4/9/22 Leaving Las Vegas

 Well I went there, I gambled a full $25 and I can say I’ve been to Vegas. Penn & Teller and the Titanic exhibition were definitely highlights.  I’m midway through a more detailed bit on the Penn & Teller show that I’ll post when it’s done.

One of the souvenirs from the Penn & Teller show, I fell over trying to find the Uber pickup area that was nowhere near where the casino lady said it was and my leg found the roughest bit of concrete to scrape past.

Today I flew from Vegas to Denver, sat around there for four & a bit hours, had some pretty good Qdoba and talked with a lady from North East Colorado who owns a ranch in Wyoming. She asked if the padded tube I was carrying was a fishing line like she has. Ah, no. It’s a light sabre. Cue the explanation.

Yeah, cheers but I’m just on my way out

For all of Air NZ’s current being a bit shit, the in flight experience is so much better than the US airlines. The screens are tiny, most of the programs don’t work and you have to ask for headphones and are given $2 shop quality earbuds that you can’t actually hear what anyone is saying.  The flight attendants were awesome though, so much better than ours - they actually come around more than once and get you drinks. 

Grand Canyon

A lake with some rocks etc

This is part of the Grand Canyon and is MILES away from the main part.  This thing is huge.

Lake Mead near Vegas, you can see where the water has dropped from the drought where the lighter coloured bands are. Bodies keep on being discovered as the water recedes from where they were dumped.

America is truely an amazing country with so much to look at

Chicken bowl from Qdoba - pretty damn good actually

This was gooooood

Excuse me, the Tornado Shelter? The hell?

Fittingly it was in the toilets, I guess so people could happily shit themselves

Denver airport is quite wide and narrow and is full of these, which I used to see the sights waiting for my flight. Spoiler alert - there weren’t sights.

Inflight dinner, chicken something or other with orzo, a chocolate filled thing and recently fresh but not really anymore fruit.

Dulles Airport in DC is weird, it’s made up of three narrow wide terminal buildings and then you get into these strange bus things through a docking bay and get driven to the main terminal where you get to slog 28km to where the baggage pick up is. To my surprise and relief both of my bags arrived, and only one was moderately damaged. Nothing seemed to be broken on the inside so that’s a win I guess.

Due to some flight timing shenanigans I arrived at the hotel at 6:30am, with checkin at 2pm. Luckily I booked into one of the most awesome hotels ever (citizenM) and they were happy for me the check in early.  So now I am going to have some morning sleep and be on holiday, with maybe a bit of a wander this afternoon to see what sort of landmarks I can spot.