Vegas baby!

Today (Friday) started ridiculously early: we were up BEFORE the crack of dawn, to watch the sun rise over the Grand Canyon. Unsurprisingly, only 6 of us out of the 13 made it for sunrise and we were all girls! Greg was far too alive for 4.45am as he drove us out to Yavapai Point, with a blanket wrapped around him and over his head somewhat resembling ET. The sunrise was definitely worth seeing, the light over the canyon was beautiful the way it changed as the sun rose and the way our cameras picked up the rays of light was pretty cool. Needless to say, when the sun finally showed his face, we were about ready for bed again. Kitty wrapped her sleeping bag around her on our walk back to the van, which highly amused me as she looked like a giant pink slug! Once back at camp, we went straight back into our tent to sleep for a couple of hours whilst five people in the group were doing a helicopter tour of the canyon.

After packing up our tent, with much help from Robin since we are pathetic girls, we all piled into the van for our final journey... To VEGAS!! Somehow, it had worked out that Kitty, Andre and I were in the front seat, the best place to be on long journeys. Bonus! Part of the journey went along the original Route 66 so we made a quick stop to take photos. We also stopped for lunch at a little burger joint on Route 66 which was really cool. The walls were covered with photos and business cards of people who had passed by and eaten there and the outside eating area was littered with old Route 66 signs and random vintage items. The burgers were also excellent and the chips came with a token potato smiley face, something all the Scandinavians couldn't understand why we got so excited about!

On the last leg of the journey it was time to wack the party tunes on in preparation for rolling into Vegas in style, so we put my iPod on and blasted out some Snoop, Kanye and whatever else was on my dj playlist from Hannah and Holly's 18th. It went down very well! Along the way Greg pointed out some things we might appreciate looking at, such as the Colorado River and Lake Mead, and was highly amused by our reaction which was 'ah that's nice, let's get to Vegas' 'very pretty... Vegas Vegas Vegas' etc. Suddenly, we came over the top of a hill and there was Vegas laid out in front of us in the middle of the desert. What a sight!

Once in the city, we drove all the way down the strip, which was interesting to see in daylight. Greg grew up just outside Vegas, lives in Vegas and worked in hotels for years so was a very knowledgeable guide as we slowly made our way down the strip to the hotel we were staying at, the Stratosphere. If you look at a city scape picture of Vegas, the Stratosphere is the tallest building, and shaped like a needlepoint sticking up into the sky. Very cool! The hotel itself is huge and our room was swish to say the least!

This is only part of our day and we thought our night out deserved its own blog so if you want to discover what happened in Vegas you'll find it on the next blogpost...