BEING A TOURIST IN VEGAS - DAY 2

April 3, 2016 

(Sunday)

 Since we both got 10 hours of sleep (haha) we were up at 7:45am to get ready for the day. 

We were going to Verve at 9am then straight to Rio to stay on the strip one night and be tourists. 

It felt SO good to see all of my Verve family!! I started attending Verve (http://vivalaverve.org) in 2013. It was recommended to me because my work schedule didn't allow me to go on Sundays and Verve had Monday night services. So when I attended for about the first year, I went on Monday nights. I absolutely LOVE it there and highly recommend it. 

After service, Janet and I drove to Rio to check in. 

I played with snapchat filters on the way....as you can see in the pic below.

 We made a stop at the Las Vegas Sign, before getting to Rio, since I didn't have a picture in front of this classic sign in the 4 years that I lived in Vegas. 

We were FOR SURE tourists this day.

I tell Janet to lift up her arm like mine and she says, "It is!"

Then we see THIS picture and start laughing so hard because her arm is NOT up!

After we took a couple of pictures, we headed to the Rio. It was about 11am. The line was SO long to check in. We were hungry and had planned to lay out at the pool until our room was ready. 

We ended up checking in our luggage and I had texted Mike, my friend and manager at the Cromwell, to see if he was there today so we could stop in and he was! 

So we ended up driving to the Crowell for breakfast at Giada's.

On our way into the Cromwell, I saw Mike and Hector (bellman) and chatted with them. Then I stopped at Bound and saw Mike Norrby, Greg (valet), and a few others and we all walked towards Giada's since we were heading that way. 

It felt good being at the Cromwell but I didn't miss working there. 

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed my time while I was there and have made some pretty great friendships but I'm happy where I am today.

When we were seated, we had a BEAUTIFUL window view and it was such a nice day that the windows were open.

It was expensive but really worth it!

The food was DELICIOUS !

I am a sucker for some red Sangria.

Kevin hears I was on property and surprised us for a visit upstairs! 

Kevin and his wife, Mandy, are so sweet.

(Bring the family for a trip to Orlando!)

Then Marina texted me and heard I was upstairs so she came and visited briefly. 

She told me she was pregnant and then a few days after I flew back to Florida, I was the first to know that she's having a baby girl! She was a little boy so he will be a big brother.

I'm so happy for her!!!

We saw Tony walking through so I stopped and bothered him a little.

Tony was my boss while I was at the Front Office; he's great fun!

After a very good breakfast and a small reunion with my work family, we got to Rio around 2:45pm. We still hadn't been informed that our room was ready so we went to the pool. It was hot and there was a bee flying around us so I called to find out about our room and guess what, it had BEEN ready, and no one contacted us. 

I understood what it was like, from the guest perspective, since I work at the front office.

I was only frustrated because we had dinner reservations on the other end of the strip. 

We got into our room around 3:30pm and immediately got ready for dinner.

Normally I take pictures of the room but I guess I didn't this time. We didn't have a view but it was a nice spacious room with a big bathroom.

We left the hotel around 5pm and took an uber to, "Top of the World", a well known restaurant inside of the Stratosphere Hotel.

Our reservations were at 6pm which was perfect because we were able to see Vegas in the daylight and saw the sunset and then the evening view.

Janet ordered a 16 oz. ribeye steak and I got a 9 oz. filet and we shared a potato puree with something on top. 

(I can't remember what the something on top was)

People can bungee off the top of the stratosphere so we saw people do that which was fun.

I was SO full after eating that I was uncomfortable and I look at Janet and say, "... Maybe if I throw up a little bit ..." and I was serious! 

We both just start laughing.

Don't worry, I didn't throw up but we definitely needed to walk off this food.

 Since we dined at the restaurant, we were able to go to the observation tower without having to pay extra.

 It was a little windy !

I wouldn't pay to go to the observation tower. There are SO many places on the strip to see the strip up high such as the High Roller, flying in/out of Vegas, Mandarin Bar, Drai's, Trump hotel, etc. 

 We can't take normal pictures. 

I take selfies whilst Janet uses the bathroom every other hour.

We took a cab to SLS since Janet didn't want to walk 20 steps to the hotel . . . 

We went to one of our favorite coffee spots inside SLS!

We've stayed at SLS twice before. It's a nice hotel, just in an inconvenient location.

We then took the monorail to Harrah's (since we had never been on the monorail) then walked to Venetian. We stopped at this bar called "Rock House" and it was dead but a ton of fun. They had a pool table, foosball and shuffle board. 

Janet won at shuffle board but not at foosball!

We walked to Cromwell to see some beautiful faces such as Linda! She was able to hang for a little so that was nice and there was a REALLY good singer at Bound that night. Linda took a phone call and walks away and Janet immediately turns to me and says, "Let's pretend like we're putting something in Linda's drink when she's walking back." I look at Janet and simply say, ". . . you are so mature."

We could NOT stop laughing because Janet was so serious about doing this and I'm looking at her like, are you really suggesting this right now?! Like, how old are we?! 

HILARIOUS

Gia transferred to Beverage! 

After we caught up with Linda and then waited for Gia to come in, we left back to the Rio to go to bed.

Such a fun tourist day for us. Though Janet has grown up in Vegas and I lived there the last 4 years, we hadn't done some of the "touristy" things so we enjoyed it.

I will say that when I now go back to visit, I do NOT want to go on the strip AT ALL.

UNLESS it's to see a show but that's it. 

It's just the SAME thing every single night and not fun to be around.

I love you, Las Vegas, but not enough to stick around! 

It was fun. Thank you for letting me use you !

#ForeverMemories