Tripping

Wow.

Just wow. What a freakin' fantastic trip.

We had 12 twelve people descend on Vegas this weekend. It was awesome.

There were any number of ways this trip could have gone wrong. For one thing, no one on the trip knew everyone else. There was one couple and J and I had never met, one couple we'd only met a couple of times, and the rest we knew pretty well, but we were the exception. Some folks only knew a couple of people on the trip. The potential for awkward silences, conflicting personalities, and group frustration was high. And none of that happened.

Instead, there are several former Vegas newbies who, by the end of the trip, were talking about making this an annual trip and friending each other on Facebook. These are signs of a very successful trip.

The down and dirty:

Thursday: Eight of us arrive in Vegas around 4pm. We eventually make it to the hotel, get checked in, and head to dinner around 7 Vegas time. Dinner decision for 12 was made extremely easily - hamburgers in a nearby casino (we all stayed at Bally's). Post dinner: wandered around some casinos a while, scoped out tables for J, and eventually found some decent video poker. I ended up playing video poker with one person or another until around 2:30 am, when I finally called it a day. Bear in mind, this is 4:30 in LR. Then I had a terrible time falling asleep, and finally crashed around 4 am, only to be woken by crushing nausea around 4:30. Damn jack and cokes. So I got about an hour's worth of sleep that night. Yay.

Friday: Crepes and coffee in the Paris' Creperie around 10, once my stomach settled a little. Our entire crew gathered at the Creperie and split up for the day. One group drove out to the Valley of Fire in the desert, and the rest of us stayed in town to do some shopping/gambling/casino ogling. We wandered around until about 4:00 that afternoon, going in the Bellagio, Aria, Monte Carlo, and some other casinos that I can't remember the names of.

Later that night, we all had tickets for Cirque du Soleil's "Love" based on the Beatles' music. Drinks beforehand with one group of friends, and then an absolutely fantastic sushi dinner after. Some of the best sushi I've had so far. We gambled a little after dinner, but I only made it to about 1:30 that night; that wasn't too bad considering how little sleep I was going on.

Saturday: More crepes (YUM), then the cabana that we had rented for the day by the Bally's pool. At first I thought it wouldn't be that great a thing, but every single person in our group spent a good bit of time down by the pool. In hindsight, I think we'll be much more likely to rent a cabana in the future if we take a group out there. It was a great way to spend Saturday. Some of the folks also got massages, some folks went for walks, some went for tacos, some played video poker, some read books by the pool, and some worshipped the sun for several hours. It was a long, lazy, removed-from-realiity afternoon.

Saturday afternoon, four of us played a poker tourney over at Bill's casino. The tourney started with 3 tables of 10 folks each - the gender split in these things always amuses me. I think there were a total of 4 women in the tournament, but I was the only female at the table I started on. Why oh why don't more women play this game? Anyway. All four of us playing made it down to the two table cut, and two of our crew bowed out somewhere after that. J and I made the final table (although I was on short stack and the first one out from that), but J finished 3rd and in the money! Woo hoo! Totally awesome for him. The payout was a pretty good return on his buy in, so this is a good thing. Once the poker tourney was over, everyone hit a nearby Thai place for dinner, and finished the trip off with some gambling.

But I have to say, one of my favorite memories of the trip was later that night. Two of the group had 6:30am flights on Sunday morning, so their plan was to just stay up all night, rather than sleep 2 hours and get woken up at an absurdly early hour to get to the airport. So 5 of us, including the couple with the insanely early flight, played video poker and drank until about 1am, when we all decided to go to the Sugar Factory, a 24 hour dessert place. Oh. My. God. The chocolate there was heavenly.  Chocolate fondu, eclairs, "frozen hot chocolate" - I only wish I could have eaten more. We were all loopy from lack of sleep and alcohol, and the conversation was all kinds of goofy. I haven't laughed that much in forever.

In all honesty, it felt like a charmed trip. With 12 people involved, many of whom who were meeting for the first time, I was a bit concerned that we'd have personality conflicts and other issues. Never happened. It's one of the few times I've really not been ready to leave Vegas - I didn't even lose that much gambling! Funny what happens when there's so much other stuff going on. J didn't have that problem, though - his Sunday morning gambling session kicked his butt, so he was ready to come home. Ah well. It was a nearly perfect trip.