Our Trip to Las Vegas- Day 1

On Sunday morning, 2/6/11, Veronica and I had to get up really early to catch our 6AM departure flight out of Newport News, VA.
We were up by 3AM and heading off to catch our flight. We flew from Newport News into Atlanta, where we had an hour or so delay until our next flight.
The flight from Atlanta to Las Vegas was a long one...over 4 hours. We ended up landing in Las Vegas around 11:30AM their time.
We took a quick taxi ride from the airport to the Monte Carlo Hotel. For the money that we paid, our hotel room was pretty nice. We paid an average of about $35 a night for our room and we also received a coupon booklet that contained some discount coupons and several 2 for 1 offers too.

 Here are some photos of our room on the 14th floor of the Monte Carlo hotel.

That night we arrived in Vegas, was the night that the Super Bowl was playing. Needless to say, the bars were very crowded and most were rather loud. There was quite a bit of craziness going on due to the game.
We found a bar in the hotel area that was packed with people and this particular bar/restaurant were selling "front row" couch seating and all you could eat food during the game for $250.00 per person.

Veronica and I walked around quite a bit after checking into our hotel room. We went to the new hotels and upscale mall that had recently been built...the Aria and Vdara hotels along with Crystals Mall.

Here are some photos of those areas:

They had a partial tram system set up between certain hotels on one side of the "strip" and a longer monorail system setup on the other side of the strip. We made use of both systems quite a number of times.

Here are some photos from inside of the mall called Crystals, which is in the new City Center

Veronica and I found the food in the hotels and immediate "Strip" area to be very expensive. Even the offerings in the Food Court area was much more expensive than the same offerings here at home. We had one coupon for a 2 for 1 dinner at the Monte Carlo buffet. Regularly the dinner buffet at the Monte Carlo is around $29.99 per person but with our coupon, we were able to eat for about $15 a piece, which was reasonable compared to other food prices. They do have numerous food bargains but they are usually at "off strip" locations and by the time you figure in the cost of a taxi cab to the location and back to the hotel again, the price isn't such a bargain any more. 

If a person wanted to rent a vehicle for a week or so, you can go wherever you want and you could park it in the hotel parking lot using the valet parking and not pay anything extra. It is included in the "resort fee" that the hotels charge.  

 Veronica and I did a ton of walking every day. The hotels and signs are so huge, that they make it appear that the hotels are closer than they actually are. We must have walked about 10 miles each day that we were in Vegas.

Here are several more general photos of the Vegas strip and surrounding areas.

Tomorrow we start walking the strip going into each hotel. We will start on one side of Las Vegas Blvd and once we are done, we will start on the other side. We planned on going as far as the New York New York hotel to the Fashion Mall on the one side and from the MGM to the Wynn on the other side. We also took the monorail to the end of the route and went to the Stratospere which was just beyond the Sahara. In each hotel that we went into, we would check out the stores that were in there and put $1 into one slot machine that was in the casino. More of our adventure tomorrow.