Vegas Baby!

With the year drawing to a close it's time to start thinking about New Year resolutions. I've decided I'm going to make at least 25% more money this year. I'm going to continue my diet which has thus far lost me 14lbs. But the one I am looking forward to more than any other is I am going to go back to Las Vegas.

My wife and I attended a convention in August and we had a great deal of fun in the five days we stayed there. We stayed at the disappointing Las Vegas Hilton which had a view of the amazing Wynn hotel from our window, which was about the only thing that impressed us about our hotel.

So I am planning to ensure that by Spring 2006 I will once again visit Sin City and take in the awesome sights and sounds that make this one of the most unique and amazing places on Earth.

Although I have only been one time, I am confident that if you had enough money you could spend an entire year exploring this city and still not see and do everything. Personally if I were a multi millionaire I would buy myself a home at Trump Towers and live in Las Vegas. I'd probably need to buy a second home out towards Reno to get away from the scary summer heat, but still I can quite see why rich people like to call Las Vegas home.

A small incident made our first trip to Las Vegas a little better than it could have been. As we were coming in to land the passenger next to me stuck up a conversation with me. He was born and raised in Vegas and had just come back from a tour in the US Army serving in Iraq. We talked about Vegas and he tried to point out some landmarks as we came in to land.

As we were sitting in the plane I called our useless hotel, the Las Vegas Hilton, and asked them if they had a shuttle to pick us up. They did not, of course, so I started talking to my wife about getting a cab.

When we were collecting our bags from the carousel the same guy from the plane came up to us and said, "You're in luck, my father is picking me up if you like we'll give you a ride to your hotel, save you a taxi fare." Now I've always been told not to accept candy or rides in cars from strange men so I thought about it for a second. But then it dawned on me that he might simply be a nice guy, and unless he actually murdered both me and my wife it would be pretty easy to trace him since the airline would surely know who had been sitting on the plane next to us.

So we accepted the ride and he and his elderly father proceeded to drive us slowly down the strip past as many hotels as they could before finally dropping us at ours. The gesture was so kind and afforded us a view of Las Vegas we might not otherwise have had. To this day I have no idea who this man was, but it is refreshing to meet a good honest person willing to do someone a favor for no reason other than to be a nice guy. Whoever he is, I wish him well.

Having done various research we've decided that we should stay at Caesars Palace this time. It appears to offer rooms at an almost reasonable rate, together with a very central location and lots of amenities. By the time we go they should have their new poker room open featuring two separate areas for ring and tournament games with a combined area of 14,500 sq ft. Sounds fun!

I am counting the days already. Which is hard to do since we've not set a date yet, but I'll be counting them anyway.