I Am Back! Las Vegas Trip Highlights (Picture Heavy)

I returned from my 5 night trip to Las Vegas early yesterday afternoon quite exhausted. As always, the last night there is the most difficult as we tend to get only a couple of hours of sleep after trying to pack everything up and make sure that we get up early enough to get ready and pack away the last minute essentials before our baggage pull comes at 5:00 a.m. (It used to be 4:00 a.m.). Between trying to finish up the packing and worrying about making sure that we get up in time and not be embarrassed by over sleeping, it doesn't make for getting a good sleep.

I showed in an earlier post my travel makeup bags so here's what my packed suitcase looked like. (Note: All of my pictures can be clicked on to enlarge it a bit.)

All of my clothing is packed into packing envelopes so I think that it makes my suitcase look so much neater. All of the rest of my items were also packed into various bags.

My mom and I arrived in Las Vegas early Tuesday evening and on Wednesday we went down to the strip to check out some new places. We went to the Bellagio Hotel to check out their Botanical Gardens, which changes seasonally. The hotel reception area and the garden area was themed for Chinese New Year.

Sorry, blogger rotated this. It's supposed to be laterns hanging from the ceiling.

Grrr! Blogger rotated this one too.

Because it is the Year of the Rabbit:

We walked through The Cosmopolitan Hotel to see City Center, which is mostly a shopping area. We decided to get something to drink while in The Cosmopolitan Hotel and I had to get this Diet Coke drink because it was so unique and cute. It is a metal can, which is shaped like a Coke bottle. It only has 8.5 fl oz (251 ml) which was just enough to quench my thirst but way less than I usually drink in one sitting.

 

While we were sitting there drinking our drinks, I noticed a fascinating vending machine. I had read on The Sungirl Says blog about how there are vending machines in Japan for just about everything. I thought that it was a very interesting post so Brianna, this part is particularly for you. This was a vending machine that had all kinds of things in it. It was mostly higher end things but it had a variety of items--cosmetics, electronics, accessories, etc.

Sorry, it was difficult to get clear pictures. It was dark and the machine itself was dark but brightly lit.

At the City Center, there was a huge golden bunny, which I assume was in honor of it being the year of the rabbit.

I did get to do a quick bit of shopping (approximately 1 1/2 hours) in Planet Hollywood's MIracle Mile Shops. I felt rushed as my mom didn't want to walk around more and so she sat and waited and I really dislike it when I know someone is waiting. One highlight is that I FINALLY got to see a H & M store! I've read about it on many blogs and how they find such cute things. I spent most of my time in that one store trying on a few things and I bought a couple of tops.

The one thing that I did find out quickly enough was that the sizing there is sooo tiny! I grabbed my usual size (which is usually a 2 - 4 but they were waaay too tight. I wish that I could have spent more time in the store checking things out better but I'm just glad for the chance that I had.

My uncle and his friend arrived in Las Vegas late at night the same day that we did so from Wednesday, we met with them to eat dinner. My other uncle and aunt arrived on Thursday night so all of us started to eat dinner together every night for the remainder of the trip. This resulted in us eating away from our usual eating places and with me eating more food and richer food than I usually eat. It wasn't too good for my tummy. This is the prime rib dinner, small portion, that I had on Wednesday night. I figured that if I'm going to eat an unhealthy portion of meat, I might as well go all out and order fries instead of baked potato or rice. I'm not much of a meat eater but my uncle insisted that I needed to eat this as it was really delicious. It was delicious but still not my kind of meal.

I forgot to take pictures of the rest of the meals but on Thursday night I had a portabello mushroom burger, Friday night we had Japanese food and I ate a bento plate which had a huge plateful of white rice, spam, teriyaki chicken and teri beef. Saturday night was a really huge plate of shrimp scampi, which was served on a bed of angel hair pasta. I also had creme brulee for dessert on this night.

The weather was quite cool during this trip to Las Vegas so I wasn't sure if my mom and aunt would be up to going shopping in the open air Las Vegas Premium Outlet Mall, especially since a storm was expected to hit. However, that morning it looked quite pleasant and it didn't feel as cold as it was--probablly around 45 - 47 F or 7 - 8 C, so we went out for about 3 1/2 hours. I did mostly shopping for omiyage (gifts) and even had to buy a suitcase for my return trip home so that I wouldn't go over the weight restriction with my one suitcase.  I did find The Cosmetic Company and bought a MAC palette that I had to have. This is from the Holiday 2009 collection and it is called 6 Mystic Cool Eyeshadows and was originally priced at $36.00. I got it for $25.25.

I also found some discontinued Lancome items, which I didn't purchase but thought about. I can't remember whose blog it was but on someone's wishlist there was the Blue Dahlia eyeshadow palette listed. Who was it who wanted it?  I was hoping to find a couple of the MAC VV collection items that I had missed out on here but there wasn't any. By the way, the storm did hit late at night bringing cold temperatures, some heavy rain and even some light snow to the strip and outlying areas but I didn't get to see it. When we left on Sunday morning, it was 38 F, 4 C and lightly raining. It was quite cold outside where we had to gather our luggage before getting onto the bus. It was quite interesting for us Hawaii people to see heavy condensation coming out of our mouths when we breath. It made us look like a bunch of heavy smokers!

Other than that, I basically walked around the casinos (California Hotel and Main Street Station) and played the machines a bit. Lost some money but hey, that's part of the fun of being in Las Vegas. The only really bad part of the trip is that I had really bad cellular service at my hotel so I couldn't spend as much time as I would have liked on Twitter and checking some blogs. I will now have to spend some time doing catch up.

*Kat*