Keep in mind that the car was really, really, really packed. Think of a salad dish in a Mongolian buffet restaurant where customers try to fit as much as possible in one dish. That was the situation of our car. Plus we had a friend, Turtle, who accompanied us. He got his personal "suite" at the back seat. You can call it a cubicle if you wanted, although it was a cubicle that imposed his sitting posture for the next 6 hours.
The use of space was very efficient. There absolutely no bubbles. Every single small space had to be filled up with shoes or household items. I was lucky to be the driver because I had to have leg space to drive. Nevertheless, I could not see anything through my rear mirrors except personal stuff.
It was 7pm when we left LA and we were sleep-deprived from the day before, yet we still had to make it to Las Vegas because of the hotel reservation at the Venetian was too late to be cancelled.
I kept my speed around 60-65mph despite the 70mph speed limit on the highways because I was afraid a bump on the road could cause the car tires to burst. I kept my lane changing to minimum because I could only see through the side mirrors. Everybody was tired, but we had to keep talking in order to be awake for another 5-6 hours.
After seeing a couple of "fake Vegases" (cities that seemingly had bright lights and casinos) we finally reached Las Vegas. Our GPS was acting wacky, causing us to be in the wrong lane several times, but we managed to get to Venetian at 1pm.
The weather was absolutely hot, as hot as Thailand's summer I could say. It took us half an hour to get our luggage out of the car and EACH OF US ended up having 4 bags to carry.
We wandered listlessly to find the lobby which was sooooo far away. After we successfully checked in and got the swipe cards, we headed to our room, assuming it would be a little bit closer than the parking lot.
We were wrong.
We got a room pretty much almost the furthest from the elevator. We wanted to cut down the expenses as much as possible so we didn't use the bellboy service. It was the longest walk from the lobby to our room I've ever made. We reached the room at 2pm-ish and went straight to bed without a bath :)
The first thing that came to our mind in the morning was we needed to ship as much as possible. We went to the business center and shipped two huge boxes of clothes and household items that weren't needed during the trip. After all the shipping was done, we wanted to have fun. We skimmed through the shows they had. To bad there were not many magic shows on Sunday except one whose name I already forgot. We went to that show at the Flamingo and on the way back we bought some Thai food, In-N-Out, and a new GPS (the old GPS was becoming a brick).
We came back to the hotel to have the dinner we bought from outside. We also bought some huge margaritas from a store downstairs.
After our lovely meals, we had fun with the casinos, and I made $30 from the slot machines.
Before we slept we figured we were still missing the "boat ride" and the pool. The next morning we decided to book the boat ride tickets, go to the pool, then come back to the boat. We went downstairs in our pajamas (but with underwear of course). I brought my credit card but they didn't accept it without my ID, which I left in the room. Damn! It took me another 10-15 minutes to run back to my room and get my ID.
We booked the boat ride near check-out time and we had little time for the pool. After we changed to our bathing suits, we rushed down to the pool for a 5 minute submerge and came back to have a bath. After that, we had the boat ride and it was pretty cool, although I didn't really want to tip the helmsman who kept chatting with another helmsman, plus she was even on her cell phone during the ride.
When we were done with everything, it was 11.30am. I tried to call the reception for checkout, but after half an our of no answer, I discovered I'd be better of checking out in person. Dear and Turtle headed to the car to re-pack stuff; the car was still full of stuff although we shipped a lot. I went to check out. The lobby was so crowded, and it took me about 30 minutes at least to check out. By the time I came back to the car, Dear and Turtle were sweating because it was still really hot.
Eventually we were ready to go! We stopped by an outlet to have lunch. And Turtle had a running-stomach which delayed our take off time by about half an hour.
Next destination, Grand Canyon!
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