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Old 16 Feb 13, 06:50 PM  
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Alien
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Join Date: Oct 12
Location: Ireland
LA & Vegas Trip Report - February 2013

2 adults, 5 full days + 2 travel. 2 in Vegas 3 in LA

Flights- Dublin Atlanta, Atlanta LA with Delta, return KLM trough Amsterdam

Delta plane on the way over was horrible, seats very small and we are average size people. Staff was super friendly, but the headphones didn’t work for most seats on plane so the movies in flight were pretty much pointless. I wouldn’t rush booking with them.

Atlanta airport is lovely – we had lunch and drinks at Chili’s and met lovely older couple from Georgia. Had such great laugh with them – the man said “I wish you are coming with us to Florida” So friendly, he said we can go fishing, and watch old cowboy movies drink beers and eat bbq every day! It’s very easy to move from one terminal to another, and people are so helpful. We were looking around for few minutes trying to find your way few people come and asked "Are you OK M'am, can I help"!

LA –

We stayed in Venice with friends of ours. The canals are lovely to walk around. Venice beach is lovely! The skaters, muscle beach, surfers, the street performers or just people watching! Beach is breath taking. The sad thing was that there are allot of homeless people

Abbot Kinney Boulevard – lovely at night. I didn’t look around the shops (apparently very high end) but had few dinner there and drinks around various bars and it’s real trendy part of LA! Allot of good looking people – apparently Ryan Gosling and Eva Mendes live around. Restaurants were fancy, small portion high quality very rich food expensive but not too bad compared to Dublin or London. We had dinner at Hal's Bar. We also had pancakes one morning but bad me – as we had local guide didn’t try to remember all names of places we had food!

Allot of skinny good looking people, not very fashionable even at night in more fancy bars most ladies were wearing skinny jeans and plain tops.

We went to Hollywood Hills, Beverly Hills, we passed by LA Ink, all lovely to drive around or go for walk.

El Tepeyak. This is the complete opposite of the fancy restaurants around Abbot Kinney. My husband insisted we visit it after watching it on Man vs Food so we had a good drive to east LA to find the place! The portions were insane, I managed to eat 1/3rd of a burrito they were gigantic. None of the skinny fancy looking people around either – supersize at it’s finest. The food was amazingly delicious, staff super friendly and my husband managed to finish his burrito. Man won you would say – I wouldn’t necessary agree he couldn’t move for the day after this (we were there at lunch) so we had to chill out that night.

Shopping – first American experience I was bit underwhelmed. Loved Sephora (hour spend there), hated Macys and wasn’t that pushed on the large department stores at all to be honest. Very hard to find things very generic looking clothes. Wasn’t impressed by Nordstrom either, but may be as it was smaller local store and LA is so casual. I went to Nordstrom Rack for hour, and got a dress from there (elie tahari) and that was it, didn’t spend hour in the department stores just didn’t like the feel of them at all

Vegas

Flights South West airlines – great experience will use them again.
Mandalay bay – lovely hotel, we got free upgrade to bigger suite. The bar on the top of “The Hotel” part of it have stunning views over the strip, a must see.

We walked the strip during the day and walked in and out of hotels and casinos. We went in many, New York New York (we did the
rollercoaster there and had some food) Paris, Bellagio, Ceases Palace, The Venetian. I loved shopping around Venetian, end up buying 2 pairs of Keneth Cole boots and they also had Barneys New York which was great to look around but bit pricey. Kind of weird with all the fake skies around, you don’t know if it’s day or night!

Shows - we went to Zoomanity a Cirque du Soleil show and it was good but not amazing tbh. We got the tickets from the discount counters on the strip – about 30% cheaper than buying in advance and had plenty of options.

We also sow a lovely art gallery inspired by cirque du soleil (I think it was at the Bellagio) and really enjoyed looking at that too.

DH gambled 20 usd, me 0.

We went with 3070 USD cash and had 1000 on card allocated for the trip. We didn’t go near the card and came back with 200 usd from the cash. We had meals in good places, drinks mainly cocktails, tipped 20%, and got allot of chocolate to bring back home. We got crests whitening strips, I bought Hilfiger glasses, 2 pairs of Nine West shoes, 2 pairs of Keneth Cole boots, 1 Dress Elie Tahari, DH got 7 tshirts, 2 shirts, 1 hoodie. Bag of clothes for DS and few outfits for my niece. Allot of spiderman stuff for DS (like little toys). 2 foundations (nars and laura mercier), oil makeup remover, mascara, bobbi brown correctors few as I am addicted to them. Accommodation in Vegas was pre paid, so were the flights, and we didn’t need a car as our friends drove us all over the place. Also got some jewellery and little guess bag for presents for family.

Weather was cooler then I was expected, summer clothes I took were not used really

Overall great holiday. We are very tired and I wouldn’t do so much travelling for so little time again but as we plan Florida family holiday this summer we didn’t had much time.
I will add few pictures

I hope I am not breaking the rules as I have one report for the full trip, I am not good writing tbh

Edited at 04:29 PM.
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Old 16 Feb 13, 07:26 PM  
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Alien
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Join Date: Oct 12
Location: Ireland
Venice - the canals

The nicest pancakes I ever had! (wholegrain too!)

The entrance of the gallery from my report

Edited at 09:13 PM.
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Old 17 Feb 13, 02:23 AM  
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Pussycat Doll
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Sounds great but very hectic! We had 4 days in Vegas last week, it feels like we never slept! Pussycat
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Old 17 Feb 13, 10:22 AM  
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KarenG
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Wow! You did so much in such a short time! Really enjoyed your report

Thank you for sharing your photos too - love the one of the Strip at night
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Old 17 Feb 13, 12:37 PM  
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Alien
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Join Date: Oct 12
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We had fantastic time and did allot! But hay plenty of opportunities to chill out now we are back - it was all go holiday
few more pictures
El Tepeyac east LA, felt very authentic (we aren't in the picture)


Vegas



And that's all from this holiday! Next - Florida!

Edited at 09:13 PM.
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Old 18 Feb 13, 10:18 PM  
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Dimple
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Hi Alien,

Great trip report and photos!

Can you tell me how did you find the flights home to Dublin with KLM via Amsterdam?

We are flying both inbound and outbound with them for our West Coast Trip in May!

Many Thanks!
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Old 18 Feb 13, 10:30 PM  
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Cal and Dave
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Great report. You were busy. We flew back from Atlanta in January. Very nice new shiny terminal with plenty to offer. We liked it
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Old 18 Feb 13, 11:31 PM  
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Alien
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KLM flights were so much better (it's really KLM & Aer Lingus in our case). There was screen on each seat, very good choices of movies. Seats were bigger - much bigger. Poor DH wasn't impressed by Delta seats but may be we were unlucky. Food was also better - I pre ordered low fat meal so had chicken, veggies, potatoes and fruit on first meal. egg spinach and mushroom & fruit on second. Plain but that's how I eat mostly at home and was happy with that.

The only benefit of Delta on the way to was that we cleared emigration here.
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Old 19 Feb 13, 09:42 AM  
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Cyclospora
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Great trippy!

Seems like you had a wonderful time - although the offer by the couple you met at the airport sounded great too

Thanks
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Old 19 Feb 13, 09:25 PM  
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Dimple
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Originally Posted by Alien View Post
KLM flights were so much better (it's really KLM & Aer Lingus in our case). There was screen on each seat, very good choices of movies. Seats were bigger - much bigger.

The only benefit of Delta on the way to was that we cleared emigration here.
Thanks, that's great news! We actually had the choice of booking Delta or KLM and was tempted to go for Delta for the Pre-clearance reason but better flight times made us go for KLM in the end.
I flew with Delta to Orlando maybe 4/5 years ago and had a good plane with screens on each seat but family and friends have since used them and had older planes that were not too comfortable as you describe!
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