West Coast
Well I'm in San Diego for the night. Why you ask? Because when I arrived in LA at around 8-9PM it turned out that they had no more free hotel rooms anywhere. Ok, granted I didnt check the budget hotels, but anyway everything else was completely booked solid. So I called up the Omni in San Diego and drove straight here. The drive was actually quite nice. An hour and a half for about 136 miles door to door.
At first I thought that New York was the best and really the only place to speed and have fun, but LA is right up there. Everywhere the highway is at least 4 lanes and everyone is already flying at 75-85mph so that gives me an edge as the M5 really gets much faster in comparison to other cars when the speeds are higher. There are a few decent cars here, and some modded ones, but I havent seen a single decent driver yet.
After spending the week in Vegas I think I need to decompress. I mean I didn't even do that much but it still is a bit over whelming. When you think about the size of the buildings its quite interesting. I mean being from New York you get used to these massive structures, but these casinos really give the sky scrappers are run for their money. Besides being 50 stories tall their foot prints on the ground floor especially if you also throw in the parking lots are gigantic.
So what can I say about Vegas besides the fact that it is hot as all hell and neither I nor Annie can figure out why the hell anyone would live there. Well the plus sides are that everywhere you got valet, if you tip everyone loves you because I guess the majority of US tourists dont. Personally I wouldnt recommend doing the whole tourist thing and checking out all of the Casinos because its a lot of work going from one to the other especially by foot. Also I dont see the point in just seeing things, I mean unless you experience it, its just another memory that will eventually get lost and not matter. However, the water show at the Bellagio is spectacular, but only because when the water shoots up the under water cannons (they can only be described as such) make a very nice bang sound. It almost feels like the 4th of July or some other ceremonious day whenever you see them.
I think you should stay at the hotel where you plan to do everything. This way you never have to leave the building which is pretty much the point behind these casinos. I havent seen everything, nowhere close to it, but after spending my last night in the Bellagio I have to give it to the Palms. Although at first it doesnt strike you as spectacular the one thing it doesn't do is let you down. While you are short of saying wow a few times you never complain about anything which is actually quite impressive when you spend an entire week there. Hopefully when I go back (trying to be optimistic here) I would definitely stay there again. You got just enough of a casino to do gambling, and the rest is focused on relaxation and partying, which is really why people should goto Vegas in the first place. Partying, not gambling. If you want to gamble, goto AC, its closer, and actually from what I've seen, better, well in terms of poker. Borgata still has a poker room that is about 5-10 times the size of the Bellagios, and probably 20 times the size of the Palms.
I flew Annie in for Thursday night because Vegas sucks if you are by yourself and we partied it up at Moon, which is at the Palms. We got a private table, which turned out to be right on the dance floor. We split a bottle of Patron Silver and Kettle mostly just between the two of us and I dont ever recall being more drunk in my life. Although at the club everything was fine, but when we got back to the room I got very friendly with the toilet bowl. Most of Friday was spent recuperating, hanging out at the pool for like 4 hours and ending up looking like a very nice ripened tomato. Although the Philly Cheese was awesome. Then we went to the Venetian, ate dinner, inhaled some oxygen at an oxygen bar and just walked around. After I dropped off Annie at the air port I decided I was too tired to drive so I stayed at the Bellagio, mostly to just say I stayed there. Although everything was decent, I didnt like it at all. I mean I much prefer the Palms in every respect. Oh well good to know for future trips.
The following day I woke up at 2:10PM and late checkout is 2:00PM and 2:30PM at the latest. So after I found that out at about 2:18PM I scrambled downstairs as quickly as possible. Though I was late, it didnt look like there were any additional charges although I was prepared to bribe the front desk guy with a c-note if need be, which would still be cheaper than the additional $300 charge to my credit card.
Had breakfast at Einstein's which is the other good thing about Vegas and set out for San Diego. Then I changed my mind since I didnt know anyone there and decided to head to LA. When I got in I drove to Beverly Hills and just drove around a bit. First impressions are that its like Manhattan Beach except the houses are larger and further apart from each other, and it is actually on a hill, quite a big one to be exact. Then I tried searching for a hotel drove around a bit and decided to fuck it and head to San Diego anyway which is where I am now.
Hopefully tomorrow night I will be in San Francisco after heading through LA in the middle of the day.
So that's an update on the what.