Day 22 – Seattle to Las Vegas
Today we headed to downtown Seattle.
In the morning we hit the Pike Place Markets for a few hours. This is where you might have seen the fish mongers throw the Salmon around. We were just in time to see them through a few around which will look great on video – but we forgot to take any stills to share with you at the moment 🙁
Pike Place is one of the better markets we have been to. It is pretty big, discount however the quality of the goods is top notch. Kerrina could not get over how cheap and how pretty the flowers were.
Across the road from the Pike Place Market is home to the very first Starbucks store. We poked our head in for a quick look – because Pike Place has some heritage regulations they can’t change the store too much, so surprisingly it is a Starbucks that is actually a good coffee shop, instead of those cookie cutter Starbucks you get in Australia.
After spending the morning downtown we jumped onto a ferry to do a cruise on Lake Washington. They call it the “Bridges and Billionaires” cruise, because you see a couple of bridges, and the homes of Seattle’s wealthiest – including Bill Gates (house below), a heap of Microsoft executives, the guy who started Amazon.com Jeff Bezos, the guy that started Costco, Starbucks, and more. It was a pretty nice cruise, and gave spectacular views of Mt Rainier in the distance.
After the cruise we made our way back to the hotel in the middle of nowhere for the last time 🙂
Today we backed our bags to head to VEGAS!!!
Seattle was a bit of a pain in the behind with regard to what our Travel Agent booked for us. They were thoughtful enough to book a transfer for us, page just forgot to book one that actually would pick us up from our hotel (slight technicality!). After a phone call back to Australia, psychotherapist and some rather strong negotiation (Paul told them what was going to happen)… we hoped into our Corporate/Town Car and headed for the airport.
Only Kerrina got randomly selected to get the special treatment by the TSA… however waiting in “the Pen” is something we have got used to on this trip.
The flight from Seattle to Vegas was pretty uneventful. There were some great views out the left side of the plane when we flew over the top of Mt Rainier. Pity we didn’t have easy access to a camera because it was spectacular.
We landed in Vegas around lunch time, and then spent about 40 minutes taxiing to our gate. It was unbelievable how busy the airport was when we arrived – there were 11 aircraft lined up to take off, and a constant stream coming in to land.
We found our bags after our baggage carousel was changed without telling anyone, and headed straight to the strip! We stayed at Planet Hollywood which has to be one of the better located casinos in Vegas – directly across the road from the Bellagio.
We arrived, dropped our bags and then started to explore. One of the first places we came across was the Fat Tuesday Dacquiri Bar. Now these are not your standard Treasury or Jupiters Casino dacquiris – these were strong and about 5 or 6 times the size.Â
Once we had a few drinks we went to book our tour to the grand canyon and a show, before heading into the casino proper and checking out the scene. Did you know that there is an eBay pokie now! We tried it – it was pretty stupid (maybe because we didn’t win anything…)
That night we dressed up and headed out to check out the Bellagio Fountain at night – it was a pretty impressive show, however a lot shorter than we thought it would be.Â
After the fountain we went back inside to the fancy resturant at Planet Holywood – KOI. Kerrina reliably informs me that a lot of the hollywood celebrities hang out there. There were none this night, but we still had a great Japanese meal.
Finally to end the night we hired a stretch limo for an hour to drive us up and down the strip. We highly recommend it – it was only $45 bucks, and a lot cheaper than the night tours you can do. We saw all the sights, like the Las Vegas sign, the wedding chapels, all the casinos (and even the dodgy ones down the end of the strip).
Once we were back at the hotel we pretty much collapsed after a huge day of travel and sightseeing.
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