The Hunts Adventures: Welcome to Las Vegas Baby!

Well we were so excited about this and the girls were waiting for the party we had told them we were going to… little they knew that it was not going to be a ‘party’ they were expecting ;)

First disappointment was when we didn’t see the famous ‘Welcome to Las Vegas sign’ on our arrival in Las Vegas! Then it all hit us when we arrived to our chaotic hotel… the noise, all the flashing lights and smell of cigarette smoke! Huge hotels and casinos you get lost every time you try to find your way out to the strip or to get back into your hotel room! Yes after first evening we were thinking, can we take four days of this?

But after good night sleeping off the headache, we all woke up in better mood and decided to go exploring the strip. We headed out North on the monorail…

The north end was very quiet and run down with homeless people kicking around. Not very nice. We checked out the Stratosphere hotel and Circus Circus, which was ok. Quite old and tacky but we had fun in the arcade and the girls loved the little circus show. When you got closer to the central everything was much tidier and nicer. The Venetian (Venice style) hotel was lovely, really peaceful with canals inside the hotel, where you could go for a gondola ride. We watched a little music show Venice style.

Later on in the day we checked out the south of the strip too. Again it was little quieter than where we were staying right in the middle. MGM was huge and we obviously managed to get lost there! New York New York looked great outside but was really buzzing inside with very loud music that was just giving us another headache.

The girls wanted to go to the Excalibur because it was a castle, but there wasn’t anything special there as far as we could see…quite dated.

We had fun riding in the lifts of Luxor (pyramid shaped hotel) as they went diagonally. The hotel looked smart in the main casino areas and lobby but as you walked to the rooms the corridors were tacky and dirty with rubbish lying around.

We were glad to return to our hotel Flamingo, one of the oldest hotels in Vegas. They say it wasn’t built on the strip…but the strip was built around it. We had a lovely room with fab view towards the high roller observation wheel (same as London Eye)! and the garden pool areas. Our hotel was by the Bellagio which was lovely to see the fountain shows. They were just amazing, they danced to different music which made it more interesting.

The nearby hotels were Paris, Planet Hollywood, Caesars Palace, Linq and Mirage where we watched a volcano erupting show.

We all loved the ride on the High Roller, the highest observation wheel in the world. Even managed to get Miia on it and one thing she actually liked without moaning!

But the most fun we had was when we had a surprise for the girls and had a limousine pick us up from our hotel and took us to the Graceland Wedding Chapel to have our wedding vows renewed!

We thought that it would be a lovely way to celebrate our 10^th Wedding Anniversary, having the girls with us as bridesmaids. Especially for Miia who has for the last few years been asking for us to get married again so that she and Emmi could be bridesmaids. My Finnish friend, who was present at our wedding ten years ago, joined us in Vegas with her family which we really appreciated.

Elvis was so funny, the whole experience was bizarre but hilarious. I am not sure how much the girls understood at the time what was going on in the chapel as it was so fast moving but they were really excited and loved the ride in the limousine! We don’t take things too seriously so it was just great way to renew our vows, here’s for the next 10!

Just before we jumped in the limo to go back to the hotel, we ran a few metres up the road to go to a ‘Pawn Shop’. Not just any pawn shop but the home of the famous Pawn Stars TV show. Worth the quick visit even though we were all a little over dressed!!