The good news: The house is almost complete. Yay! (If you're a follower of The Pink Pineapple Blog on Facebook, I've been sharing photos of the progress. Be sure to 'like' the page) And, we are finally getting some "normalcy" back into our life. We are no longer living in a hotel and we also had to give up our globe trotting summer and return to work like responsible human beings. I still haven't cooked my husband an actual meal (kitchen still not complete), but we FINALLY got to go through our wedding gifts. Yay! In fact, I just ate off of our "K" Pottery Barn plates for the first time. I felt so regal eating off of a plate with my last initial on it. Yay for being married and yay for being back in OUR home!
Anyway, I know I promised a FULL Vegas re-cap including how we did our trip on a budget so here goes:
Hotel: Bills Gamblin' Hall. It's one of the last of the old hotels still on the main strip and its location is PRIMO- right across from the Bellagio and Caesars, next to the Flamingo. I would never have thought to stay there except my friend and her hubs stayed there once and said it's a great place to stay if you're looking for a cheap hotel. It was super cheap, our bill for 4 nights including the weekend was less than $400. Now, would I go stay here for a big, romantic, type weekend? Negative. But, would I stay here again for a quick Vegas getaway. Definitely. The rooms where large, super clean, had large flat screen TV's and had clean bathrooms with great water pressure. The hotel itself doesn't have a pool, but all guests were able to use the Flamingo's pool by showing their room key. You truly felt like you stepped back in time when in the hotel, but that's what's so neat about Vegas. SO much variety!
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| View from our room |
Transportation: We flew to Vegas on Southwest. We had to drive to Louisville since they don't fly out of Lex, but it saved us a couple hundred dollars per ticket by doing so.
While in Vegas we took a shuttle to the hotel and a taxi back to the airport upon us leaving. Reason being; It ended up being the same cost and the shuttle took FOREVER getting us to our hotel because it had to drop of so many people. Unless you're staying way down the strip, the taxi is the for sure way to go. It was only $15 for our ride to the airport from the hotel.
To get around the strip and to get to "Old Vegas" we used the public transportation. Old Vegas being the Fremont Street area (giant neon cowboy, covered street, etc) They have a monorail, which is great when wanting to sight see the strip and a bus system, called "The Deuce". We used the Deuce the most, but monorailed a few times as well. The bus is good in that it's cheap and takes you EVERYWHERE, but it's bad in that it can take awhile to get to where you're going i.e. from our hotel to Old Vegas took around 30 minutes. The buses make TONS of stops, but they are clean, air-conditioned (a lifesaver when it was 110 degrees) and are much cheaper than taxis. A taxi ride from our hotel to Old Vegas would've been $40 round trip where as the bus was $13 for a 24 hour unlimited pass.
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| Riding the "Deuce" to Fremont street. Can you see the sweat dripping off our faces?! It was SO hot! |
Food: Vegas food can be super pricey, especially on the main strip. However, Old Vegas has some crazy awesome deals ($1 margaritas, $10 prime rib dinner, etc). M and I went down there twice, but never ate there. We did, however, zip line across Fremont Street. SO fun and only $15 a person-so worth it!!
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| M and I zipping down Fremont Street |
Here's my food suggestions:
Breakfast:
Hash House A Go Go. It's in the Imperial Palace and the food is SO good! I ordered a pancake and it was as big as my face and M got biscuits and gravy. It's like Cracker Barrel on crack. Ha! So delish and super affordable prices- most plates were under $10.
Bill's Gamblin Hall main restaurant. I can't think of it's name, but it's right by the front desk and the food there was amazeballs as well. And again, affordable.
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| Egg white omlet with hash. Yum! |
Lunch:
We never did anything big for lunch. Most days, we ate breakfast during the time we'd eat lunch at home (thank you 3 hour time change) so if we were hungry, we'd just grab something by the pool or at McDonalds.
Dinner:
Our first night we ate at In-N-Out Burger because neither of us had ever eaten it before and we were starving by the time we got off our flight. We had to hike over the interstate to get to it (it's located right behind the main strip but on the other side of the interstate). Ha-that was fun ;) But it was yumm-o for sure!
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| Hubs loving his burger! |
Spago: Wolfgang Puck's restaurant in Paris. It was very, very good and they even had bread that tasted like a Thanksgiving meal. Sounds weird, but it was SO good! I had the butternut squash ravioli and it was delish. Prices here were okay, around $20 a plate. Service was good and we were happy with our dinner choice.
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| Spaigo had perfectly sized portions :) |
Alright, I'm exhausted. I'll post more about our Cirque show, trip to the Hoover Dam, pool day with Vanilla Ice, riding the Big Shot at the Stratosphere and share some other fun pics in another post.
Stay Tuned.......and be sure to like the Pink Pineapple Blog on Facebook. I've been posting links to great deals and such I run across, since it's much easier and faster than posting them in a blog :)
Happy Vegas-ing
Ash
