Who doesn't love VEGAS!

March 14th - March 17th

It feels like it has been forever since we were able to head out of town, so when we finally did, we went all out and headed to Vegas. Eric and Audrey invited us on a long weekend trip and even let us take advantage of their hotel points.
So we headed out of town on Friday evening and they picked us up from the airport later that night.

 After finding our hotel, Westin and get settled in, we headed out for to find a super late dinner/snack. We ended up in Carnegie Deli.

It was not the best but it might have been what we ordered or the fact that we were there at 1:30 in the morning.

As we headed back to the hotel for the night we came upon a very interesting sight. We quickly passed an incredibly drunk lady on the ground kicking and screaming with the security guard on top of her trying to calm her down. It seemed as if she had been kicked out of the club and wasn't very happy about it. Just one of those things that happens in Vegas, I guess.

On Saturday morning, we woke up and started to get ready when we realized the hotel had run out of hot water...how does that happened?! So after we learned that the entire hotel is out of hot water, Jed and I took off to get some caffeine from the greatest coffee place, Coffee Bean &  Tea Leaf.

By the time we made it back to the hotel, the hot water was back on and were ready to get ready and go.

We didn't feel that it was appropriate to bring Little Hokie Bird to Vegas (i.e., we forgot him) but we found a new little friend to document all our Vegas adventures.

As we were all getting ready, we had to document our amazing view from our hotel window.

Eric chose to see the brand new Linq, High Roller, where the rest of us just saw parking lot. Way to always look at the positive, Eric.

Because we had no hot water, the hotel gave us free breakfast so after a quick stop for some free food we headed out by car. The goal was to check out the Neon Museum. Unfortunately, by the time we got there, the tickets for Saturday were all gone, so we decided to get tickets for Monday and also get tickets to the Mob Museum.

The Mob Museum was really cool but definitely not for kids. We had a great time learning and being silly and having a great time.

The actual court room that they tried Mob Bosses

After the Mob Museum, we walked down to Freemont Street to place the horse racing. It is a game that we played 9 years ago with Eric & Audrey and it was just as fun this time as it was back then.

At this point we were hungry so it was the perfect time to head to IN N OUT!

Thanks for taking one for the team, Eric.

That evening we spent walking up and down the strip, catching up of life, laughing and being silly. We grabbed dinner at Grimaldi's and watched the last two fountain shows at the Bellagio before calling it a night.

 On Sunday morning, Jed and I were off to explore a little more and found some fun new shops.

We even stopped at the M&M Store on our watch back and checked out there little 3-D Movie.

We met up with Eric and Audrey at Hash House A Go-Go. We had no idea how popular this place was or that it was on Food Network. There were a ton of people there but we had no back up plan and we were all starving so we waited the 45 minutes to get a table.

It was good, not great but part of that might have been because we were overly hungry and it was so freaking loud in there. Audrey's pancakes were definitely the highlight of the meal. After brunch, we took to the strip to find cheap tickets for a show that evening. After a lot of discussing, voting, revoting, many veto's and voting again, we landed on going to see The Improv at Harrah's.

Once we figured that out we spent our time back at the Bellagio checking out the garden's and the fountains during the day. (It just never gets old!)

And that evening we made out way to a pretty funny comedy show at Harrah's and tried our hand at Italian one more time. This time we went to Carmine's.

Dinner was hilarious! It started with ordering the House Special, being told it was sold out, then told that they had one left. We should have known when there was one last one that it was going to be a bad idea but we did it anyway. The appetizer we got was great and was followed by the House Special that we think they found in the back of the fridge or what they could piece together from others left over plates. But we ate and laughed and decided that we would try something other then italian tomorrow.

Monday was our last day in Vegas and it started like all the rest of the days, Jed and I headed out stupid early to explore and this time, Jed to play a little blackjack. He was quite successful and the experience was something we won't forget. 

One guy at the table would double down on all kinds of crazy things and was crazy successful. The other guy, had to have been still drunk from the night before, still nursing a beer and talking really crazy. After a little blackjack we met up with Eric & Audrey at a breakfast buffet in the Monte Carlo then headed back to the hotel to check out before heading to our Neon Museum appointment.

The Neon Museum was so so cool. When old casino's or shops close down or remodel and have old neon signs many of them donate them to The Neon Museum from them to restore them and display them. If you are ever in Vegas, it is a MUST!

And if you want to see something really cool, check out the view from Google Maps... 

Once we were done with our tour, we headed back to The D Las Vegas, to take one more shot at the horse races.

Before we knew it, it was time to find dinner and head to the airport, but not before one more unexpected adventure...

SO, we have not had the best of luck with finding good Italian food so we decided to try our hand at Mexican. We found this place on yelp that had 4.5 stars, one $ and was near by to we hurried over to Tacos El Gordo.

You could tell as soon as we pulled up to the restaurant that this was the real deal Mexican. As we headed in and checked out the menu, Audrey and I quickly realized we were in trouble. The first two things on the menu were "Beef Head" and "Beef Tongue". Eric and Jed both got something and off we went to the next place we could find, Los Huicholes.

The website looked like it was much more our speed but again, this one was a bust. So we decided, lets go with something that we know. We were all a little disappointed and broke almost every food, travel rule we had by heading to the closest mall to hit up La Salsa.

What we thought would be a sure thing was once again a bust and La Salsa had closed down at this mall and left the four us just laughing at how the last hour had played out. So finally we decided to head back down to the Vegas Strip and hit up a place that we knew would be there and would be good Mexican, La Salsa Cantina.

Once we finished dinner, it was time to head to the airport. We are just so glad that we were able to make the trip, spend time with AWESOME friends. We can't say thank you enough to them. The trip could not have come at a better time. 

The trip home was pretty uneventful until we got back to the car and had an inch of ice covering the car...

Definitely made us thankful for being about the get out of the cold from a few days but it took everything in us not to turn back around and take another flight back to some place warm. 

Once we got home, our new little duck had the chance to meet Little Hokie Bird. They are like two peas in a pod.