About to board our early morning flight home from Las Vegas, I turned to Travel Gal and said, "With the possible exception of New Orleans, I think that the Las Vegas airport has the highest percentage of drunk fliers boarding planes." And I thought that we looked bad . . .

Forty-four hours in Vegas.  Amazing how much damage you can do to yourself in forty four hours.

Back in early December, our friends from Australia sent an email asking us to join them for part of their American holiday.  Just where? Vegas, baby!  No need to think about it - a quick YES before we even looked at our schedules.  Travel Boy would have to stay home this time, as this is NO place for a 9 year old.

As we landed in Vegas, we were welcomed to this huge, sprawling desert city with. . . with . . . wait for it . . . rain.  Lots of rain.  Rain that the streets of Vegas were never designed to handle.  Rain that brought out umbrella vendors, but also thankfully brought in most of the seedy guys handing out 'hooker' cards and peep show coupons.

Travel Gal and I checked into the MGM Grand.  Huge.  Bigger than huge. Ginormous?  Our first task was to find the correct bank of elevators for our floor.  We then had to navigate four impossibly long corridors to determine which one held our room.  Speaking of the room, it was unremarkable inside except for a nice view towards other mega-hotels on the strip - "Doesn't the skyline of New York look romantic in the fog?"

Rain-filled skies, crazy-slippery sidewalks, and flooded intersections limited our walking excursions to a handful of hotels and casinos around the intersection of Tropicana Ave. and Las Vegas Blvd.  Shops in all the hotels were getting a premium for umbrellas.  We grabbed a $5 umbrella on the elevated walkway to the NY NY Casino by a street 'entrepreneur' holding a bag full of them.  At that cost, it was disposable, but at least it kept the top third of our bodies somewhat dry.

Now, Vegas isn't for everyone.  Personally, I will admit that it's not my favorite place. I'm not really a 'Vegas Guy'. A bit too seedy, billboards too suggestive, and way too smoky - if you think less people smoke nowadays, just spend a minute in a Vegas casino. Makes you want to throw away your clothes.  It was remarkable to me that, walking down the street, arm in arm with my wife, that those nasty street vendors still tried to hand me cards for prostitutes.  The sad thing is this: there are so many people handing out these cards, that they must actually work. 

The Vegas Strip is not a place to find deals.  Lunch (regrettably in a hotel food court) was OK but not cheap.  Drinks are really expensive, unless you discover, as we did, that sitting at a penny slot machine gets you free beers!  Woohoo.  Free drinks made us feel like big rollers ("I'm betting 18 cents at a time!").

We met our Aussie friends at Happy Hour at one of the MGM restaurants for some drinks and laughs. We decided to tough out the rain and walk to Caesar's Palace for dinner.  Casino was full, shops were bustling, and restaurants had lines. Jeez, this is a Wednesday!!  Dinner under Ceasar's changing skies was unremarkable, but we had lots of laughs.  Rain forced us into a taxi back to the MGM, where our tired friends called it a night.  I was ready for an all-nighter, but even Travel Gal pooped out on me and crashed.  And I am usually the boring one . . .

My normal early morning wakeup had me searching the hotel for one of many Starbucks.  While Travel Gal slept, I meandered around the casino. Not sure if I was more shocked or disgusted to see just how many people were gambling, smoking and drinking heartily at 7:00a.  Just me and my coffee . . . made me feel a bit like a lightweight, but I was OK with that.

With 45 minutes remaining before the Breakfast Buffet was converted to a Lunch Buffet, I decided to wake Travel Gal and get her day started.  We had never indulged in a Vegas buffet, and since we had a hotel credit (bonus for booking online), we decided to blow it all on a big breakfast.  Now this buffet, ladies and gentleman, is America at its absolute best and worst.  Variety to make even the biggest glutton blush.  If you craved it, they probably had it.  Unfortunately, huge variety leads to huge excess, and I would guess that the average plate carried to a table weighed in at 5 pounds.  We did our best damage to the buffet and walked away with inevitable regrets and a vow to walk it all off.

Next to the MGM are a bunch of shops, including an M&M store and Coca Cola store.  We meandered through a tacky souvenir shop laughing at the incredible diversity of items that can be stamped with Las Vegas on it.  The far section of the store had what we would call an 'adult section' with hilariously inappropriate items that had us laughing throughout the day.  As shocked as we were of the junk that people bought, we were actually regretting not purchasing some of the funnier items we had seen!

Despite flooded intersections and very slippery sidewalks, we huddled under our rent-a-umbrella to check out some nearby hotels and casinos.  Lets not kid ourselves - these hotels are enormous, and what looks to be directly next door is actually a really long walk.  New York New York remains one of our favorite hotels, as it actually has some character.  Some of the older hotels have the tacky decorations and lights that you think of when you imagine Vegas.  After a while, all of the casinos look alike.  Same games.  Same cigarette smoke.  Same seediness.  The only good thing was our frequent stops at penny slot machines in order to get our free beers.

An Irish Bar at NY NY was the Happy Hour meeting place with our Aus friends.  A few drinks and hilarious laughs.  We walked through NY NY, then through Excalibur, and then Luxor.  Our trendy dinner at Luxor was quite good.  More drinks, more laughs.  They went to a magic show, while we explored.  We snuck onto an elevator at Luxor to see what it was like to take an angled ride along the edge of the pyramid (very strange feeling).  More penny machines = more free beer.

After their show, our friends met us at Studio 54 at the MGM.  I had been here before while at a conference, and thought this would be a good site for them.  Barely dressed dancing girls gyrating on elevated platforms. Loud music, video screens, rock-concert-quality lights, smoke and strobe lights.  Oh yeah.  Travel Gal couldn't stop watching the scantily clad dancers, and later kept asking, "Just what happened to make them end up here, doing that?".  Really expensive drinks helped our dance moves.  Fascinating people-watching.  Funny stuff. 

Rolling out of the club, we decided for one more nightcap (which turned into several more . . .).  At one of the bars, our friends informed us that sitting behind me was none other than Tom Jones. Yup.  The "Its Not Unusual" Tom Jones.  Lets just say that the billboard photos throughout the casino advertising his live show were taken some time ago.  Tom's not a young guy, however, his platinum blond table mate certainly was.  When they left, I wasn't sure if people were watching Tom, or his friend's really short skirt.  We inevitably had some inappropriate jokes at Tom's expense, including a Google voice search on my iPhone - - "How old is Tom Jones?"  (69, if anyone's interested)

At 4:00a, we began to fear our 6:00a wake-up call for our flight.  Laughs, hugs, and good-nights.  I would have powered through and just gone to the airport sleepless, but Travel Gal really wanted that two hours of sleep.  Which brings us to our realization that, even after many free beers and even more expensive drinks, big meals, way-too-little sleep, loads of laughs, and unfortunate Tom Jones songs stuck in our heads, we still looked better than most of our fellow travelers sitting at the gate, waiting to board the flight in the hopes of quickly falling asleep.

We returned home slightly tired, slightly poorer, and slightly damaged.  Vegas was kinda fun.  Not sure I want to return any time soon, but we had great laughs.  Now we just want to shower and burn all of our clothes . . .