Las Vegas for a few days

[munitalP]

Having just got back from the Singapore F1 Grand Prix, I now set my sights on a one week conference in Sin City – Las Vegas that I would be attending a couple of weeks after returning from Singapore. The problem here was, this conference had been locked in prior to quitting my last job and trying to convince my new boss to shell out for J tickets and 5 star hotels was going to be a hard task – however in saying that, my new boss is a gentleman among gentleman, he took up the reigns and agreed to letting me go and picking up the tab, albeit Y fares to the US, on top of that, I didn’t have to take leave without pay to attend (due to my short time at the new company) because he saw the benefits of the conference – as I said, a gentleman!

So planning underway, I booked into the Las Vegas Hilton – Junior Suite, signed up for fast track to Gold, booked my flights – QF25 via Auckland and headed off for a few weeks of customer visits between Tasmania and South Australia.

Sunday 17-Oct

I can’t believe it! I slept through my alarm with my driver banging at the door waking me up. I had packed the night before (carry on only) so was up, teeth cleaned, and on my way in the shortest time – pity my First Lounge time was going to be cut very fine...

Dropped off at the First curb side suite, I went in and an ex work colleague who was also attending the same conference met me there where he checked luggage and we got boarding passes through to Las Vegas. 5A & 5C (738 MEL/AKL), 24J & 24K (332 AKL/LAX), and 14b & 17A (MD80 LAX/LAS).

We skirted through immigration and up to the First Lounge with what I thought were 30 minutes up our sleeves, but alas on entry, the concierge told us boarding would be in 15 minutes! I placed my breakfast order with my mate and turned left and headed in for a shower.

I’m clinically not human until showered in the morning so this was a must do...

In the final stages of repacking my carry on, the flight was called, so I left the shower area fresh and awake, straight down to the restaurant where mysteriously my Eggs Benedict appeared as I sat down, which I managed to scoff in a couple of minutes, have an orange juice and a coffee. I had to leave the sour dough toast behind though, yelled a big thanks to the waiter and raced out after my mate who by this time was marking time at the top of the escalator waiting for me. Honestly the fastest First Lounge visit in history and not a single glass of bubbles!

We boarded the 738 using priority boarding and took our assigned seats. The lines outside were quite long, so I had no doubt that the B seat would go, the only question was would it be a Sumo wrestler or not. Lucky for us, it wasn’t a Sumo wrestler, in fact, petite young Asian lass who took up no room at all – great! Shortly after takeoff, the iPad was turned on, some music chosen, Bose headphones on, and I settled back into the first flight of a long trip.

I snoozed most of the way, only opening my eyes to choose another artist to listen to on the iPad until we descended through the clouds to land from the west into Auckland where it was raining a little and overcast – a typical Auckland grey day.
Here’s a first for me – a transit in Auckland which was spent in the Qantas First lounge on Skype as well as sorting out hour’s sheets and paperwork that needed to be in the office by Monday AM which I would likely miss while travelling.

After a few hours in transit, we went down through the extra security check and again boarded the aircraft through priority lines. The scene in Flying High at the Hilton with George Clooney handing the lady the HH sign up form is a classic, and I have often thought how much of an asshole I could be if I had Qantas Frequent Flyer forms to hand out to all the people who “give you the look” each time you cue jump and use priority boarding – it would be a heavy bag of forms...

The seatbelt signs stayed on for well over an hour – there were a few bumps, but sometimes I think the flying roo take the caution stance a little too far. The flight attendants getting grumpy at people who ignore the signs because they need to use the loo or they need water or myriad or reasons needs addressing. I saw a flight attendant become openly hostile toward a PAX after the light had gone off – this PAX during the last 10 or so minutes the light was on had got up and used the loo – not unreasonable in the situation, if it had of been 3 minutes after takeoff, I could understand the FA being angry, but come on – over an hour?
After the sign had gone off, I said bye to my mate and headed back to row 40 (I think) immediately in front of the toilets, and got comfortable in the F seat with E & G empty. Armrests up, no feet in my back, noise from toilets not an issue as I either had headphones on or ear plugs – never underestimate how good this seat actually is.

 

[munitalP]

The flight seemed to take forever, the young fellow in the D seat was very interesting, on his way home to Alaska from his second tour of duty in Antarctica, and about to spend a month on the North Western (a crab boat seen on the deadliest catch on TV) who’s owners were family friends. Apparently the boat is used for salmon in the off crab months and that was what his plans were. He had a million photos and was a great guy to chat with for an hour or two.

Eventually breakfast was served – I had skipped dinner and was quite hungry by this point and had something disguised as egg – disgusting understates the meal.

We disembarked a little behind schedule at LAX and wandered down to immigration. Usual lines of people but I was through and out in a short time where I said to my mate I would meet him at the AA bag drop – through, out, turn right and up the ramp!

A long time later he arrived.

I had however, been having a chat with an AA staff member who looked considerably like Cameron Diaz and I didn’t care about his slothy arrival!

We wandered out into the early morning of Los Angeles and headed down toward the AA terminal check in / security where we went up to the new body scanner area. The only thing that annoyed about the full body scanner was it got me unprepared – If I had of remembered it was there, I would have worn my elephant undies – you know, the ones with a trunk and big ears!

Without looking sideways, we wandered straight down to the Admirals lounge where I was given the special key to the Flagship Lounge, and up we went for coffee, breakfast and maybe a shower. No chance of a shower, the list was 20 names long and I had just on an hour before my next flight.

After struggling with trying to connect with the T-Mobile free internet, I gave up happy that I had sent all work related documents from the Qantas lounge in Auckland. I got my iPad out, it immediately connected, I checked the news, weather etc, had a coffee, bagel and I was ready for my next flight.

In search of another coffee, I decided to find a star bucks which isn’t hard in LAX and bid farewell’s to the dragons, grabbed a handful of Flagship chocolates and headed downstairs. Pity the lines at star bucks were so long and in the end, I went and waited the next 10 minutes by my gate before boarding.

Priority boarding again had me in my seat, no neighbour and I awoke on decent into Vegas.Landing in Las Vegas came as a bit of a shock to me, I never expected it to be such a busy airport! There were so many planes landing and taking off – for some reason, LAS was burnt in my mind as some smallish country airport, not the busy airport I found.

The slot machines didn’t come as a shock as I had heard about them before now, but people alighting aircraft and straight onto a slot machine did come as a surprise.

After waiting for my mate to collect his luggage – you must be aware at this point, I have ribbed this guy for about 20 minutes about the aspects of cabin luggage only – we wandered out into the taxi line (the first line with no priority I’ve been in for a while) and took a cab to the LV Hilton.

 

[munitalP]

My room was ready when I arrived, a little disappointed as I was on level 3 (I didn’t know then this was a good level!) but my mates room wasn’t. So we both went up to my room where he deposited his luggage and went in search of coffee. I quickly freshened up, and headed down to the casino level where we caught up again. We had some time to kill before his room was ready, so we put $20 each into a 1c slot and played for hours – literally. At the end, I had lost my $20, had drunk about 6 Heinekens, had 7 sets of coloured beads the dancing girls had bestowed upon me, and was feeling a little tired!

My level 3 Balcony!

My mate finally got his room keys – same level and about 10 suites apart – in a 30 million room hotel, we had done OK and we were both reasonably close to the elevators. He picked up his luggage and we agreed to meet down stairs a couple of hours later and head out on the strip to find dinner.

I showered for about an hour – in fact, I may have dozed in the shower, half a dozen Heinekens, a long economy flight and the hot shower took its toll on me, but I knew sleeping too early would be a disaster, so, on schedule, I met my mate and we ventured out to the monorail station at the Hilton then on into town. It was raining in Vegas and I was wearing thongs – this was a bad move, and after a couple of close calls of coming guts up on the pavement, I ended up going back to the Hilton and changing footwear.

While waiting for me, my mate had joined the Harrahs casino, been given some free money to play on the slots with, and was busy winning back his $20 from earlier when I returned. I sat next to him and was immediately asked if I wanted a drink. Who am I to say no? So, another Heineken was enjoyed – I’m liking this place, I haven’t paid for a beer yet and I’m on my way to party mood!

We wandered down the strip a while then went into Paris Casino where we found a nice looking French restaurant (surprise) and ordered a large Bouillabaisse for dinner. By the time dinner was over, we had both hit the wall and headed back to the nearest monorail stop, then back to the Hilton with plans to meet for breakfast at 0830 the following morning (Monday).

Advice hotline – buy a 3 day monorail ticket for $28 if staying on any hotel near the monorail – excellent value, clean, frequent (every 6 minutes) and safe to use.

 

[munitalP]

Monday 18-Oct

Today was a golf tournament organized by the conference at some top Las Vegas golf course and all full paid delegates were entitled to play. I couldn’t be bothered so Monday became a free day.

0830 came and went. I was still checking the inside of my eyelids for holes when I was rudely awakened at about 0930 by room cleaners. Hmmm I thought. I called my mate – I woke him as well and we met downstairs at the buffet for breakfast. By the time we got there, we had caught the tail end of breakfast, and there was a lunch menu fusion thing happening – kind of confusing, should I have wheat germ with fried chicken, pancakes with lasagna, and would I like a coffee or beer with breaklunch?

Anyway, bagels, cream cheese, smoked salmon and capers saved the day.

My mate wanted to go to Walmart to look at iPads he had heard were cheap there, so I decided this would do to buy a US sim for my phone as well, a taxi from the lobby was hailed, and we showed the driver on the iPhone where we wanted to go and we were quickly there. I like looking around Walmarts, but this one was a little disappointing – small and lacking in the variety of goods I have seen elsewhere.

We both left rather disappointed in our efforts, I couldn’t buy a sim card and went off in search of a phone shop. After half an hour in a shop unable to get a sim for less than $35 activation fee, I thought screw this, I’ll pay international roaming. Walking away from the shopping area, toward where we hoped would be a taxi rank back near Walmart, there was a RadioShack store, were I bought an LG touch screen phone, $20 credit (plus $50 credit free on first top up) complete with data access for $110.

I was quite happy with this, the sim worked in my Blackberry – only I couldn’t make my emails work, so, I copied my contacts to my new sim then just used the LG phone from that point on. A simple bulk TXT to my regulars to inform them of my new number and I was up and going again.

We got a taxi and asked if there was a larger Walmart near – yes there was and off we went to a huge Walmart where we spent the next hour or so wandering around reminding ourselves how expensive Australia is to live in.

We had kept the taxi drivers number, so he was back to pick us up shortly after and we went back to the Hilton, it was now getting dark. A quick drop off of the goods we had bought had us on the monorail heading back to track down the Apple store for my mate to buy his iPad.

Take pics of presents you are about to buy SWMBO - email home for approval first!

A couple of diversions into shops such as Marc Jacobs, Louis Vitton and Prada had us at the apple store, me buying the camera adaptor for the iPad and my mate getting a 64GB unit, wireless keypad and camera connector as well. We headed back to the hotel using the monorail and into the buffet where I had the Chef cook me a shrimp bowtie pasta dish while I waited – yummy.

The day was over, had to knuckle down and work the next day, so early to bed – 11pm that is...

Tuesday & Wednesday

Both days were spent at an engineering conference. Dinner Tuesday night was again at the Hilton buffet where again I had the Chef prepare fresh for me another pasta dish. Wednesday night we ate at another Hilton restaurant, a Tepyanaki, good food – expensive as poison

 

[munitalP]

Thursday 21-Oct

I awoke with a whole heap of emails I had to urgently respond to so my final half day of the conference was spent in my hotel room catching up on work. That really sucked as there were two papers I particularly wanted to hear. Oh well, such is life and I had packed up and checked out by 1230 with my luggage stored and my mate close behind.

We caught the monorail the full length and got off at the MGM grand where we had a look around at the opulence of the casino, then went across the road to Hooters and had Taco’s for lunch.

From there, we walked back along the strip to Caesars Palace – quite a long way – and back to the Apple shop where I bought 3 more camera connectors for others at work with iPads.

From there we caught a taxi back to the Hilton, got our luggage and back to the airport.

At the AA desk, we got checked through to Melbourne, LAS/LAX 7A&B (MD80), LAX/AKL 24 A&B (332) and 5 A&C AKL/MEL (738).

LAS/LAX we arrived on time, again I couldn’t get my laptop to connect with the Admirals club WiFi yet the iPad had no problems at all, I did get a shower this time though, had a few G&T’s then went down and boarded our flight to AKL. This flight was full, so no moving seats this time. The CSM introduced himself, gave us both J amenity kits – woo hoo, earplugs (I had mistakenly thrown my unused pack out at the Hilton) and again skipped meals.

Our arrival into AKL swung us over Great Barrier Island and we had wonderful views into the city of sails. Through security and into transit again, up to the First Lounge where another shower awaited. Ahh, cabin bag only means fresh clothing at every shower stop – I love it.

Across to Melbourne and again we had a smallish girl sitting between us taking up no room at all, and again a full flight from where I was sitting. On landing in Melbourne, I bid farewell to my mate at the duty free store where we filled our wives requests, and I was straight out, no X-Ray and into my car – my wife had come to pick me up – and heading home.

As we pulled into our driveway – 40 minutes after I had exited MEL, my mate rang to ask me if I was out yet… I told him I was home, he had been held up waiting for luggage, then again at the customs X-ray.

Tomorrow, I fly to Sydney for 3 days to another conference, then from Sydney to Hanoi.

From this trip, I have made some choices I hope I can stick to, these are, all flights to/from the US in the future will be direct and will be in J or better. I would consider Y+ if I had no other option

 

[totalk]

Great TR. Lovely pics as well.

 

[yo yo ma]

Cool... Benihana restaurant is in Vegas! Love the one at the Marriott, Gold Coast. Will have to go there! Thanks for posting.