Tuesday 4 December 2012

Dad and Daves US Adevnture Part 9, saying goodbye to Vegas..

We zoom back into Vegas from the Hoover Dam, top down on the Mustang, loving life, expecting to find that the old man had only been back a short while from his jaunt over the Grand Canyon in a chopper "Nah I've been back for hours" he says, "it's a pretty quick trip, 40 mins there, half an hour on the ground, 40 minutes back". He doesn't seem that impressed, I thought to myself, "I ran out of memory on your camera just as I got to the edge of the Canyon" he says.. bloody hopeless. He reckons it was good, but I'm not convinced. He's hard to impress, or so I thought, more on that later.

We have to be up early the next morning for our flight to New Orleans, and we all wanna go back to Fremont St for another lash, so we crack some beers and decide on eats. Fanta pants keeps banging on about a place called The Peppermill, he has since we got to Vegas, so we decide we should check it out. 

Walking through the door, some locals say "you'll love it, the food is amazing", we're shown to a booth and order some drinks, I dive into a long island ice tea.. or two to get the blood pumping, we order, the prices are reasonable, so we get appetisers, I forget what we ordered, but they were delicious, maybe I shouldn't have dived head first into this pool of long island? 

When the food arrived, we were all gob smacked at the portions. I should have taken photos of it, coz just writing about the enormity of them won't do the place justice. What was served to the 3 of us would have easily fed 967 people, with enough for seconds. Are you understanding what I'm trying to say? Fucking enormous. 

"We should check out the lounge, get some drinks" Aaron suggests, so we slide in through the glass doors and it's hard to describe the decor and ambiance. To my left is a sunken lounge, in the middle a water feature with a dancing flame in the middle, like the water's on fire. We sit in the deeply padded and soft blue crushed velvet couch and stare at the fire when a cocktail waitress sidles up next to us with her ample bosom pushed up to ask us what we'd like to drink, I switch to JD and Coke, she dashes off and returns quickly with a smile and my drink, I take a sip and suggest we move to the bar coz this is gettin way too comfy. Drinks, fire, soft couches, no ideal. 

The bar of course has electronic poker machines set into it, dad can't help himself, by the time I've ordered another drink, he's 20 bucks into it. 

The plan is now set, we'll walk up to Stratosphere for a look out over Las Vegas at night, then on to Fremont, finally finding out way to where we have to buy tickets to get up the top (yeah, ya gotta pay $18 for the privilege) we line up (fuck this better be worth it) and then get to the ONE lift that's taking people up. This joint is losing points REAL fast. FINALLY we get to the top and start to walk around, wait.. we can only look through windows? Oh, this isn't the top.. we have to take another elevator.. of course we do. 

Look, lets skip to the point. It's a nice view, and it's fun laughing at the people being scared shitless on the rides up top, but is it worth the $18? No. Not at all. Don't bother. 

Dejected, hungover and full, a unanimous decision is made, it's almost 11, and we're calling it a night. New Orleans awaits and we want to charge that joint hard. 

*some hours later*

Time to leave, we're packed, downstairs and drop our door keys in the quick exit box, get the Mustang which we'll be dropping off here, and head out toward the airport, stopping at the drive through Mexican joint on Tropicana for some breakfast burritos. 

Now, this was probably a little naive of me, but I expected the rental drop off place to be at the airport, as it say it is in the brochure. But that would be too easy. As we drive down the road to the airport, following the signs, I couldn't help but notice we driving past the airport.. waaayy past the airport. "what the fuck man, where is this joint?" I say, when we do find it, we realise we're now going to be pressing it to get on a plane. 

We get into the terminal, and find the check in counter, Aaron had already booked and paid for the tickets and in fact checked us in the night before, so all we had to do was drop our bags off. When we do, the woman says 'because you haven't checked in 45 minutes before your flight, we can't guarantee your bags will be on the same flight." Aaron doesn't have a good temper when shit goes to plan, and I certainly had never heard of this type of shit, but we were getting on that plane and if our bags don't arrive, we have money, we'll buy what we need till they get there.

I think we were flying South West airlines, and their policy is a 'first in best dressed' deal. Aaron checked in the night before to try and get us into the A seating category, they board first, and of course that means you can sit together and get your choice of seat, we were in C category, in other words the last. But at least we were getting on the plane. I have headphones and a breakfast burrito, I don't care. 

We get to the gate, Fanta pants says he's gotta go back his brains out, and that we should just get on the plane and not wait. We wait, we're in category C after all, I don't think we'll be sitting next to each other. I was right. 

It was a pretty cruisy flight, we made up some time, I can't really complain about the carrier, they're low cost, all I would advise when using them is, check in online as early as you can, and get to the airport early if you want good seats. 

Bring on New Orleans.. 




















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