Las Vegas Part One - Pre Fire

It's going to have to be diary style again I think. It'll probably start quite detailed and get less and less so but i'll see how it goes.

Wednesday 23rd January - Work was odd. There were floods in Brighouse so the roads were busy and I had to go to Sowerby Bridge but halfway there the client rung to cancel then they emailed me all their queries which took most of my day to solve anyway. I left about 4 o'clock and Kate and I got the train to Manchester Airport from Huddersfield at about 7:15. I got to meet Kate's family who seemed a lively bunch, but very nice and welcoming towards me. It was then early to bed due to getting up before 6am for the flight.

Thursday 24th January - This would be my first ever flight so I was quite apprehensive about the whole thing. It was also to be a long day - 32 hours in total as we had to do 8 hours twice due to the time difference. We checked in at 6:45 and set off at 9:05 and landed in Vegas at 11:45 their time. The flight was a bit boring to be honest after 3 hours had passed and I didn't mind it so at last that's another life experience out of the way. I wonder why they don't just fly directly there rather than going through Greenland and Canada. It would be much quicker point to point! The in flight entertainment broke halfway there not helping my boredom but i did get to watch Ratatouille which was quite funny.

We got the Monte Carlo Hotel at 1:00 but couldn't check in until 3:00 so we took our first of many trips to the bar we were able to pour our own beer out of a "7 pinter" which was quite cool. Then we checked in, the room was nice. We had a meal in the bar afterwards. The first thing I noticed was that the portions were rather large!

Most of us (there's about 25 of us when i talk about "us") went down The Strip (the main road in Las Vegas) and watched the spectacular Bellagio Fountains which were quite amazing, rivalling the Eiffel Tower belonging to Paris Hotel behind it. It was also my first experience of girl selling Mexican men on the side of the street with the "flick flick thrust" of their calling cards. There were lots of them of all agesfrom 8 to 60 I'd say. We then went to Planet Hollywood where loads of hot girls were as it was Miss America there on Saturday and they were just settling into the surroundings. They knew they were hot and weren't afraid to show it. I went to bed about about 11:00 but some others stayed up drinking until about 7am!

Friday 25th January - I got up at 8:30 and entered the 9:00 poker tournament in the Monte Carlo Poker Room. This was my first live game - another experience i'm no longer scared of - however it didn't go well as i had 7-3 on the big blind, flopped 2 pair, but someone had J-7 and he hit a J on the river. I had no further luck and finished 25th out of 26 at about 9:40. I then played on some slots and lost. I was on my way back up to my room to sulk for an hour or so and to get my jumper, camera and phone before learning to play craps at 11:00 but I only got as far as the lift where I met Kate and Trish so I joined them for breakfast. It was an all you can eat thing. It got to just after 11:00 and I had eaten all I could so we were just about to go for our craps lesson when...