Vegas, baby, Vegas!

last weekend I drove to Las Vegas and met Marla (one of my roommates from college) there, along with a couple of her friends (Clare and Monica). we stayed at the Luxor, which was pretty nice. Saturday night, we headed out to the Wynn. unfortunately, it took *one hour* to get there because there was so much traffic. in fact Las Vegas Blvd was more like a parking lot than a street. it sucked. but, we finally got there and it was so nice, we forgot about the drive. Clare and Monica wanted to go to the club Tryst, so we left them in the line for that and headed down to Parasol Down, which is a fancy little bar there. we had to wait a while to get seated on the patio, but it was worth it. the bar overlooks this lake and they have a "show" every 15 minutes. they're usually a little weird/absurd which was totally amusing, but the best one is when this giant frog comes up and sings a song. Marla had hoped we could hear it do Low Rider, but we got What a Wonderful World instead, which was still pretty great. after that, Marla and I walked over to the Venetian to check that out. I should mention that the last time I was in Vegas was sometime in high school. so it's been a while and much has changed since then. the Venetian was really cool, but as it was 2am a lot of things were closed.
Sunday we slept in and then hung out at the pool for a while. it was nice to be outside in the sun during the day with it not being ridiculously hot (like, today, for example when it hit 111 degrees. ick). later in the afternoon Marla and I went exploring to the Paris hotel and the Bellagio. both were very impressive, especially the famed water show at the latter. that night, the two of us had tickets for the Cirque du Soleil show, LOVE, which features music from the Beatles. Marla and I both love the Beatles and Marla is also a huge Cirque fan. I would say we both had pretty high expectations for the show, but it was even more amazing than I could have hoped for. I don't even know how to describe it, except to say that it amazing. you really have to see it.
after the show, Marla and I got some yummy gelato at the Venetian (good, but not as good as the gelato I had in Venice, of course) and met up with Clare and Monica where they were hanging out at Caesar's Palace. they had initially gone to Pure, but apparently it sucked, so they left early (like 1:30am). so they were stationed at some random lounge area (the Seahorse lounge, I believe), near some poker tables. they were most of the way through a pitcher of cocktails (just to mention how crap this lounge was is that they couldn't get individual drinks, only a pitcher) when Marla and I showed up. Marla and I were tired and planning on leaving soon, but we got into an interesting conversation about our random celebrity sightings and how they mostly sucked. I related the time Jonathan Taylor Thomas came to our high school dance and seeing Luke Perry in his car on my way to soccer practice once (this happens occasionally in LA). Monica, who was more celebrity-inclined than the rest of us, had tried many times to go to places in LA where there were supposed to be celebrities, but she never saw any there. anyway, shortly after this conversation, the bartender came over to our table and informed us that someone at the bar just announced that they were going to buy everyone there a drink. since we were planning on leaving soon (it was around 3am by this time and I had to drive us back to the hotel), Marla and I declined, but Clare and Monica got a drink. about five minutes later, Marla and Clare both looked over at the bar and remarked that there was a guy there that looked really familiar. kind of like...well, no, it couldn't be him. so we all looked over and sure enough, it was Vince Vaughn. he was there with a little posse of some friends. he was actually pretty tall and looked good. we purposely left him alone, but I think Clare managed to get a blurry picture. he stayed for almost an hour, until some skanky drunk girls showed up and made a big deal. one of the security guards came over, and his bodyguard escorted him somewhere else. as he left, he walked by our table and smiled at us. it was exciting.
after that, we stayed around talking, no longer tired, and met some more interesting people who were still awake. and made friends with one of the security guards who told us they were shooting a movie out in front of the hotel. it's some comic book thing, called Iron Man. they mostly had a bunch of extras around. we saw one actress, but none of us could remember who she was. eventually we got back to the hotel and collapsed. Monday was spent sleeping in, at the pool again, and then a long drive back for me. I'm still trying to catch up on the sleep. but it was a great trip. :)

I posted some pictures up on Picasa. click on the picture for the album:

Vegas!