las vegas :: part 2

saturday night (4/27) :: day 2
Yesterday when I left off, me and Pat had just headed back to the hotel to take a power nap after exploring as many of the casinos as we could get to. Pats mom had made dinner reservations at Strip House, which is a nice steak house in PH, so we woke up after a while and started getting changed for the evening. We got downstairs a little bit before our reservation so we all headed to Koi, a Japanese restaurant also in PH, for a cocktail and appetizer first. By the time we got in to Strip House we were all pretty freaking hungry having not eaten anything since breakfast. I honestly don't even remember what I ordered (halibut or something similar I'm sure), but everything was delicious.

[[ a selfie in our room. cleopatra. appetizers at koi. looking down on the casino. me & pat in the awkward lighting. dinner at strip house. sweet fuzzy wallpaper. ]]

Afterwards, me and Pat headed up to the room to make a drink (because you know, in Vegas you can do that), met up with Courtney and her man, and headed over to The Cosmopolitan across the street, where her little brother was staying. If I was going back to Vegas I would definitely want to stay there, everything was sparkly, and they even have a three story bar in the center called The Chandelier where you literally enjoy your drinks surrounded by crystal in (wait for it) a giant chandelier. Get ready for an obscure movie reference... This reminded me of the Disney movie The Rescuers Down Under because at the beginning the mice are on a date eating "peeaaa sssouuupp" in a chandelier. Moving on...

[[ the chandelier: epic crystals everywhere. ]]

Next we hopped in a cab and headed for The Palms on the other side of the strip where we had "VIP" status for some clubs, simply meaning we didn't have to pay the ridiculous fees, wait in line, and I got some free drinks. Works for me. My high school self assumed that The Palms would be super awesome based on that whole Real World Las Vegas thing (anyone remember that season?), but it was really just ok compared to some of the other stuff we had seen. However, the club we went in to, Moon, had a retractable roof, and since we could get to the top floor with our passes, we got an amazing view of the entire strip! (See epic title photo).

[[ the palms: moon. part of the view. ]]

We stayed at The Palms for a while and then headed back to The Cosmo to hang out at The Chandelier. Those free drinks at Moon had done a number on me and I honestly don't even know what time it was at this point... Inside the Cosmo there was another bar, called Bond, that I totally would have wanted to check out, had it been a little earlier. There were girls in boxes above the lounge acting out scenes like lounging at the beach or cleaning a house. It reminded me a lot of Austin Powers for some reason, or at least something you would see in the UK in the 60's.

Eventually we said goodbye and went back to our own hotel where we realized how hungry we were, so we dipped in to a little diner in PH for a snack. I also decided that I needed a chocolate milkshake, so that happened. Finally we made it up to bed, definitely sometime closer to 6am.

[[ bond at the cosmo. planet dailies after midnight snacks. chocolate milkshake. ]]

sunday (4/28) :: day 3
Me and Pat were leaving Sunday, while everyone else was staying through Monday or Tuesday, so when we woke up in the morning (way later than we should have) it was a mad dash to shower, pack, get all of our stuff in to his parents room, and get over to the Bellagio, where we were meeting everyone for brunch at Olives. Needless to say, we were both dragging a little bit. When we got to the restaurant everyone was waiting for us, but we were not admitted to our seats, outdoor seats mind you, because Pat was wearing a sleeveless shirt... Sooo, we backtracked to an Urban Outfitters we had passed, ran in, bought Pat a lightweight button up shirt, ran back, and were promptly seated. We definitely thought that whole transaction was a bit ridiculous, but its cool, Vegas does its own thing. What was really confusing to us was that they felt the need to enforce a dress code against Pat for exposing his shoulders, at an outdoor table, in the middle of a 90 degree day, but the man whose hairy nipples were exposed due to his extremely deep V had no problem at all being seated.

The food was excellent however, so it made up for all of the running around. I tried beef carpaccio for the first time (raw, seasoned, extremely thin sliced beef) and it was actually really delicious. Everyone kind of ended up sharing, but I ordered the halibut, which was amazing. I wish I could remember the specific flavors involved. We also had a perfect view of the fountain, so I took a bunch of pictures of the water show. After breakfast, our party all split up, heading either to the pool or the roller coaster at NYNY, but me and Pat decided to head back to Urban to do a little shopping since we only had a couple hours left before our flight. We also checked out Aria, which was a super modern (and really boring in comparison) hotel, and then wandered around The Cosmo some more before heading to the airport where we bid Las Vegas adieu and began our journey home, extremely tired.

  

  

[[ wait, its morning already? tons of club passes. olive at the bellagio. delicious brunch. walking around the strip by our hotel. wandering around the cosmo: i wanted to pose with the sparkly things. old vegas pictures upstairs. the view of the strip from our plane. bye bye vegas. ]]