If Carlsberg did weddings... (yet another blog) **TRIP REPORT FINALLY COMPLETE**

[KarmaDope]

In McCarran now on way home - via LAX, cheers Joobs wife.

[Joobie538]

There will be a trip report up at some point but i have managed to upload our wedding dvd onto youtube!!!

[The_nun]

You both looked gorgeous.

Once again Congrates..xx

[KarmaDope]

A little teaser...

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[KarmaDope]

Now that I have sufficiently recovered from jet-lag, I bring to you part 1 of many... (also x-posted on APAT)

Day -1: Tuesday 15th November 2011, aka Running Around Like A Headless Chicken Day!

Before we start, I’d just like to point out that there is no better feeling than the anticipation of the trip of a lifetime, as I’m sure many of us who went to Vegas are aware. However, waking up on the day you’re supposed to be leaving having a million and one things to do…not so much fun! In her infinite wisdom, Joobs had decided that although we were leaving for London on the Tuesday, she was actually going to work on the Monday so she would get everything done before she left.

[   ] This happened.

Needless to say we were still in her work at 7.30pm on the Monday night trying to get everything done. This left Tuesday to sort out the house.  

And pack.

And get the train, complete with 3 suitcases, 1 wedding dress in a box and 1 wedding suit to London, at 2pm.

It got even more fun when Joobs disappeared to have her nails done before she left, which turned out to not be the best idea we’ve ever had! Somehow we managed to finish all the packing, make the house look tidy, get Joobs’ nails done, sort out money for exchanging and leave by 2pm. Because we live 5 minutes away from the train station (under normal circumstances) I was in no uncertain terms told that no, we were not getting a cab to the train station. Needless to say this sure was a good idea! 15 minutes it took to walk to the train station, and Joobs still has the bruises from the wedding dress box hitting her legs!

Once we got to the train station we had enough time to get through the barriers (tickets already sorted out well in advance) and thankfully the train was due to depart from the closest platform. Win number 1. Win number 2 was when we got on the train. I’d booked a table seat for the laptop, and naturally so had half the world and we were supposed to be sharing our table all the way to London. We were the first ones on the train (started at Chester) and so Joobs had commandeered the table for our use. The couple who had booked the other 2 seats glanced at their seats, then Joobs’ maniacal look, then the wedding dress box proudly sat on the table and realised that the dress box wasn’t getting moved.
 
And left. Awesome.

Train journey was a doddle and we arrived into London Euston right on time. Joobs decided she was hungry and I had to go to London Victoria to change some money at a very good exchange rate (I got 1.60 whereas in Chester I was lucky to get 1.55) so I left her at Euston with the luggage and quickly zipped to/from Victoria to change the cash. Sadly, by the time I got back to Euston it was clearly rush hour on the Tube and the journey to Travelodge Heathrow Central was a nightmare. We had to take a train from Euston to Green Park and then Green Park to Hounslow West (well, some crappy place out there anyway). Euston to Green Park wasn’t that bad, just hot. Green Park to Hounslow? That was just horrible. I had trouble breathing at one point, and we were stood on the Tube for the whole 45 minute journey, complete with bags jammed against us. Just to cap things off, there was an old, unkempt looking labourer guy stood against the ventilation window. When we left Green Park, he farted. The whole carriage turned green. I still, to this day, never want to smell anything like that again. It was worse than anything I’ve ever smelt before and I’m struggling to describe it without heaving. Needless to say he carried on doing this all the way until he got off.

At Hounslow West.

FML.

FML.

FOL!

Finally managed to get off the train only to find that there was no lift and we had to lug all the suitcases and luggage up some stairs. Just what you need when you have been travelling for 5hrs! Eventually get them up the stairs and find a bus to the hotel. Bus drops us straight outside the Travelodge and 2 very very exhausted Vegas Vengeance travellers collapse in the hotel, not before grabbing some food and watching England beat Sweden 1-0. Quick shower and then bed, although stupidly excited about what is to come the next day…

[KarmaDope]

Day 1 – Wednesday 16th November 2011 aka **** me, we’re off to Vegas day!

Needless to say, not very much sleep was had on the Tuesday night. Acceptable, I guess, when you’re both as excited as a child at Christmas. Anyway, both of us were up by 7am which meant we had a lot of time to kill before our flight at 3.40pm.

Enter the BA Business Lounge.

I’ve probably told the whole world by now, to treat Joobs before we even headed off, I’d saved up enough money to book us Premium Economy seats. No sitting with the cattle here, thankyouverymuch. I had no intention of sitting in PE though, as I’d also saved/bought 50,000 BA Miles and used said miles to upgrade our seats to Club World. One of the (many) perks of this was access to the BA Galleries Lounges at LHR. So we rolled up to the airport at 8am, quickly through check-in and off to Security.

Who sent us back to check-in. Uh oh…

A little part of me was worried that for some unknown reason, we weren’t gonna be allowed to fly. Game over. However, another little part of me was secretly hoping that we’d scored a cheeky free upgrade to First Class. Sadly, it was neither, all that they needed to do was confirm that we had ESTA’s, which we did, and it was back to Security. Through Security like a breeze, until my belt broke as I was putting it back on. Oops. Make it to the Lounge and settle in with breakfast. We were lucky enough to manage to get some window seats with plugs so out came the laptop. Sat online browsing for most of the morning, occasionally getting up to get more food/drink.

We had a lovely view from the lounge…

Click to see full-size image.

Click to see full-size image.

Another perk of the lounge was that BA had an Elemis Travel Spa downstairs. All ticket holders were entitled to a free treatment on the day of travel. Well, was Julie turning down a free treatment? Hell no! So we both headed to the Spa to book our treatments and I made the fateful mistake of saying to her “I’ll have whatever you have”. She decides to have a facial. Awesome. Well, I don’t back down and despite Joobs giving me an out, I end up having the facial. Not something I’ll probably have again but it was pretty nice. The best part though was the massage chair. The Spa had the latest new-fangled chair and it gave you a Shiatsu Massage for 15 minutes whilst you had your treatment. OMG, I want one. They were HEAVEN! Never felt so relaxed in my entire life!

After this, time flew and next thing we knew, we were headed to the gate. Terminal 5 is ridiculously huge, so much so that we had to take a train from the main terminal to the gate itself, which was in a separate building. I’d booked seats for the Upper Deck after reading about it online, and we were lucky enough to be the first onboard headed upstairs (and yes, it is a very nice feeling getting on a plane and being directed upstairs ) so we were able to get a few pics.

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Not the best view of Sunset...

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We were lucky in that our flight was being buffeted by tailwinds so we were only in the air for about 9hrs 15mins rather than the expected 10hr plus. Not that much turbulence which helped, especially when they brought the food! Pics are below…

Starter:

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Main:

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Dessert:

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{Dessert was that nice, we forgot to take a pic before...oops!}

I tried to sleep on the plane but was just way, way too excited so ended up getting the lappy out and playing Football Manager whilst listening to music for most of the journey. Joobs had the nicer seat and was able to get a bit more sleep, but the best part of the journey was afterwards when the Captain invited us up to the flight deck – and you can see the results!



Landed at McCarran on time but because of the aforementioned trip to the flight deck, we were greeted with a mile long queue for immigration. Thankfully the queue only took about 30 mins to get through and we were soon headed for The Strip! Got to Bally’s without being longhauled (infact, we weren’t longhauled at all during the whole trip) and the first people we see when we walk through Bally’s front door?

RichEO and Jon MW.

Welcome to Vegas.

We get checked in eventually at Bally’s and manage to score a 73rd floor room with a view without greasing anybody’s palms. Pretty nice view as well, you can see for yourselves…

Click to see full-size image.

Click to see full-size image.

Click to see full-size image.

Head out for a quick exploration of Vegas and Rich drives us to Venetian. Wander around Venetian taking it all in before hitting Harrah’s to give people some phones and catch up with Shogun and HOLDorFOLD who arrived the day before. Stand around chatting for a bit before feeling really tired and head back to crash.

We made it.

[The_nun]

Loving the thread. Great pics.

[Laxie]

A week between updates?!  WTF man?!  This just isn't good enough.  Get yer act together and put the whole trip report up or, at this rate, it'll be November 2012 before we've read it all!

[Girgy85]

A week between updates?!  WTF man?!  This just isn't good enough.  Get yer act together and put the whole trip report up or, at this rate, it'll be November 2012 before we've read it all!

Prolly busy making babies.

[KarmaDope]

A week between updates?!  WTF man?!  This just isn't good enough.  Get yer act together and put the whole trip report up or, at this rate, it'll be November 2012 before we've read it all!

LOL, this isn't a bog standard trip report you know. A special occasion means a special report. Worth waiting for, IMO. I've already written nearly 1600 words according to Microsoft Word, and that's what you have already had.

[paulhouk03]

Wow this is amazing

When u gonna start having kids and how many

[smashedagain]

Wow this is amazing

When u gonna start having kids and how many

pretty sure conception photos wont  be on this blog

[Laxie]

A week between updates?!  WTF man?!  This just isn't good enough.  Get yer act together and put the whole trip report up or, at this rate, it'll be November 2012 before we've read it all!

LOL, this isn't a bog standard trip report you know. A special occasion means a special report. Worth waiting for, IMO. I've already written nearly 1600 words according to Microsoft Word, and that's what you have already had.

Excuses, excuses.  I could do 1600 words in me sleep so just get on with it.  Where's Joobs?  She'll back me up on this.

[KarmaDope]

Day 2 – Thursday 17th November 2011 aka The Organising Day

I can think of worse views to wake up to…

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So we wake up, annoyingly, at 5am after having approximately 350 minutes sleep. Still dark, I decide to head out for a quick walk/exploration, and spend half an hour just wandering around Bally’s/Paris taking it all in. Quite possibly the best feeling ever. Joobs decided that for her first breakfast in Vegas, she wanted to go to the culinary masterpiece that was…Denny’s.

I can hear you all saying “WTF?” at your screens right now.

Anyway, we head to Denny’s and have a surprisingly nice breakfast. After this it was time for one of the most important trips of the whole holiday – go to get the Marriage Licence. Jump on the Deuce outside the Flamingo - $7 for a 24hr pass, absolute bargain. Manage to score a front seat on the top deck, which was excellent for the views of the casinos up and down the Strip. Sadly, dumbass here forgot the cameras. One reoccurring theme throughout this trip, we didn’t take enough pictures. Will rectify this on the next visit (November 2012/2013, one of them!) but for now, I’ll just borrow pics everyone else took

Arrive downtown and it was a 5 minute walk to the office where you get the licence. I had filled out a pre-application form online and thankfully the queue for this particular desk was empty, so we were in and out in 5 minutes, $60 lighter but holding a marriage licence. Walk back to the Bonneville Transit Center (bus station, for us Brits) and straight back on the Deuce to the Strip.  During all the travelling Joobs had broken a nail and had to get it fixed before the wedding obv so we wandered around the casinos for a bit before she headed down to a spa/salon and got her nail fixed for $10 + tax + tip. The whole lot only cost £30 ffs!

Whilst she was getting this done, I needed to go get a simcard for my phone as I needed an American number to give to the chapel before the wedding, so I hopped on an internet terminal and found out that there was an AT&T store just down Flamingo Rd, which was the road Bally’s was on, coincidentally. Head onto Flamingo Rd and decide to walk to the next bus stop then jump on the bus. Have you ever walked somewhere by bus stops? Basically, you walk to the bus stop, realise you can’t be arsed waiting and keep walking, stopping at bus stops to see if a bus is coming and if not, keep walking. Well we did this. ONE AND A HALF MILES LATER 2 very tired Vegas Virgins realise that everything is a hell of a lot further away and finally arrive. Buy the sim card (- another $60) and decide we are getting a cab back.

Make it back to the hotel and throw down in the hotel room for half an hour before going to the Venetian to see how my horse is doing. He’s running good (what do you expect, it’s Dominic Kay ffs!) and we leave him to it as it’s 3.30pm and we have to go to the Chapel of the Flowers for our official pre-wedding meeting.

Now it’s getting very real.

Arrive at the Chapel on time and I just sit there in a daze really as Joobs organises it all whilst I apparently look very green and sick. Fill out some forms and give them the documents so we can legally get married, before heading back to the Strip. Head to Harrah’s to meet everyone else as they had all arrived on the infamous Virgin flight. Off the top of my head I think I was chatting to Shogun and a couple of others in the Poker Room at Harrah’s whilst Joobs headed out to Carnival Court where all the drunks were. Eventually decided we were hungry and hit the Imperial Palace for the first of many visits to the best restaurant in Las Vegas.

Hash House A Go-Go.

I’d bought a voucher from restaurant.com online which gave us $25 off the bill, caveat was we had to spend $50. Easy when there’s 3 of us. What we didn’t realise is that we would have struggled to eat one meal between the 3 of us! Joobs ordered a salad, a good decision in the end!

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Jon MW dined with us and made the mistake of ordering this:

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And my plate was bigger.

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After managing to eat about a quarter of it, we eventually gave up and staggered downstairs in a food coma. Headed back to Harrah’s and left Joobs there as Jon and I headed to McCarran, because I had to meet my mother off her plane (landed at 9pm) and I had no clue where I was going, and MW did so I dragged him with me. Stuck $20 in a Wheel of Fortune slot whilst waiting and won $50, first win of the trip. Mum’s plane lands and we quickly grab her bags and head to Harrah’s. She checks in, and heads to bed after a 17hr trip. (As an aside, thanks to a monumental cock-up by the check-in girl, they ended up charging $1200 to my card! Needless to say that got wiped VERY quickly…)

Pretty knackered by this point, so we head back to Harrah’s and find the last stragglers (read: Laxie) in the Poker Room. She’s hammered and heading off to bed so we decide to do the same thing and head back to Bally’s, pausing to run the odd $20 through a slot machine before heading to bed.

[Laxie]

Excuuuuuuuse me?!  It was jet lag ffs!  You can join M Dubya in the corner now.