Fun in Las Vegas

A couple of month ago, my friend Shannon asked me to join her for an upcoming trip to Las Vegas for her brother-in-law Jacob's 30st birthday. Why not? I knew it would be very different from our other Vegas trips as a lot of partying, drinking and the typical Vegas stuff would be involved... Sven didn't want to join us ("are you nuts, it'll be 110 degrees..."), so I left him in San Francisco and met the "Alabama"-crowd in Vegas...

Shannon got us tickets to see the newest of the Cirque du Soleil shows named "Love", a show that combines the great Beatles music with the breathtaking acrobatics and performances of the Cirque's artists. What an amazing experience! If you have plans to go to Vegas and want to spend the money on one show, I highly recommend "Love" that's playing at the Mirage Casino. With the music blasting out of the chair in front of you, you get the impression that you actually ended up at a real Beatles' concert. To celebrate the show and the continue the fun, we visited the really cool Beatles' bar after the show:

As you can see, we enjoyed the nights drinking quite well.

During the day we walked through the Casinos and, rode the roller coater at the New York, New York. Susan and Jacob, fearless by nature (or alcohol) even made their way to old town and took a ride one the scariest of all rides at the Stratosphere. The less crazier of us went to the spa or the hairdresser at our hotel (MGM) and recovered for the next night :-)

The next evening, we had reservations at the "Red Square", a Russian restaurant in Mandalay Bay. With a couple minutes to spare before meeting the rest of our group, Shannon and I made our way to the casino. We each put $5 in a quarter slot machine to pay our tribute to the Las Vegas gambling fever and join the boys in their continuous loss of money. At least that's what we thought... Before we knew what had happened, my lucky friend had hit the jackpot! With the lights going off, the machine making crazy sounds only to be beaten by Shannon yelling even louder, Shannon won $2,500.

At the Red Square, we all visited the so-called Vodka Vault, which is pretty much a walk-in freezer where you can enjoy your Vodka shots (you get the Russian feeling). Because they want to make you feel special and not to freeze your butt off, the owners treat you into Russian fake fur coats, hats and winter military uniforms for some of the guys. What a great thing to start a fantastic dinner, thanks for spoiling us Shannon!

The entire trip was awesome. Thanks "Alabama"-crowd to invite me along, can't wait to visit you in Houston!