Well, it's been great so far. The journey over was painless and we've done Las Vegas, Reno (briefly) and have now arrived at our Marriott holiday time-share at Lake Tahoe.
We're used to travelling early morning from Aberdeen, making it a daylight flight all the way as we head west, but this time, we didn't leave Aberdeen until the afternoon and arrived in Vegas early evening local time. We were upstairs on the transatlantic flight and were surprised to find that they darkened the room and dimmed the lights, just as they do on the overnight flights on the way home. It seemed to work OK as we both got a few hours' sleep and weren't feeling too bad when we arrived in LV. On the flight, we had dinner and, later on, afternoon tea, and in between, I only managed to watch one movie - Django Unchained, which I've been meaning to see for some time - in fact, the DVD's at home just now, courtesy of Love Film.
Our first view of Vegas from our taxi was of the flames from the wildfires raging in the nearby mountains. They've been going for 4 weeks now and they can't put them out.
After checking in at The Signature at MGM Grand we walked up to the Strip and headed to Monte Carlo. They used to have a brewery there, but it's now just a pub, albeit they have over 300 beers from all round the world. Body clock time, it was now after 5 am in the morning and here we were drinking beer!
The following day (Thursday) we had breakfast at the Rainforest Cafe in MGM Grand - this was my breakfast:
After this, we jumped on the monorail and went to the end and walked back - quite a hike, I can tell you - several miles on hard pavements and humid heat, although there were a couple of stops on the way, of course, notably The Venetian, where we did the gondola ride and were serenaded by our gondolier.
In the evening, we went to the Blue Man show (http://www.blueman.com/). It's been running for years and we always wondered about it - now we know - it's completely mad.
Friday morning we rested by the pool then headed out in the afternoon. Lunch was downtown - well away from the Strip - at the Triple 7 brewpub, and we had a pre-theatre meal at Bubba Gump's before heading off to the Mirage to see Cirque du Soleil's Love again - we had been there when it first opened a few years ago. At Bubba Gump's we had what they called Coronaritas:
On Saturday we flew north to Reno to meet up with the Lesinas. We had dinner at Silver Peaks brewpub - one of many in Reno:
We had plenty time on Sunday to get through to our timeshare at Heavenly Village, South Lake Tahoe, so Scott suggested a slight detour through the hills to Virginia City, an old cowboy/mining town, still preserved as it was in the mid 19th century, when it was reputedly the richest town on earth. We had been there a few years ago when we stayed at nearby Genoa, but Braeden was just a youngster then. We watched the staged gunfight again:
We did one of the museums too and Jo and Lucy had to pose afterwards:
Another brewpub - this time in Heavenly Village - for dinner, then off to bed.
Today, we walked down to the lake and sat on the beach and swam. The Lesinas hired a pedalo and Jo went for a long swim:
Did you know we're still at 6,000 feet elevation? Lake Tahoe is known as the lake in the sky.
Enough blogging - we're off to dinner soon.
