mix…

The view from the restaurant of where we’re staying…

We had a wander around the pool area on the way back to our room, but it’s all locked up at night. Had a little trip to Walmart to get me some goggles and some more diet coke. Then came back and collapsed as it had been a long day and we needed to be up early!

Today we had another slow start, with breakfast consisting of Cinnabon snack bars whilst we decided what to do! Eventually we headed off to the Japanese restaurant Chris had a voucher for, and had some rather yummy Japanese food for an early lunch :) I had beef and chicken teriyaki, Chris had a chicken katsu bowl, and we shared some vegetarian sushi.

Then we went back to the room to collect things for the beach and headed to the seaside. It was rather more blustery than expected, so instead of swimming we walked down the beach to the pier where we had a wander and I bought a pretty new skirt :)

After exploring the pier and eating a churro each, we headed back onto the sand and had a splash in the water. The Worcle ball got up to some mischief (though I might have been helping)…

Then there was games of burying one anothers feet and more splashing in the water before returning to the hotel to wash away the sea and sand.

We decided to go to The Cheesecake Factory for dinner, aided by the closest one apparently being very romantic. Sat inside I’m not sure it would have been… but we had a lovely table outside, with a gorgeous view of the harbour :) There was a slightly cold breeze, but the heaters did a good job of helping us ignore it whilst we had some yummy food :)

The view really was very pretty as the sun set…

Alas, the cheesecake I wanted was still frozen, so I had to steal half of Chris’ and then bring mine back to eat in the hotel whilst we watched some TV on the iPad :) Such a hard life ;)

Today was a very lazy day due to extremely sore feet and legs after all the standing round yesterday!

We had a very slow start to the day which started with a trip to IHOP for breakfast (mmmmm, cinn-a-stack pancakes!)

Then back to the hotel room to write blogs, sort out photos, have showers, and plan the day. We decided to go and take some photos of interesting places… the obvious one being the Hollywood sign :) This resulted in a lot of photos…

We stopped by a geocache so we could log the Worcle ball travelling with us :)

It had taken an awfully long time to get across to the Hollywood sign, so we worked our way slowly back to where dinner was via a couple of silly signs…

Then to the Stinking Rose for some very tasty dinner :) (After stopping on a random road to get changed because the restaurant has valet parking so we couldn’t change in the carpark as planned!)

Then back to the hotel for snoozes once we were suitably stinky! :)

First off, something I forgot to mention yesterday was the “amusing” breaking into a safe! Chris brought his money and cards in a little safe, but we left all our keys in the UK. It took rather less time than one might have hoped to break into the little safe… Using a comb and fingers!

Today we managed to sleep through till gone 5 which was good. Had another morning bath, this time with bubbles :) Oddly, having used the bath the first day, we actually got better toiletries the second day, including some bath stuff, but we’d already bought our own!

We then spent rather too long messing with photos and things on our laptops and the plan for an early start kind of vanished! We had a banana and some tasty pecan crunch bars for breakfast in bed, and finally got moving about 10.

We headed over to the nearest geocache so we could mark the Worcle ball as visited. It was a diddy little cache but found pretty quickly once we were looking in the right place (coordinates seemed to be a bit off, but description helped).

On the way back to the hotel (via a detour) we picked up Cinnabon having both decided that the banana had been a long time ago already. Then we checked out and loaded up the car (once we found it!)

We headed over to Palms to make use of their carpark to sit and eat our Cinnabons and stopped in to check for offers, but there was nothing of interest. On our way back the the freeway I noticed the Gold Coast sign pop up something saying “everyone’s a winner on Wednesdays” and so we had to pull in to check.

The promotion was a quick one, needed 200 points for two chances to win anywhere from $5 to some silly amount. So we sat at the video poker and played. I was rather excited when I turned Chris’ $20 into $250!! Though by the time I stopped there seemed to only be $203 left ;) Then got 15000 points in the bonus draw, which is worth some amount of money (can you tell I’m just doing as I’m told in the casinos?) :)

Finally we got on our way to LA! Though of course, we had to stop at Primm to ride the big coaster on our way past :) Then we had to stop in Baker for the worlds largest thermometer (which isn’t the giant mercury thermometer you imagine and the sign wasn’t even working, bah!)

Here we found some Alien Fresh Jerky! The shop was very silly, full of lots of cool things! I’m currently drinking a very nice black cherry soda from there :D

Then a stop at Taco Bell for some lunch before the long, long part of the driving. There was a lot of desert to look at, and mountains. Though there was more green than I was expecting. We saw the temperature hit 44°C at one point – “That’s halfway to the boiling point of water… Almost” ;)

It got busier as we approached our final destination but we did eventually get to the hotel where we will be for the next 4 nights. It is conveniently next to an IHOP, although they failed somewhat on dinner tonight by interrupting us still eating main to ask if we wanted dessert, and not refilling my drink! Bah!

There is a slight problem with the hotel though… Chris’ magic internets isn’t working so we’re using the hotels free wifi which is slow and not allowing mail sending, so we’re feeling a little disconnected already!

Today started rather earlier than it should have done! Chris doesn’t do well with crossing time zones, and was wide awake by 3am. By 4am we were both awake and eyeing up the Luv Tub in the room. It took a long time to fill up, even with tap and shower! At one point we thought it was going to cool faster than it would fill! But eventually it was deep enough to get in, and nice and hot for a good morning soak.

We were out and hunting breakfast by 8am and found our way to Hash House a Go Go which is in the Imperial Palace, so easy to get to. Given the name of the place I felt a need for a hash breakfast and Chris and I decided to share a corned beef hash and a napanee hash. Now, these aren’t what you’d expect in England! There are what I would describe as little roast potatos (though I’m guessing they’re fried?) covered with topping, served with two eggs, a buttermilk scone, and a strawberry (oh, and a piece of melon, but neither of us like that!) My eggs weren’t exactly “over medium”, rather more runny than I wanted, so Chris shared half his scramble with me in exchange. The corned beef was not what we were thinking, seemed to be more like shredded gammon… odd but very nice! The napanee was steak which was very tasty too :) The buttermilk scone was very light and there was a pot of freshly made (this morning!) strawberry jam on the table which mostly ended up smothered over our scones… I mean biscuits ;)

After breakfast we waddled out of the hotel for a bit of an explore. First up was a wander into Flamingo to have a look at the actual flamingos :) We managed to time it for the morning wildlife presentation and got to learn random things like that flamingos live up to 30 years, and 40 to 50 in captivity and that they suffer duck invaders in their habitat! ;) We took lots of photos of the birds, huge fish, turtles, and waterfalls :) Then wandered round to investigate the pool, but there was quickly security in our way.

After failing to see much of their pool we went over to Caesars Palace to investigate their watery offerings. There was no one about to stop us so we walked straight in and had a good look round the many pools. Looks lovely there so we’re planning to go sneak in again with swimming stuff next time ;)

Then we went to Bellagio hunting for a drink but instead found the conservatory filled with pretty flowers and there was more photo taking! We saw someone having wedding photos with the fountains on behind, but haven’t managed to catch the display yet.

At this point I realised my feet were somewhat sore already so we headed back towards our hotel to get the car (valet parking is slow to get car back!) and then I enjoyed sitting down for a bit whilst Chris drove us over to Walmart. We bought various supplies and then had to find another Walmart with an opticians to fix my glasses (lost a pad first thing).

Next up was a quick trip into Terrible’s to check Chris’ points balance, before heading over to Palms. Here I joined my first players club and watched Chris put money into a video poker machine to get points… because points make prizes as we all know! :) Managed to put through enough money to get the maximum newbie prize which also meant an upgraded card so it’s now purple! :)

Then we headed over to Gold Coast where I signed up for another card and played some more video poker for a free buffet “lunch” (it was gone 4 by this point, so not exactly lunch time anymore!) Of course, it being a buffet we did have quite a few platefuls…

After that we managed to get back to the hotel room in a very sleepy state! I managed to write all of this and argue Flickr and Facebook into behaving before I joined Chris for a good sleep! :)

Our journey began at a very sociable 10am with a squish into my Mothers sports car and a drive to Manchester airport. We got through checkin and security quickly and then headed to the BA lounge to partake in free food for lunch.

What does the sign mean?

After a short, easy flight we were at Heathrow and on a hunt for the lounge there. When we finally found one they told us that we need gate B44 (which wasn’t on the board yet) and suggested we head to the lounge there. We finally found a nice quiet lounge and sat down to enjoy a little more free food :)

Planes from the lounge

After a number if packets of mini hobnobs the Worcle ball jumped out of my bag to join in the fun…

Do I belong in the bowl?

Then, finally, came the long flight. Although not as long as expected thanks to the wind!
Business class is awesome! There’s so much space and comfy seats, you get fed proper food with proper cutlery! I fear I may never be able to fly in economy again! ;)

We watched Adjustment Bureau first on the media system whilst we got up in the air and then fed “lunch” (at about 5pm!) I had a salad followed by some rather tasty beef and then a chocolate caramel cake with pistachio. Once we’d been fed, we managed to balance the iPad between our lap trays so we could use Chris’ iPad to watch Rat Race followed by a failed attempt at 21 (audio was out of sync) and then Bring it On. Then a couple of Scrubs episodes before they turned the lights back on.

I don’t understand why they were encouraging sleep on a flight which left in the afternoon local time and arrived in the evening local time. That’s just a really long day… Surely having a nap screws up any chance of syncing with local time quickly?

We escaped the airport, found a car (it’s big and blue!) and then headed onto the strip so I could go ooo at the lights which were just turning on.

It’s weird seeing places which I’ve seen in films and on TV. Doesn’t quite feel real even now sitting on the hotel bed able to see Ceasers Palace out the window!

We drove all the way down and then back to Imperial Palace which is our first hotel of the holiday. Valet parking was awkward having come in from the back, and there were quite a few people waiting to checkin, but we got there eventually. Plus, we got a free room upgrade! We have a huge room, or should I say rooms? There’s a lounge area with bar which you walk into, then double doors through to the bedroom with a huge bed and a funky luv tub bath!! It’s awesome!
Plus, we’re on the 18th floor with a strip view! It was cool seeing the neon from our balconies last night :)

View from our balconies

Once we were checked in, bags in room, and before I totally collapsed, we went down the strip a little to a Chipotle for some dinner. A very tasty chicken burrito later and my stomach was quite satisfied that it was time for bed and so it was back to the room and time for some sleep!