Our last day in Vegas we still had most of the day and our plan for the day was to hang around the resort and pool and finally get to the Welcome to Vegas sign that we are right beside that we kept putting off, then head to the airport at 4:30pm for our 6:30pm flight.
Before going to the hotel, I read reviews and recommendations from other people who has stayed at Mandalay and this was a common heads up - that the room coffee is $4.50. That's over $5 Canadian for a keurig kind of coffee! So I came prepared with instant coffee so we had something to get us through getting ready (until we could make it to the Starbucks downstairs!).
Instant coffee is foul. I don't get how people drink it for enjoyment (maybe its purely for caffeine like in this case...). We had some the first morning (no kettle - just hot water from the tap) and found it was awful so took some sugar from dunkin donuts on the way to the Grand Canyon. And the sugar in the raw from Starbucks. We both hate sugar in coffee... that's how good this coffee was.
We fixed up some drinks in our room before heading out to the Welcome to Vegas sign. We dropped our bags off at the reception in the morning because we had to check out at 11am but needed these floaties for our pool day. Solution: they came with us for our adventure to the sign! This was our first stop of the day.
All the randomness in one picture. Since we had the floaties with us, might as well get a picture with them too.
It actually took longer to get to the sign than we thought. Probably a 15 minute walk from our hotel. There were people waiting in a huge long line to get a picture with the photographer that is apparently paid to do this but we didn't want to wait so we took a few quick shots and left before the line barely moved.
After getting back to the hotel, we headed straight to the pool area. We decided we would either try the Moorea - the adult pool, or the beach club. We decided on the beach club because we got in for free and I could drink for free until 2pm and Alesy got his first drink free. We realized that "free" is used lightly because Aleksy's drinks after that were $36 american (seriously).
Funny thing... after carrying our floaties all the way to the sign, they made us get rid of them to get into the club!!
Having a free drink in our spot by the pool by the dj stage! Apparently some big names play at the day club too!
When we first got there, it was so dead we didn't even know what to do because all the booths were reserved, we didn't know where to sit. We asked the bartender. Newbies clearly. But we got a spot and slowly it filled up and people started dancing - pool party!
The drinks may have been $36, but after all those free ones, you just had to keep the party going and we ended up buying 3 total (sharing the other 2). That's around $150 Canadian.. for 3 drinks!! But we made new friends and had such an awesome afternoon. My friend Helen in the middle was with us for most of the afternoon and the guy on the right was from Canada!
Everyone told us we were crazy when they asked when we were leaving Vegas and we told them in an hour. But we manged to leave the pool on time and headed to get our luggage and catch a cab to the airport.
We grabbed a taxi and told him about the previous tax who ripped us off and this guy didn't go the long way!
We got to the airport and checked our bags in, I dressed into warmer clothes then Aleksy got stopped at customs for his sunscreen. After an afternoon of drinking, this was all a very smooth process.
When Aleksy was stopped, I made a mission to get a coffee and didn't notice he was stopped. But when we reunited, we grabbed some food at Carls Jr - I didn't even realize that we skipped lunch (and pretty much skipped breakfast except a banana, some rice cakes and chocolate covered almonds that were in the room). They had lettuce warpped burgers too! This is our new love.. we had these for supper 2 days ago too (homemade).
We boarded our plane (and apparently missed the first call for boarding but still made it in plenty of time) and switched our seats to the very last 2 with a family that wanted to be together. Worked out great because we were by ourselves and no one behind us. It was a quick 2 hour max flight to Calgary with a transfer in Calgary at 12:30am and another 3 hours afters that - the transfer was so quick I didn't even have time to grab a vending machine water.
We slept the whole time from Calgary to Toronto (as best you can on an airplane) and then after hitting a Timmies for breakfast and a large coffee and the 2 hour drive back to London we exhaustedly picked Logan up at 9am from Nana and Dziadek's. I was sooo excited but would have been even more excited if I had slept more! Goober was walking down the street with his Nana and I attacked him as soon as I saw him. He was so cute and excited to see me!
Naps were had by both me and Aleksy on Friday - Aleksy had 2 actually but still we participated in all Easter activities planed for the weekend!
Vegas was the fastest vacation ever! Flew by and the 2 things that we wanted to do but literally could not fit in were a show - we stopped on the Wednesday to check at the kiosks for discount tickets but there were no shows available (it was already about 8pm when we checked which meant some already started) and also a Vegas night club. So happy with all that we did manage to fit in though!
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