Yep, yet again I call it Spring Break. Why? Because it is, I may no longer be in school or of the typical Spring Breaker age group, but we tend to go on a trip around the same time to a destination full of these spring breakers. As usual we went to Las Vegas for our trip this year. We haven’t been to Vegas since June 2007. That is a pretty long stretch for us, we try to go at least every six months.
This year we decided to stay at Excalibur. Yeah, I know it’s crazy. I have never had the desire to stay there. In fact of all the times we have gone to Vegas together the first time I took Renee there was about two years ago. It is still very family oriented. We chose the Excalibur because they are updating the rooms and had a smokin’ deal. We wanted to do this trip on a budget because we have a larger trip in June to Vegas. It wasn’t bad for the money.
The updated rooms were nice for the money. Not perfect, but you can tell they put some thought into what they were doing. It was nice to see they used CFL for lighting and the plasma TV is a nice touch. Amazingly we spent very little time in the room, so I did not take any pictures. We were constantly on the go.
The Las Vegas landscape is always changing, when we were last there the Frontier was getting ready to close down. It has since been demolished, but the old sign is still there. A new resort will occupy the land once adorned by the Frontier and the Stardust. Here is a before and after photo of the Frontier:
There has also been great progress made on the new MGM Cosmo project being built between the Bellagio and the Monte Carlo along with the Bellagio appearing to have finished or are very close to finishing their new tower.
Here are some photos of the Cosmo project, this is a mix of 4 different lifestyle towers, there is residential and hotel. The pic on the left id from Spring 2007, right March 2008.
Renee and I both keep saying if I ever hit it big we’ll buy something down there. I don’t think I could live there full time, but it would be nice to have a place I could call home.
In the last year both the Wynn and the Venetian have added additional towers as well, the new addition to the Venetian is called Palazzo and the new tower for the Wynn is called Encore. You can see the Encore and the sign for the Palazzo, I thought I had a picture of the Palazzo but I guess not.
One major thing to note for the site seeing folks who are heading to Vegas the Volcano show at the Mirage is shut down until late 2008. It appears they are revamping it, my guess is there will be more fire and all that. My guess is they are also going to change up how the show is powered, I think before it was oil and gas? Here is a picture from a few years ago of the display out front compared with how it looks right now.
While walking around all day we stopped by one of our favorite spots (at least in the Summer0 which is the out door bar and stage at Harrahs. While there we caught a few songs being performed by Band She. I have to tell you, they kicked ass! I wish we would have stuck around longer, but they finished their set and took a break. We never really got back by there. I posted a very short clip on you tube of them performing Separate Ways from Journey. Watch the video.
We also took a trip down to Fremont Street. We had a lot of fun down there last year and we wanted to go down and see the show and walk around. In the end we didn’t have very much fun down there this time. I think it will be more fun when everyone is together in June. At least the bus driver was entertaining on the ride down there.
This trip also coincided with the beginning of March Madness so on Thursday the sports books were all jam packed and were really wild. It was cool to be in Vegas for something big like that and see and hear the energy. We flew out to Vegas on Ted, with some guys from KU who were taking their first trip to Vegas and of course wanted to root on their team. We also ended up Flying back on the same flight as them. One of the poor guys was really hung over and almost got sick. The flight attendant had to give him some oxygen to help him out as we wrapped up the flight to Denver because it was pretty bumpy. I just talked him through it and got him focused on breathing. It was pretty funny because you know these guys will have great stories to tell about their first trip to Vegas. Reminds me a lot of my first..okay well second, my first trip was not a good one.
In the end the trip was a blast, it really felt like we didn’t do as much as we usually do, but we were constantly on the move. I guess that’s good, we didn’t get bored. Though I will have to admit my legs are still a little sore even after being home for about two days now. We are really looking forward to our trip in June.
I took more pictures than what is posted above to see all the pictures click the picture below.
