Las Vegas
We had a really comfortable flight with Delta airlines from Dublin via New York and arrived in Vegas in the early evening. We were all booked into the MGM Park Hotel for the duration of our stay. This beautiful hotel has modern, spacious pubic areas and airy hotel rooms with great views of the surrounding hotels and casinos. Over the coming days we visited a lot of these hotels so we could get to know them and see what they had to offer. On this first evening, we headed out to the Fly Linq zip line, which lets you fly, superhero style, 12 storeys over the lights on the strip. A real adrenaline rush.
We loved the zip lining so much that the next day we headed 30 minutes out of the city to Bootleg Canyon, where Flightlinez is located. This is a 1.5 mile zip line, that your tackle in four parts and while I admit to being a little nervous on the first leg, once I had that under my belt I thoroughly enjoyed the other three.
We headed back to the city for a lovely lunch at the Luxor Hotel and then we spent the afternoon checking out the MGM Grand, The New York New York and The Venetian Hotels. All these hotels lived up to the hype with great facilities for all the family including resorts and casinos. I’m not sure which I found more memorable, driving up to the 30-storey pyramid that houses the Luxor, watching a roller coaster thread its way around a New York skyline at the New York New York, standing in front of the 45ft brass lion the fronts the emerald green MGM Grand or watching the gondolas navigate the canals at the Venetian. Las Vegas does not do subtle.
Just when I thought things couldn’t get any more spectacular, we headed to the Maverick terminal at the airport to catch the Nightlight helicopter. The helicopter cruise over Las Vegas at night has to be the most amazing way to see it in all its glory.
The next day we visited the 5-star Cosmopolitan Hotel and has the fun experience of sneaking into a speakeasy. We had to go into the barber’s shop and find the unassuming door marked ‘Janitor’, through this we entered a bar modelled after a prohibition era speakeasy, albeit a luxurious one. After the morning in a speakeasy, it seemed appropriate to visit the Mob Museum, otherwise known as the Museum of Organised Crime and Law Enforcement. Located in the old Court House and Post Office building it was great fun for anyone interested in history and with a fascination for the old gangster era.
From here we travelled to the Golden Nugget, one of the original casinos located in Fremont Street. Being one of the originals does not mean it lacks anything in luxury and up to the minute facilities, although I decided that the water slide the passes through its three-storey shark tank was a little scary for me, definitely something for the more adventurous. My kind of adventure came after lunch, with a shopping trip to the North Premium outlets. Bargains galore.
For dinner we went to the Palms and took a tour of the facilities. This hotel has the distinction of housing the world’s most expensive hotel room, ‘The Empathy Suite’. Our tour guide went above and beyond by getting permission from the manager to show house this suite. I’m not sure how to describe such indulgence, suffice to say it’s the only hotel suite I’ve ever seen that has its own basketball court.
No trip to Vegas would be complete without a trip to see ‘Cirque to Soleil’, so off to the Mirage to see the Beatles Love show, a wild ride through the 60’s with the music of the Beatles. The next morning, we had breakfast at the Hard Rock Hotel and went on to tour Paris and Bally’s before departing for our flight home with KLM via Amsterdam.
