30 is going to happen anyway, best do it in Vegas - Day1 - Strip & Hooters - Nov/Dec 2018

[fiona88]

Index Here

After waking up around 11:30 then 3:30 and eventually 7:30 we sat chatting to friends on messenger and watching American trash TV on TLC/MTV for a while. (Catfish and Weird Obsessions)
After getting showered and dressed we headed down to the hotel breakfast around 10:30. I’d been given a very good review by my friend who booked the room for us (he generously donated Hilton points as a birthday treat!)
The long walk down from the tower room to the restaurant told us eating here was the right decision, the hanger was beginning to surface. I believe it was $24.99 but If you took your receipt downstairs you got $10 free slot play.
Breakfast was ridiculous, an omelette station, pizza and waffle station with chefs, then the buffet had traditional hot and cold breakfasts, sushi, a Mexican prawn dish, pre-wrapped breakfast sandwiches, hot deserts and a cake/donut/bread section. I didn’t take buffet photos but here are some plates.

Yes that 'single serve' crumble was almost the size of the plate!

Todays plan was to cover the hotels at this end of the strip, no real plans beyond that. Nay had no idea what to expect as doesn’t like any research or thought around a holiday, she just turns up.
The weather was lovely, about 20C, we walked to Mandalay bay over the bridge outside of our hotel and down the opposite side of LVB.
View from Bridge outside hotel

MB entrance area, it was starting to feel like a holiday now

Inside Mandalay Bay we were blown away, these hotels are like shopping centres mixed with arenas and in this case an aquarium, which Nay had to visit. We checked online and could save a few quid booking for another day or buying a GO LasVegas pass, however we didn’t know if we’d fit another visit this way into our limited time, so paid entry at the door.

We really enjoyed it, I’d read reviews from people saying it was small, but there was a jungle-styled area with great theming, a room with a touch pool and a few tanks, jellyfish etc, then a large tank with sharks and turtles with a pirate ship theme linked to a tunnel we were there for about 90mins. Thought it was very good for $25.

As it was included in the price we went through the polar journey exhibit which is probably more aimed at kids, VR stuff and a small motion simulator ride.

We left around 1:00, we hit Luxor briefly then Excalibur where rather than gambling we played on the shoot-em-up arcade machines Jurassic Park and Resident Evil.

We carried on up to New York New York which we really liked the feel of.

The Hershey’s store was a highlight, we behaved ourselves and only got one brownie and one cookie sandwich which came to $14 or so ouch!

We had these with beers outside and the question of the trip “Would pigeons be here if they hadn’t built Vegas?”…. would they?

Beers and weird, pigeon discussion over it was almost 4, so we headed to the finest eatery in the land – Hooters!
We went for a mountain dew cocktail each

Then the food pretzel bites with beer cheese, sliders with curly fries and 10 buffalo boneless wings.

The walk to the Hooters casino hotel wasn’t too bad in the daylight but the return in the dark was a bit nervy, it’s about 15-20mins walk from the strip and the place itself is grim, so pleased we didn’t stay here as the original package advert had suggested. [edit: I think this hotel has been taken over]

Leaving around 5:30 we went back to the room for a rest and some more trash TV.
We left again heading up to the top end of the strip via the coca cola store (nothing compared to Orlando) and Walgreens (looking for hair dye as I didn’t get the chance to do it with the train/drive/hotel nightmare which was $10!).. Then Nay spotted the tat shops… sorry souvenir establishments, that was time I’ll never get back, but she bought me a Snapple to keep me happy. We carried on up to Bally’s & Paris dodging the CD “salesmen” and old ladies handing out the “female nighttime companion” business cards.

It was about 10:30 by now and we had an early start planned, so we crossed over the bridge just as the Bellagio fountains show started, so we watched that and headed back to the hotel going through the Aria shops, a much more comfortable walk, less harassment and worry.

Back past NYNY and over the bridge and we were home… Oh wait, there’s the ridiculously long walk to the elevators.

We got back to the room and while getting ready to hit the hay, we discovered the toilet flush was broken and water was pouring out everywhere! We covered the floor in towels, trying and mostly succeeding at stopping it going into the room. After 2 calls to maintenance and the poor worker knocking the cistern lid onto the floor, smashing it, then returning with a replacement we made it into bed at 2am!