I recently went to Las Vegas for work and decided to stay the weekend. Jessi flew in the final day of the convention and stayed the weekend too. We both derive little entertainment out of gambling, so we decided to do other things. I'd like to share some of the things you can do with gambling.
CSI Experience
Jessi LOVES CSI. This was actually the big reason she agreed to come with me. In the MGM Grand you can go on a CSI adventure. You have to process the scene of a crime, then get lab results... follow the evidence... and come up with a conclusion on what happened. It was really well done and a lot of fun.
Coca-Cola Store
The Coke store used to be cooler when I was a kid. It actually had a museum that talked about the history of Coca-Cola. Today it's just a store. BUT they did keep one cool part. You can taste different Coca-Cola products from around the world. We got this double tray of samplers and couldn't finish it. Some were amazing, most were okay. One was so horrible we both thought there must have been something wrong with the machine. Nope. It's just that horrible. This was surprisingly a lot of fun.
M&M Store
What's super cool about this one? For one, there are hilarious posters everywhere. You can tell working in their marketing department is a lot of fun. Also, they have a wall of M&M dispensers. You can mix and match to your heart's content of M&Ms. We may have mixed in about one and half pounds of M&Ms. Yeah - we didn't eat a big dinner that night.
Visit an expensive clothing store and laugh at their ridiculous prices
There are some really nice and expensive stores on the strip. I would never dream of buying anything there. Instead, we looked for the ugliest dress we could find and see how much it costs. It was a mere $2,000. We did find a jacket I liked (pictured above), but it was $450 - a little out of my price range.
Swim at the pool
Each morning we started out with a swim in the pool. In Las Vegas, it's already hot by 9am and the pool feels great. This was a great way to start off the morning! I came up with all sorts of crazy games testing our speed, stamina and strength. Jessi was a lifeguard in high school, so she beat me most of the time.
Watch a Cirque du Soleil Show
This was on Jessi's Bucket List. We saw Mystere in Treasure Island and it was fantastic. The stunts they did were amazing. I loved the strong men and trampoline acts.
Walk around the "block" and check out each hotel
The blocks are HUGE. It takes at least an hour just to go from one end to the other without stoping. We walked from hotel to hotel. We went inside of each one and checked them out. Once you got past the casino area, there would be some cool restaurants or attractions. It was fun to see what theme each of them had. The Luxor was my favorite type of architecure. The New York hotel was my favorite inside atmosphere. As a result of all this walking, we took ~29,000 steps each day (~2,000/mile).
Bellagio Water Show
Jessi loved this. Music would play around the lake and the water would coordinate with the song. Each show lasted a couple minutes (the length of the song) and would happen every 15-20 minutes at night. We watched 4 shows which had 4 different songs. Some days I think it would be cool to be an engineer because you get to work on cool things like this.
Mirage Volcano Eruption
This isn't has cool as the Bellagio waters show, but it's louder & hotter. We could actually feel the heat from the fire of the volcano! I stayed in the Mirage a couple nights (while officially there for HP) & I could hear the eruption each night, on the hour, until midnight. It was cool.
Grab Dinner
You can spend a lot of money just eating in Vegas. We did splurge one night, but it was for creme brulee which is Jessi's favorite dessert.
Have a Drink
Vegas is also know for the flowing alcohol. We didn't get nearly as crazy as some people, but we did try an Irish Pub in the New York Hotel. Jessi's parents recommended it. It opened around the time of 911 and so there were a are of patches from NY firefighters. Over time, it looks like other law enforcement from around the US also added their patches. It's was a fun atmosphere.
So there's 11 things you can do. Two days was long enough for us. We did everything we wanted and had fun.