Alistair Baillie

Well, I know I’ve been a bit late posting this, however I have back dated it so it fits in better!

Having had an awesome time out in Hawaii, it was time to leave and I flew from what is probably the nicest airport I’ve ever experienced to Las Vegas. We left Hawaii early afternoon and touched down in Las Vegas around 10pm. However you can check out VIP Casino Sites if you want to register and play on one of the top online casinos!

We were staying at The Mirage and after checking in and dumping cases in the rooms we went a walk around the hotel & casino and did a quick spot of gambling before heading to bed.

Woke up early the next day and we went exploring the various hotels on the strip starting with the Venetian. It took most of the morning to walk around the Venetian – its huge although not the biggest and we ended up having lunch in a nice italian (funny enough) themed restaurant.

After lunch we walked down the strip having a look at the various hotels on the way down, we walked down as far as New York New York where we had pizza and started wondering back to the Mirage. While at the Venetian we had booked a helicopter tour to the Grand Canyon, we didn’t have enough time to drive to it.

That night we had dinner in the hotel and took the tram over to Treasure Island to catch the “Sirens of TI” show and then headed back via the street to watch the Volcano eruption outside the Mirage.

The helicopter tour was definitely worth it – we were picked up from the hotel just before 7am and taken the short drive to the airport. After a brief safety briefing we were on our way, the entire flight takes just under an hour and a half and its around 30 minutes flying time to the Hoover Dam. The tour we went for didn’t land at the canyon and on the way back it flew over the strip giving an excellent view of the hotels before landing (Video is below).

We were back at the hotel by 10, so after a quick coffee we headed out took the monorail down to MGN Grand and then headed down to the Luxor and Mandolin Bay to have a look at them. On the way back we wondered into pretty much all the hotels on that side of the street including spending a long time in Caesars Palace shops – there huge!

That night we had dinner at the Stratosphere in the restaurant at the top which rotates round as your eating giving you some amazing views over Las Vegas and the desert. We had timed it so we were having dinner during sunset and although its expensive its well worth it for the view and the food was excellent. Since we were at the north end of the strip anyway, we also took the opportunity to have a wonder along the old part of Las Vegas (Fremont Street) before heading back to our hotel.

Due to Virgin Atlantic canceling the flight from Vegas to London, we were having to fly with Virgin America to San Francisco and then catch the Virgin flight from San Francisco to London. Virgin America are awesome – there planes as well as having live TV also have wifi! Why can’t we have that in this country?

We got back into a snowy London and after collecting baggage and walking from Terminal 3 to 1 we checked in for the BMI flight from London to Edinburgh. The airport was pretty empty on account of a lot of the flights being cancelled.