Las Vegas!

What happens in Vegas...?! Euh, not that much actually when you're visiting as a couple, apart from eating, lazing by the pool and a little bit of gambling.

It's never been a big dream of me to see Vegas. It definitely was Benoit's idea to spend four days in gambler's paradise because he wanted to practice his poker skills. But when I saw the hotel he'd booked, my prejudices about Vegas kind of faded. Four days of sleeping in a king size bed (with at least six pillows), our own bathroom and a swimming pool is more than heaven after 17 days in the Jucy van. For those starting to wonder about our budget: hotel rooms in Las Vegas are ridiculously inexpensive, especially this time of year and we stayed in a four star hotel that was way cheaper than your average shabby roadside motel.

Las Vegas is a mid size city with about half a million inhabitants but all tourists want to see is THE STRIP, the area that has all the bigger than big hotels, casinos and shopping malls. As we're not different from all the other Vegas first-timers, we didn't really leave the strip during our stay. (Except for a trip to the Grand Canyon, about which I'll tell you in the next post.) I even had trouble leaving the hotel some days; yes I was that happy about having our own space for a while! Benoit signed up for some poker tournaments, won 130 dollar in the first one and was able to finance  some more games. But his luck turned and the other tournaments sent him back to the hotel empty-handed.

About every hotel in Vegas has its own casino with poker room and a bunch of slot machines and you should see the people playing there; lots of old ladies with big blond hairdos, long painted nails and cheetah blouses, cigarette in one hand, the other hand frantically pulling the  handle. It's just hilarious! We tried the slots once too but didn't really get into it.

We did get into eating though, very much! Lots of hotels offer (again) ridiculously cheap and very decadent lunches, champagne brunches or dinner and we so took advantage of that! We ate like crazy even though there was no way we could keep up with some of those huge Americans!