Tony and Petra's Travels: What happens in Vegas...gets posted on here

Despite our hotel being the tallest tower in Vegas we seemed to have trouble finding it, ending up driving up and down the strip which is not a quick affair seeing as the lights seem to stay on red for about 10 minutes at a time. Gave us a chance to soak up the illuminations which are just plain crazy. We arrived at our hotel and good things started happening already. We managed to get a room upgrade for next to nothing and ended up on the 19th floor at the Stratosphere hotel with a view looking out over Vegas.

Our first day in Vegas was Petra's birthday. After spending the day sunning by the pool (in late november) we decided to go have a birthday meal date. Obviously there was no better place than Hooters! Surprisingly the food was pretty damn good and cheap. We had to get the wings as they are famous for them. 15 sauces to choose from. Found it pretty funny that there were so many kids there especially the large group of 10 year old boys that walked in. They were loving the waitresses.

After hooters we went back to the hotel to meet up with some people we had contacted on couch surfing. We met Tim and Rik our new dutch friends at the tower and after buying small cans of budweiser for $7 each we decided to go somewhere cheaper. Another couch surfing friend took us to a bar outside the strip that had karaoke and $2 pints. We could put up with a bit of crap singing for drinks that cheap. With drinks flowing nicely and a bit of dancing with some 40 year old party animals we left with the two dutch guy to head for the strip.

First stop was Bills Saloon where Petra found her love of blackjack as well as the free drinks brought round by the waitresses. Despite Riks expert guidance Petra managed to lose her money in the next casino although found an amazing tactic for winning it all back without having to gamble. Whining about losing loudly and drunkenly until someone feels sorry for you and gives you everything you have just lost back. Yes this did happen.

Overall the night was a huge success. Lots of casino fun, even a quickie at the legendary Ceasar's Palace, which is totally not designed for cheap traveller fun. Minimum bet for the bar machines $30 so our tactic of pretending were playing until we get served free drinks didn't go as planned and we ended up paying crazy money for the drinks we accidentally ordered. Do note that this does work in most places though. Hence getting hammered in Vegas is very cheap.

The original plan was to leave Vegas the next day as we had only booked the hotel for 2 nights. Somehow Vegas sucked us in for an extended stay and despite the worst hangover ever experienced the next day we somehow ended up repeating the birthday night, but unfortunately cannot write too much about it as none of us remember much. All we know is that we didn't get back to the hotel until 6am the next day. For this I blame the best 24h drunk food selection including fatty diners all over the strip. Check-out was at 11am so you can only imagine how fun it was to wake up and pack our backs. Hangover breakfast/lunch was enjoyed at the infamous Señor Frog's, where the food was rather disappointing. So if you wanna go there, make sure you only go there to drink. Saying goodbye to our new crazy friends, we finally hit the road heading to Utah. More on the national parks in the next post.