Tuesday 22 November 2011

"How much to the Airport??"

So yeah. Didn't get back to this as soon as I had planned but things came up :P

So, Last time I threw something up we were heading towards Vegas.............suppose ill pick up where i left off!

Where was I!? Yeah, right, so we were tearing it through the desert on a completely straight and narrow road and a few eyes were starting to open! On the way we came across this really surreal backwater little village which was just off the highway and the people there were the real deal, "hillbillys" that were completely taken aback by an accent any way different to their own! Imagine how they thought the Irish accent sounded! Turns out the village was planted right on route 66 and there were only a few people left standing there to run the novelty restaurant, the feeling of isolation and abandonment really driven home when we took a look around the back of all the dilapidated buildings and came across a vacant and rusting funderland type theme park. It was a strange sight to see, especially with an idea of what we were expecting to see in vegas. However the camera was lost at this stage (a story we will return to later) so no pictures unfortunately but I think somebody got a video on their phone so will have a "route" around for that (pardon the pun!).

Anyway, foot to the floor on the way into vegas, desert all around us and the thermometer reading 110 degrees fahrenheit  it felt a bit like this.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2pgWsYSyUA

.....well not entirely but it reminded me of it! So anyway we rocked over the Hoover Dam (where yet again the camera was still missing and moods were starting to get sour, so no pictures!) stopped off in Wal-Mart to load up on booze and supplies for the 2 nights we would be there and turned the van onto the strip and were nearly blinded by the neon and flashing lights and absolutely overtaken by the hypnotic vice the place gets you into, not to mention the heat! We pulled into the Tropicana hotel on the strip (cheapest, obviously) walked the considerable distance it took to get to our hotel room (the hotels are about the size of Ballincollig) and got ready to get togged out and go for grub in the excalibur buffet across the road! 30 quid all you can eat and it had been highly recommended to us by a Corkman who certainly knew and enjoyed his food! While we were getting changed/havin a few cans the mysterious case of the lost camera turned up in the hairy babies bag, which he previously denied, but anyway this was the moment he discovered it..

Clearly delighted we get a chance to show our guns off to the Facebook population. So off we went to excalibur for what can truly only be described as an ocean of food, and free milk! Something we had been lacking a serious amount of over the summer! So after trying nearly everything that was on offer there we waddled back over to the tropicana ready to tackle the nights festivities, or not. A can or two in everybody crashed!! Disaster! After trying everything to get a bit of life out of them I had no joy so... I got the idea, being the tight miserable so and so that I am, that I wasn't going to miss a minute of our two nights in Vegas so I jumped into the van and took a spin for myself down the main strip! It took half an hour to get from the end we were at to halfway down so I decided to turn it and go back, but on my way I decided to swing into the Bellagio for a sconce at the fountain and all that jazz. In typical me fashion though, when I pulled in I ended up in some taxi lane that was cordoned off by cones and I couldn't reverse as there was another taxi up my ass!

This is the entrance I'm talking about now but imagine it 100 times busier at 9 o'clock at night with every car horn in the world going off! So I said I would wait in the taxi lane and hopefully drive off peacefully, what I forgot however was that our van was a big white driving the kids to soccer practice type machine so it looked very much like a taxi! And seeing as I was in the taxi lane people started approaching it and opening the doors asking me to take them to the airport and to hooters and to god knows where. All I could do was keep refusing them and smiling! When I finally got out of that mess I took myself, very swiftly, back to the Tropicana and see could I get any joy out of the lads. After trekking through the Douglas sized hotel for about another hour I got back to the room and started jumping on the lads/beds. Eventually, and surprisingly, Jamie woke up!! However nobody else stirred so we got a couple of cans into us and went for walkabouts! Trying to get over the fact that you could walk around with your own booze and smoke away inside the hotels was enough for me and I was seriously running on empty so we left the Luxor(pyramid shaped hotel) and headed back to the room where I CRASHED.. And I mean that in no uncertain terms.

Vague recollections of the morning where I was attempted to be awoken for the breakfast by the lads kind of come back to me now but mostly I just remember swinging out, shouting certain curse words, and heading back to dream land! Apparently I missed a great morning in the pool where the lads had the banter with a couple of absolute babes and some other stuff happened but yeah, its my blog, f them.

Got up about 12 or so when the lads came back and today was when the real party started. It was Farraghers birthday so we went across to the New York New York to go on this rollercoaster he was obsessed with! In true gentlemanly fashion he wouldn't accept us paying our admission on to the ride as he had simply been delighted we came over with him! A present from the birthday boy, how bad! We hooked up with a couple of friends who were in San Fran for the summer afterwards and around 2 we were meeting some Irish dude from Dublin who was giving us free entry to clubs and limousine rides around Vegas for a fairly decent price so we hooked up with him and headed for Wet Republic! Talking to him he came across as a pure chancer but for all his talk he did seem to know a lot of people and was able to back up (some) of the stuff he was saying! We headed into Wet Republic with some problem with ID's but were seriously chuffed with the effort we had put in to get in there! Its an absolutely mental spot, as my description skills are lackin and I tend to ramble on I'll just lash on a video to give you an idea of how unreal this place was!..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb5XVbeXhqs

Any place with that many hot women, good tunes and the pool as the dance floor is pretty alright with me! Highlight of the day had to have been when one of the lads who will remain un-named tried his arm with an absolute babe inside the pool and got nothing but half of what looked like the male jersey shore cast in his face! What happened next is way too funny for words however, the Irish guide guy who was about 5'8 and carrying a few came out of nowhere to get rid of all the guido looking fellas and send them back to the other edge of the pool! Other than that things ran pretty smoothly and Wet Republic is definitely a must if your in LV.

After the days boozing we went back to the hotel to get perked up and throw on the gladrags and into the stretch hummer we popped. However after a summer of torment to our bodies we were never going to look truly classy, vegas style....like


Free booze in the limo plus the general occasion got to us and we barely noticed the limo taking us away from the strip and away from any high rise buildings! When somebody finally noticed we were being told to get out of the hummer and were being sheperded into a strip club where we were forced to pay $20 in. Feeling a slight bit dis-honoured we shelled out the 20 quid anyway because even with that we were still getting a fairly decent deal compared to other people we had heard about! Time took a backseat but as soon as we we knew it we were back into the stretch and making our way to studio 54 nightclub in the MGM Grand. The night turned into a bit of a blur but you can be assured Farragher had a memorable 21st birthday night anyway!

We got up in the morning and tried to do the tourist thing around Vegas but did it pretty miserably. One highlight was getting into an elevator to the top floor of the bellagio and flynners heading into the honeymoon suite for a look at the Vegas skyline, with the honeymooners inside with him! Our heads were a bit too sore and the heat was a bit too much for us to be bothered so onwards and offwards we went for Yosemite!...


3 comments:

  1. great blog - reminds me of my J1. (wish i could go back )

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  2. Aaah Vegas! We stayed in the MGM when we were there... Possibly the best 3 days of my life!!

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  3. Where did you go on a j1 to james? East Coast or west coast?
    @megan. Yeah Vegas is fairly intense! I think you would need a week to really experience it properly.. but no j1er has that kind of cash!

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