Vegas, baby!

We went to Las Vegas for the first time ever in April.  The trip was a gift to my husband from his company for his 10 year anniversary.  Pretty nice, huh?

They put us up at the Aria, which is one of the newer hotels.  We liked it because it didn’t have a cheesy theme.  It was modern and cool, especially because a tablet controls everything in the room — all of the lighting, the curtains, the tv, alarm, etc.

Day One

We got up and headed to the Wynn for their breakfast buffet.  Oh. my. gosh.  The Wynn is absolutely spectacular.  It was my favorite hotel in Vegas.  So beautiful, so classy, so whimsical.

The galleria shops at the Wynn were too rich for me, but I love looking!

Then, we were off for our big adventure. So, what’s the first thing you think of doing in Las Vegas?  Cars!  What, no?  Gambling, nightclubs?  Well, Erick thinks exotic cars.  He found a really cool company, World Class Driving, that allows you to drive three different luxury cars through Red Rock Canyon.  There was also the option to drive these types of cars at the Las Vegas speedway.  So, drive one car really fast for a very short period of time vs. drive 3 cars for 15 minutes each through a beautiful canyon.  Since he had already done the Dale Jarrett Experience in Charlotte, he decided on this tour.  The other cool thing is that I got to ride with him and it was a beautiful drive.

Car #1: Jaguar

Erick’s favorite, the Lambo, was in front of us.

Car #2: The Ferrari Italia 458 (brand new)

Holy crap! This car was amazing.  The smell of the leather, the power, the sound of the engine.

Here’s the view as we were driving.

Car #3: The Lamborghini

Think he looks happy?

That night, we went to dinner at LAVO, at the Palazzo.  The restaurant was gorgeous and the food was wonderful.

 Day Two

We had breakfast at Mon Ami Gabi at Paris.  The place was packed!  I really wanted to sit outside, but it was a huge wait, so I talked them into letting us sit on the open air patio, which was quite nice.

The food was really good.  It was a a typical Parisian cafe/brasserie.  Check out my delicious lemon crepes.

We went to the Venetian and Palazzo.  We did a gondola ride and though cheesy, it was fun.  I also did some damage in the Michael Kors store! 🙂

And, later, we went to the Bellagio for lunch at Olives.  This place has a terrace overlooking the fountains and is hard to get into, so I made reservations the day before.  You still have to wait for a patio table, but after bugging them enough and giving them the stink eye, we finally got a table.  This place was so nice.  I really enjoyed watching the fountain shows.

Later that night, we went to the Mandarin Bar at the Mandarin Oriental for pre-dinner drinks.  It’s a bar at the top of a swanky hotel with great views all around of the strip.  It’s very laidback and sophisticated.  Expensive drinks, but worth it for the view.

We had plans to go see La Reve at the Wynn.  This show was so amazing.  It’s in a small, beautiful, round theater and involves water, acrobatics, dancing, etc.  If you ever go to Vegas, you have to go see this.

Day 3

We went to the Grand Canyon and I’ll post about that later.  But, for our last night in Vegas, we went to Mandalay Bay to the Foundation Room on top of the hotel.  The difference between this and the Mandarin is that Foundation Room has a terrace.  It was spectacular! See for yourself!

We had a really fancy dinner that night –we went to In-n-Out Burger.  We were definitely the only tourists there and felt a little out of place.  We had never been to one of these before, so it was fun.