Monday, February 28, 2011

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*

18 comments:

. said...

Aww I hope you are having a good rest now that you're back! I always feel quite tired actually after holidays! xD Nice to see that you're back safe and sound! =D

It's good that you had that time to spend with your mum! It sounds like you had a great time! It's a pity you didn't get to spend a little more time shopping in H&M though. The designs are sometimes quite nice, but you have to be careful with the quality! A handful of my tees from there have holes in! :(

galpal.hi said...

@Jian--Thank you so much! I am quite rested now and although I had planned on going to work today, I ended up taking the day off instead.

Yes, my hubby and I agree that it's good that I get to spend time with my mom like this. She's not (and definitely we all aren't) getting any younger so time spent together is much more precious.

I agree with you in that the H & M tops that I got are made of rather thin fabric but for the price that I paid for it, I couldn't resist the bargain AND to be able to say that I finally have something from H & M.

*Kat*

sugar sugar said...

The prime rib looks so delicious! x)

It looks like you had fun on your trip. :)I agree with having to spend time with our parents once in a while.

I wonder why blogger rotates your pictures..? :/ Hmmm...

Brianna said...

Your trip sounds like it was a lot of fun! :)

Thanks for thinking of me! That vending machine looks like it would be dangerous for my wallet!! We don't have anything that sells those types of things yet, the closest we have is a machine that sells proactive skin care at the local mall.

I think I want to eat prime rib for dinner now, that looks so good. ;)

Welcome back Kat, you were missed!

Georgina said...

welcome back Kat! i hope you had a good rest already, trips are fun but exhausting! and you wont feel it until you're back home LOL

im glad to know you had a lot of fun walking around and eating! that portobello mushroom burger sounded good LOL XD

galpal.hi said...

@sugar sugar--Thank you for commenting. Yeah, every once in a while blogger will rotate my pictures. It's quite irritating! It happened when I first started the blog and then for the longest time it didn't do it and now it's doing it again. I don't do anything different with the pictures. If it continues to be a problem, I might have to switch to some place else.

*Kat*

galpal.hi said...

@Brianna--My mom thought that I was really crazy for taking pictures of the vending machine. It says that you can touch the screen to sample but when I did that, it came up with a message that there was nothing avaiable to sample! A man stood there watching me take pictures too. I wonder what he was thinking.

Thank you! I missed everyone too.

*Kat*

galpal.hi said...

@coffretgorge--It is good to get away from it all once in a while. I still couldn't get completely away from work as I was getting email notifications on my phone. The good thing is that my cellular reception was so bad that I couldn't access my emails more than half the time.

I have to say that the portabello mushroom burger was quite yummy. As with most food things in Las Vegas, it was huge.

*Kat*

Jenni said...

welcome back and sounds like you've had fun!! The H&M top looks cute <3 and once in a while a large steak is nice :D

p.s. has my packaged arrived :)?

galpal.hi said...

@Jennifer--Thank you! I did have a lot of fun! I emailed you.

*Kat*

K said...

Yay, it looks like you had a great time in Vegas! I haven't been there in like, 20 years. Thanks for sharing the great pictures!

galpal.hi said...

@K--So much has changed in 20 years! Actually, I think Las Vegas changes significantly from year to year, usually. However, with the current economic conditions, I don't think that it has changed much since I went last year. They are really having a hard time, like most of the world.

*Kat*

Jess said...

Sounds like you spent an awesome time in Vegas! Yay for trips!

galpal.hi said...

@Jess--Yes, I had a great time, loved spending the time with my mom and relatives. The only thing that I don't like about trips is the exhaustion when you return. Oh, I also don't like that everything is so disorganized after I return and I have to unpack and put everything back. It takes me days.

*Kat*

Steph said...

WELCOME BACK~~~

WOW your suitcase is so neat!!! on the way back i always just stuff everything in... as long as it closes i'm good =D lol

fancy vending machines!!! && CCO... *sigh i hear so many good things about them i want to go to one so badly~~~

evie said...

welcome back! it looks great there!! would love to visit it someday! yay to the visit to h&M and hope that you will have the chance to visit(spend quality time) h&M again! hehe

galpal.hi said...

@Steph--I used to be the same way but with TSA opening up suitcases now, I prefer to keep everything compact so that it doesn't spill out and perhaps lose something in the process.

Only since I've started beauty blogging do I know the true value of a CCO!

*Kat*

galpal.hi said...

@evie--Thank you! And yes, I would love to be able to spend more time in H & M again.

*Kat*