Las Vegas Round 2: What Are the Odds You'd…?

Vegas Bitches!

We left you last post on a cliffhanger…Haha.

In the 5 minutes we had to research a place and book it we settled on a cheap motel in Barstow, CA. A place we thought was close enough to spend a day, or so, in Death Valley, along with a day trip over to Sequoia National Park. It also looked close enough to check out Joshua Tree National Park as well so we thought we had come up trumps.

In our rush booking the hotel we didn't really look into exactly where the entrances to the parks were, and as such, what looked like under an hours drive to each park, would have been 3 and 4 hours respectively.

We got back into Vegas on the Monday after a weekend of doing pretty much nothing. It was practically an admin weekend, shite it almost felt like we had a job of sorts – so we couldn't let that last and got back into Sin City ready to give it a fair old nudge.

Second time round we were staying at Hostel Cat – not much to the place but they do organise some pretty decent activities, and it had a basketball hoop. And on a side note they are wedged in between a tattoo parlor and one of the seediest looking strip joints in Vegas...and that's saying something.

Few quiet ones at The Cat!

I should add, to the disappointment of a lot of you, that we didn't enter either of these fine establishments, but I did have a funny altercation with the meth-head tattoo artist. After locating a basketball within the hostel I decided to have a few shots. After 10 minutes or so, my new mate crawled out of the gutter known as his tattoo shop and told me 'Game's over buddy!' Given I had just woefully missed I thought he was actually being funny. I apologised to him for the noise, you know cos there's noise restriction in Vegas at 7pm on a Tuesday, and was given the tart reply of 'I don't give a f_ck. As soon as I find my angle grinder I'm going to cut the f_cking thing down!' Again I thought he was joking but looking a little closer at old mate revealed he had two cutting disks in his hand and really was only missing the grinder!

Safe to say I didn't play any more ball, but old mate didn't find his grinder either!

First night we met a few of the other hostel crew over a cheap dinner and then got fairly stuck into the beers before the group consensus was to hit up one of the premier night clubs in town – Marquee at the Cosmopolitan.

Marquee

With our ratio of girls to guys being OK, the hostel said they could get us all in for $15 each, as opposed to somewhere in the realm of $50 each. So 28 of us piled into a 15 seater van – good old bench seats are the way to go when it comes to packing cadets into a car – and headed to the strip.

Before getting in, the hostel's 'Events Manager' advised us to grab some cheap drinks, possibly bottles we could sneak in, because not too many of us would be impressed with drink prices within the club. So bottle of Captain Morgans in tow we hit the biggest and best club I have ever been to.

We proceeded to lose pretty much everyone else in the crew apart from Bec, but still had a solid night. I can't say I can remember all of the finer details, but I will say that Captain Morgans possibly wasn't the best choice of spirit to drink straight! Who would have thought?

Captain Morgans can have that effect

Surprisingly we weren't too bad the next morning, not quite good enough to get up in time for the 10.30am breakfast cut off, but I think we were somewhat functioning before mid day.

Being the frugal and forward planning travelers we like to believe we are, we had not only kept our two room keys from the Venetian, we had managed to 'lose' a couple whilst we were there. This meant we had 4 keys in total and could get a number of us into the pools if we felt the need.

So a few of us crammed into Rodge and spent the afternoon chilling by the pools and then hit the casino floor for some 25 cent blackjack and more importantly $1 drinks.

That night the hostel took us down to a more local bar in Fremont. $5 entry may seem a little pricey for the area, or for the establishment for that matter, but 5 cent beers more than made up for that. You may not believe the 5 cent tag there but honestly you laid down a $1 bill and grabbed as many beers as you could carry. For most of us that was 4 and it included your tip. It was actually a pretty low key night compared to the Monday but it does have the all the makings of a huge one if that's where you want to take it.

Wednesday was probably the best day I have had in a city for a very long time. We gathered a decent size crew from the hostel and roped them in with our stories of the Mirage buffet from the week before. It also happened to be that the 'best' pool party in town on Wednesday was at the Venetian, and given we still had the 4 room keys it would be highly possible we could get a good dozen or so others in for free.

We got to the buffet a little later than we would have liked, but more than made up for that by the end of it. How we didn't get kicked out is beyond me, but I supposed they are used to that in Vegas. Actually none of us were too bad, just a little louder than most of the others in the room. Drinking games tend to have that affect!

Buffet Crew

What are the odds you'd skull 4 glasses of red in 4 minutes?

Fair to say the others were as impressed with the buffet as we were, and then the pool party was just icing on the top. It actually wasn't anything special, it was really quiet given it was a Wednesday, but given most of us are on 'backpackeer' budgets it was still pretty good fun. Throw in a handful of free drinks bought for us from some of the 'proper' Vegas punters and we made sure we had a good time!

Making the most of a free pool party

That night a few of us headed down to Fremont for a look around – it's the less glamorous side of tourist Vegas but still worth a look before returning to the hostel to chill out drinking a few quiet ones, throwing in a few 'what are the odds you'd...' (insert something stupid here-mainly revolved around drinking) to spice things up, gearing up to head back out on the town.

What are the odds you'd lie down in the middle of the street to watch the light show? F_ck it looks like a good view from down there, let's come and join!

The Fremont Street Experience - what we were actually watching

Nic and I made the somewhat responsible decision to skip the club given the states we, or more likely I, was in (what are the odds of that?) but the others headed out for a rather interesting night. Twice throughout the day we got to see first hand the efficient effectiveness of alcohol in bringing out someone's 'other self'. One lad went from rather shy and unassuming to some kind of human leech in the space of 4 red wines in 4 minutes. Good old Vinny Chase. And another went from a pretty funny, decent lad to some sort of misogynistic pig. Well not some sort of, he was an out and out dick. I am happy to report that I was neither of these guys!

And even though we made the sensible decision to have an early night, early for Vegas standards anyway, the next day proceeded to be one of the longest and toughest of my life. I reckon if I was an animal, anyone who came across me that day would have shot me to put me out of my misery! Nic didn't have the best of days either, given she had to drive practically the entire way to San Diego! But I’ll get to that story next time.

Vegas will always remain one of our favourite places. Everything is bigger, better and way more over the top in America, and Vegas is the jewel in that over-the-top crown! And even though it practically broke me, we will be back!